New system will send SMS to patient, show name of allotting officer, and unblock beds that are not occupied within 4 hours
BENGALURU:
Approximately 100 hours after Tejasvi Surya exposed the Covid bed allotment scam, the Bengaluru South MP initiated four major changes in the system. Among them, the name of the officer allotting the bed will reflect in the system, while the patient will directly receive a text SMS once the booking is confirmed.
The BJP’s Youth National Wing president claimed that the new system will remove the earlier loopholes and make the system more transparent and amenable for common citizens who do not have access to influential people like MLAs, MPs, or IAS and IPS officers to get a bed allotted.
Addressing a 47-minute presser on Monday evening, Surya said BBMP’s booking portal did not have transparency and cited the example of one person who had booked beds in multiple hospitals. “This was a big scam and touts were collecting Rs 60,000 to Rs 1 lakh from patients’ attenders to provide a bed under BBMP’s government quota allotment,” he said.
Surya said, “I along with MLAs M Satish Reddy, Ravi Subramanya and Uday Garudachar met Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa and explained the issue in detail. Later, on the CM’s directions, the matter was referred to the CCB and a few arrests were made.”
The Karnataka High Court and the Lokayukta have taken up the issue suo motu and have asked for a detailed report, he said.
Help from Infosys
Surya said, “During our meeting with the Chief Minister, he directed us to come up with a remedy. As per the CM’s directions, I spoke to IT czar Nandan Nilekani and he provided a few software architects from Infosys. The Infosys staff along with e-governance and BBMP officials started working on the issue. And in the last 100 hours, war room in-charge Arvind Limbavali also directed officials to set up a transparent bed allotment process which is now in place.”
“I am happy to say that we have brought about many changes in BBMP’s bed allotment system. This will remove touts and the common man will be directly able to book beds,” Surya said.
Accountability
The new system will provide details of the officer or doctor on whose recommendation beds are booked. It will also have details of the computer system from which a bed is booked, and the person who has booked it.
Auto-generated SMS
Under the new system, in place since Sunday, patients will receive an SMS once a bed is booked. (This system was not adopted earlier and a screenshot of the booking was shared on WhatsApp.) The same message will be sent to the nodal officer of the hospital – this will save time in patients getting admitted as hospital managements were earlier denying that beds had been booked in the system.
4-hour window
Earlier, once the bed allotment was made, the patient had as much as 10 to 12 hours to occupy the bed. Now, the patient has to occupy the bed within 4 hours, after which the bed is unblocked.
No manual unblocking
Earlier, beds were blocked even in the name of a deceased person and these were manually unblocked and realloted. Now, manual unblocking has been removed from the system.
Further changes
Surya said that the common citizen will be able to see the real-time position on the portal, similar to the railway’s booking system where people can see the real-time change in their booking status.
He also said that a person in home isolation will not be able to avail of a bed under the new system till he gets a certificate recommending hospitalisation from a doctor. The queue system will cover general beds as well as HDU, oxygen and ventilator beds.
Congress ‘twist’
“Our aim was not to target any person. We wanted to bring changes in the system. But Congress and other political leaders tried to give a communal colour to our efforts,” Surya said.
Surya thanked BBMP Chief Commissioner Gaurav Gupta and IAS officers Tushar Giri Nath, V Ponnuraj, D Randeep and Kumar Pushkar for their assistance in working out the new system.
