BMC chief IS Chahal told private hospital management that the active case load has soared 50% since Sept. 1 due to increased testing.
Sending patients from outside Mumbai to giant centers would be blatantly discriminatory. People from MMR come to Mumbai private hospitals due to the lack of health infrastructure outside the city limits. The decision to admit or not admit patients should be based on their condition and availability of beds, not where the patient lives.
Active cases in the city have risen to 30,316 on September 13 from 20,067 on September 1.
“Patients from remote stations are requested to be diverted and asked to go to giant field hospitals for treatment and not assigned Covid beds in private hospitals to ensure that local citizens of Mumbai do not suffer due to the lack of beds, ”Chahal said in a text message to hospitals.
The director of a private hospital told TOI that the commissioner’s diktat applied to 80% of the beds that are under BMC’s control. “For the remaining 20%, we are free to admit anyone,” he said. Another hospital official said BMC ward-level war rooms have not been allocating private hospital beds to MMR patients in a while. “It is discriminatory, no doubt, but the state and other MMR corporations are also to blame for not developing infrastructure for years,” he said. The commissioner added in his text that the BMC will ensure that people outside of Mumbai find a bed in the jumbo centers. With the situation of the beds getting worse, Chahal reiterated that the allocation of 80% of the beds in the private hospitals that are under the control of the BMC must go through the war rooms of the ward. Of the 1,418 ICU beds, only 91 were available as of Monday afternoon, of which only 27 were in private hospitals.
Joy Chakraborty, director of operations at Hinduja Hospital, however, said that many patients coming from MMR do not require a dedicated covid hospital (DCH). “Basically, BMC’s communication is just admitting patients who need DCH level of care at major hospitals and referring others to jumbos,” he said, adding that no Indian citizen can be denied care anywhere. A member of the Association of Medical Consultants said BMC was struggling with ICU beds since the closure of 72 nursing homes.
On the discharge of all asymptomatic positive patients, Dr. V Ravishankar, director of operations at Lilavati Hospital, said that the average length of hospital stay anyway is five to six days for mild patients who are given discharged after their clinical and biochemical parameters stabilize. “Sometimes patients request a longer stay if their relatives are in quarantine or if they have smaller homes,” he said.
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