Hyderabad: Following guidelines big challenge for small hospitals, clinics

Hyderabad: The Health department's fresh guidelines to ensure social distancing, sanitizing premises regularly everyday, providing hand sanitizers and masks etc will be a big challenge for small clinics and also to small hospitals and nursing homes across the State.

While clinics run in small establishments surrounded by commercial shops or located in commercial shopping complexes and could be found in every nook and corner of the State capital and in districts, some small hospitals are functioning in plot sizes similar to independent houses. These hospitals have small rooms that act as consultation rooms for regular doctors.

The waiting area in these small hospitals, mostly with 10 to 50 beds astrength, are packed to the hilt with reception counters, waiting chairs for patients and attendants and hospital furniture all around. In this backdrop ensuring social distancing is quite difficult.

However, R S Saluja, former president of Telangana Private Hospitals and Nursing Homes Association and who has a 50-bed hospital in Secunderbad, said that the number of patients visiting hospitals has come down drastically in the last three months and the situation will remain the same atleast until September-October or till year end. " Post corona only 25 per cent of patients are visiting hospitals now. Earlier people used to rush to hospitals for every small health issue. But due to fear of infection people rarely visiting the hospitals unless an unbearable and major problem. So ensuring social distancing will not pose much difficulties although space is small in these hospitals," Dr Saluja said.

Further, he added that all hospitals have to strictly follow consultations according to fixed hourly appointments every day. Patients have to be told to come to hospital at this time and meet doctor and then leave the premises so that next few patients come over to avoid overcrowding.

Meanwhile, giving sanitizers and face masks to patients or sanitizing or disinfecting premises few times every day will take a toll on doctors who run in small clinics. Most of them, especially in districts and rural areas charge a small or negligible amount as consultation fees and usually these clinics are flocked by people in considerable big numbers.

" We have to see how to go about the new guidelines. It has be to be done strictly to avoid infection in this corona pandemic or else these spaces will act as source for spread of infection from one patient to other patient visiting clinic at the same time," a doctor who did not wish to be named said.