COVID-19: Odisha Govt Issues Fresh Guidelines For Help Desk In Hospitals

Bhubaneswar: Odisha government on Tuesday issued an advisory for having mandatory Help Desk in all Covid-19 treatment facilities both in government and private centres.

In a release, the State Health and Family Welfare department said that in spite of the instructions for all the COVID treatment facilities (both in government and private) to have a Help Desk to provide information to the attendants or relatives of patients, complaints are being received from them that they are not getting any feedback on the status of the patients.

Therefore, after careful examination of the matter, the government has come up with some guidelines to be followed for establishing dedicated Help Desk in each Covid-19 facility with immediate effect, it added.

Guidelines for establishing Dedicated Help Desk:

1. Each Covid-19 facility (Both Government and Private) shall mandatorily establish a dedicated Help Desk to function 24 x 7.

2. The help desk must have a dedicated telephone preferably a toll free number.

3. The toll-free helpline number of the help desk must be intimated to the State Level Authorized Officer i.e. Addl. DMET, Odisha ( Prof Dr Umakant Satpathy) Mob-9437410842.

4. The toll-free numbers of all Covid-19 facilities shall be widely notified to the public.

5. The help desk shall be manned with sufficient HR so as to attend all calls round the clock in shift manner.

6. The help desk apart from telephonic communication shall also use social media like WhatsApp etc. to communicate the voice and pictures of the patient to the attendants of the patient.

7. A dedicated conference room may be set up at outside of the Covid-19 Facility with the provision of TV and Cameras which can be connected with CCTVs instaled inside the facilities so that the attendant can see his patient and talk with him/her.

8. Steps shall be taken to collect and record the contact numbers of the patient at the time of admission and even if not inquired by the attendant of the patient, general information of the condition of the patient shall be communicated as an SMS or WhatsApp message to the attendant of the patient every day at least once.

9. The Authorized Medical Officer and the Authorized Person shall ensure the establishment of Help Desk within a limited time of one week and intimate the helpline number to the State Level Authorized Officer.

10. The AM0 as well as AP shall also ensure the proper functioning of the help desk. In case of any complaint regarding the non-response of the help desk to the query I help needed over the telephone, the AMO AP shall take necessary steps to respond to the call immediately.

11. For any violation of the above provisions and non-functioning of the help desk necessary action as deemed fit shall be initiated against the erring hospital. Further, as the compliance of the help desk is directly related to the overall satisfaction of the patient as well as the attendants, noncompliance of the same shall be seriously viewed and shall be considered as negligence in duty for the concerned patient and the claim of the hospital for the same patient shall be withheld. Such matter shall be decided by the Technical Committee after receiving a written complaint from the appellant and approval of
government.

On the other hand, the State government added that to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic, it has already directed private hospitals to reserve 50% of the total general bed and 80% of ICU in five Municipal Corporation area and 10% of the total bed in case of other districts.