Chandigarh: Patient load increased over 20 times in 54 years, says annual report of PGIMER
The Advanced Trauma Centre in PGIMER Chandigarh. (Express photo) The Advanced Trauma Centre in PGIMER Chandigarh. (Express photo)
THE POSTGRADUATE Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER) continues to witness an unprecedented rise in the number of patients from different northern states, revealed the institute’s annual report.
In the beginning of the 652-page annual report, the PGI director said, “The patient care load over the years has been increasing exponentially and now it is becoming unimaginable.”
From the annual attendance of 1,25,163 outpatients and 3,328 admissions in 1963-64, the figure has gone up to 25,55,455 outpatients and 89,584 admissions in 2016-17.
The PGI, in its report, states that in the emergency OPD, the number of patients in 2016-17 was 41,221, from 37,039 in 2015-16. In the emergency medical ward, the number of patients also increased from 4,923 in 2015-16 to 6,176 in 2016-17. The outpatient statistics of 17 major special clinics at PGI also revealed that almost every clinic has seen a rise in 2016-17.
PGI Director Dr Jagat Ram had earlier told Chandigarh Newsline that “we [the institute] are a victim of our own popularity. And patients who prefer to visit the institute, rather than other hospitals, have high hopes from the institute”.
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Post-mortem: Mostly road accident victims
The highest number of post-mortems conducted at PGIMER was of patients, who died in road accidents. According to the report, for 2016-17, 580 post-mortems were conducted at PGI. The total number of post-mortems conducted was 1,029, a little less compared to 1,028 in 2015-16 and 1,154 in 2014-15.
The report said that in the accident category, road accidents were the highest in number, followed by other causes, including fall from height, fall on ground.
The number of suicide (poisoning) related post-mortems, however, were less compared to previous years. For 2016-17, the number was 20, while the number was 55 in 2015-16 and 68 in 2014-15.
Excel in quality research
The report states that the “institute continues to excel in quality research and the clinicians and basic scientists attracted Rs 29.30 crore as extra-mural grant and published 1,276 papers during the year and 282 scientists were awarded fellowship, oration and other national and international awards”. The report says that the institute has now international collaborations with Universities of Virginia, University of Oxford and School of Tropical Medicine (London) and others.
PGI has also said that the 2016-17 academic year introduced new database relevant to meet the international needs of its clients and to keep abreast with new research developments in their fields. The report states that for the future, they are planning digitisation of thesis, archival access of journals and addition of more online databases.
Information Technology
The report has also highlighted that Information Technology (IT) has not been implemented as such but great care/process re-engineering has been done to make the system perform optimally and improve that further. It said that around 84,230 patients for 2016-17 were registered online for per-registration. The report stated that on peak days, about 10,000 patients are being registered through this system in various OPDs of PGI.
“Nursing system is offloaded from preparing manual statistics of patient admission, discharge, deaths for about daily intake of 250 admissions and 225 discharges,” said the report, adding that collection and dissemination of blood and blood components was being done through the system as well. About the future plans for IT, the report said that integrated PACS for various departments of the institute have been proposed to be implemented at PGI while the complete process of online raising of lab investigation is to be initiated for inpatients in the female medical ward on pilot basis.
The report also said that the maximum number of students, studying MD/MS, belong to the southern part of the country. According to details mentioned in the report, out of the 27 mentioned states and a total of 805 candidates, the highest number of students were from Andhra Pradesh (87), Kerala (33), Telangana (84), Tamil Nadu (55) and Karnataka (62). Students enrolled at PGI from other states were Bihar (28), Haryana (50), Himachal Pradesh (84) and UP (40). And, regarding foreign nationals, there were 56 from Nepal and one each from Canada, Sri Lanka and Bhutan.
Services for PGI staff
About PGI’s staff clinic, the total beneficiaries are approximately 26,200 and on an average, 200-250 patients visit the staff clinic daily. It said that the number of patients examined from April 2016-March 2017 was 53,923.
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