ISLAMABAD-Federal Government Services (FGS) Polyclinic hospital is facing immense pressure of patients’ burden as the facility provided medical facilities to above 100,000 people only in one month, The Nation learnt on Monday.
As per the data released by the hospital administration the hospital examined 113,533 patients only in the month of December and patients influx is increasing monthly because of inflation and poverty.
The hospital is already examining around 4,500 patients in Outdoor Patients Department (OPD) daily.
The data released said that in the month of December last year, 82,295 patients were examined in OPD while 29,101 were brought and treated in the hospital emergency.
While the hospital has 550 beds capacity, it also retained 1,457 patients during previous month.
Hospital spokesperson Dr. Sharif Astori informed The Nation over-burden of patients at hospital results affecting the performance, however, hospital managed a huge influx faced last month as per its capacity.
“The load is shifted on the hospital medical equipments also like x-ray machines and ultra sound machines,” he said.
Dr. Sharif said that a capacity of x-ray machine is to perform 400 tests but it has to produce 800 reports a day making it dysfunctional.
“Same is the case with ultrasound machines and resultantly patients face difficulties,” he said.
He informed that Polyclinic hospital has a major hospital, Mother and Child Hospital (MCH) and 32 dispensaries in the city, while it is catering huge influx of patients.
Dr. Sharif said that as the poverty and inflation increased, the residents of the city prefer getting free healthcare from Polyclinic hospital instead of visiting private hospitals and clinic which cost heavy fee.
He informed that the hospital has 500 medical officers with 390 nursing and above 1,200 paramedical staff.
He added that capacity of the emergency has been increased to 40 beds while all medical examinations, lab tests, medicine provision and reports are provided free of cost to the patients.
“Load reduction is vital for hospital as it is not possible to handle the patients with full efficiency with increasing burden,” he said.
As per World Health Organization guidelines, one medical officer is authorised to examine only 25 patients a day. However, hundreds of patients are examined here by doctors, he said.
Officials informed The Nation that the project of extension of the hospital has also been shelved after the court decided the land issue against the hospital.
As per the plan, the hospital capacity was to be doubled by the Ministry of National Health Services at a portion of Argentina Park. The authorities had also mulled to increase the storeys of the hospital as second option but it was also not implemented.
Meanwhile, there was also no fund allocation for increasing the capacity of the hospital in previous budget which also dimmed the hope of hospital extension, officials said.
Dr. Sharif Astori said that government has decided to expand the hospital on the alternative land allocated in the city and hopefully its construction will start soon. He said that hospital staff needs appreciation on the performance of examining above 100,000 patients in December last year which was beyond their capacity.
He said that patients’ number also increased due to cold weather while old age and children were majority in the number.