UT orders audit of Oxygen cylinders procured by private hospitals

Dushyant Singh Pundir
Tribune News Service
Chandigarh, May 13

To prevent the misuse of medical oxygen, the UT Administration has ordered an audit of oxygen cylinders procured by private hospitals in the city.

Considering an acute shortage of medical oxygen, the UT Administration has rationalised the distribution of oxygen cylinders and also fixed the daily quota for each of the private hospitals.

Further, Jagjit Singh, PCS officer, was assigned the charge of coordinating with all private hospitals regarding their availability of beds and supply of medical oxygen.

Yashpal Garg, nodal officer for managing medical oxygen supply in the UT, said the consumption of each of the private hospitals was examined with regard to its capacity and bed reserved for Covid patients.

During the process, it was found that earlier some of the private hospitals were consuming excess quantity of oxygen. One private hospital was taking abnormal quantity of about 400 cylinders per day while another hospital of almost the same capacity was consuming about 90 cylinders only.

Senior doctors from government hospitals observed that it seemed almost impossible to consume such quantity even when all patients were on ventilators, he said.

Accordingly, the private hospitals had been asked to submit detailed information about the number of beds and oxygen cylinders procured by them from private vendors approved for refilling of oxygen cylinders and other sources from April 1 to May 10, he said.

He said a detailed inquiry had also been ordered against procurement of excess cylinders by the private hospital.

He said it had also been decided that a team of senior doctors from the GMCH-32 and the GMSH-16 would visit private hospitals and government hospitals to educate and sensitise them to optimum utilisation of oxygen, which is a precious commodity.

Garg said a team, led by Jagjit Singh, along with Dr Manjit Singh, GMSH-16, and Dr Manpreet Singh, GMCH-32, visited Landmark Hospital, Mukat Hospital and Healing Hospital yesterday to educate and sensitise staff to optimum utilisation of oxygen. Today, the team visited City/Apollo Hospital, Kare Partners Hospital and Santokh Hospital. The team would visit Eden Hospital tomorrow.

The team would also visit mini-Covid care centres and government hospitals next week with the same purpose of optimum utilisation of oxygen, he said.

The Central Government had fixed the daily quota of 20 MT of medical oxygen for the UT from M/s INOX, Barotiwala, to be utilised for the GMCH-32, GMSH-16 and the Sector 48 Covid hospital. Private health care institutions were also being catered from this quota of oxygen.