Indoor services of IIT KGP's hospital to begin next year

Kolkata: The indoor services of IIT Kharagpur's superspecialty hospital, Dr B C Roy Institute of Medical Science and Research, is expected to begin next year with 400 beds in the first phase, the institute said in a statement on Monday. The outpatients' department is likely to be open by the end of this year while the capacity of the hospital will be enhanced to 750 beds in the second phase, it said. Officiating Director of IIT Kharagpur, Prof Sriman Kumar Bhattacharyya, said once the hospital is operational, an MBBS programme will be rolled out for 50 students in the first phase.

The course curriculum will be formulated as per the MCI guidelines, he said. Bhattacharya said the number of seats in the MBBS programme will be expanded to 100 in the second phase and postgraduate degrees will eventually be introduced. Healthcare data sciences and data analytics would also be among the primary thrust areas of the hospital, he said. "While the academic affairs will be managed by the institute, the healthcare facilities of the hospital will be run by a special purpose vehicle floated under Section 8 of the Companies Act, 2013," Bhattacharya said.

The hospital's board of directors will be headed by the director of the IIT Kharagpur and will comprise senior faculty members of the institute, he said, adding that the hospital will be run in a not-for-profit model. While 10 per cent of the beds at the hospital would be free, 65 per cent of them would be charged as per the rates in the central and state health insurance schemes, Bhattacharya said. Anticipating a heavy influx of patients, the institute has also decided to set up mobile healthcare units to cater to the needs in the immediate neighbourhood, project director and visiting faculty at IIT Kharagpur, Dr Satadal Saha said.

"The mobile units will perform basic diagnosis and treatment, which will reduce the patient load in the hospital," he said. The institute has also collaborated with the All India Institutes of Medical Sciences, Tata Medical Center and the South Eastern Railway Hospital. "Collaboration between clinicians and scientists will help in the development of better therapeutics," Prof Ritobrata Goswami, Assistant Professor, School of Bioscience at the institute, said.