Contrary to the popular belief about Government-run hospitals, visiting the lok Nayak Jai Prakash Narayan Hospital (lNJP) — situated at the centre of the Capital — is now going to be a less traumatic and hassle-free affair. Stinking corridors and suffocated waiting area has given way to neat and hygienic centrally air-conditioned galleries. The newly-constructed Out Patient Department (OPD) at the hospital, equipped with state-of-the-art facilities, can be touted as parallel to a private multi-speciality hospital in Delhi.
The hospital gets a daily footfall of around 4,000 patients — and with its transformation to one of the biggest OPD in the city — it can now easily cater to double the number of patients.
A fully air-conditioned new block consisting seven floors, the OPD is outfitted with almost five times the capacity to accommodate patients than the old OPD and can sit up to 300 patients at any given time on each floor. “The earlier block was 5,000 square metres in area whereas this block is 25,000 square metres. This means that while there is more room, almost double the crowd can now come and get treated,” said the medical superintendent Dr Sidharth Ramji. There are more rooms also in the new block — almost 30-40 per block — making it over 210 rooms in the whole block.
This is the first time that a Government hospital in the city has got a centrally air-conditioned OPD. “This is probably the first step ahead. We need Government hospitals to be the best,” stated Dr Ramji. However, with all of this development, the hospital authorities have planned to install televisions across rooms and corridors which give important health tips to patients. The old OPD has now been closed and the new one still needs to get fully functional. “It will take another week-10 days to make the OPD fully functional,” ended Dr Ramji.
After nine months of struggle with the Public Works Department (PWD), the hospital finally began operations in the new OPD on Monday. However, two services are yet to be shifted from the old area to the new. “Currently maternity and cancer services have not yet been shifted to the new OPD because we don’t want to shift them in a chaotic manner. We want to shift them when the OPD is fully functional,” said Dr Ramji.
With space there are world-class facilities which have been taken intricately care of as well. The building is an earthquake resistant with base isolation and the entire complex is fully air-conditioned. Additionally, there are unlikely to be long queues at the hospital as this block has more consultation rooms and almost six minor operation theatres. Dr Ramji informed, “The old block has only two OTs, which were also not very well-equipped and always crowded. This OPD has six of them with all facilities.”
According to Dr Ramji, the hospital will also be introducing an automatic queuing system soon. He explained, “At the moment patients get a token number which is shouted out when their turn comes. However, we will stop this system soon and have the automatic system where the number of patient shows on the screen. This way it will be easier to manage the crowd.”