Kolkata: The Bengal health department on Friday rolled out the central referral system (CRS) — on an experimental basis — at five govt hospitals in the city: SSKM Hospital, RG Kar Medical College and Hospital, Medical College Kolkata, Calcutta National Medical College and Hospital (CNMC), and NRS Medical College and Hospital.
CRS — which connects district and block hospitals in the state to the five city hospitals — was one of the demands of protesting junior doctors in the wake of the RG Kar rape-murder on Aug 9.
A trial of the system was conducted at the five hospitals on Wednesday, said officials. A pilot project had also been run in South 24 Parganas on Oct 15, with MR Bangur Hospital acting as the destination hospital for referrals.
Even though CRS was officially rolled out, electronic display boards, a key requirement of the system, were yet to be installed "because those may be stolen," a govt official said, adding that the installation would be done in the "next couple of weeks, with proper guard." The plan is to install the boards near each hospital's emergency department to display bed availability.
The health department is monitoring the system. The usual practice is for patients from Howrah and Hooghly to be referred to Medical College Kolkata; those from South 24 Parganas to be referred to SSKM and CNMC; and those from North 24 Parganas to RG Kar. "From today, patients brought to govt hospitals in Kolkata for admission from these districts are being monitored by CRS. With this system, officials are checking bed availability at these five state-run hospitals in the city," a health department official said.
CRS, in theory, would allow doctors at OPDs to determine how many beds are vacant. With district and block hospitals also connected to the grid, they can also see, in real time, the bed vacancy situation at any medical college or hospital in the city.
Officials said the system would be implemented in the remaining 23 medical colleges across the state "in the next few months". "In North Bengal, North Bengal Medical College Hospital has been identified as the nodal centre for the system," an official said.
Debasish Halder, a representative of WBJDF, which was spearheading the junior doctors' protest, said: "Now that the system has been introduced in city hospitals, we will have to see how it functions."