Wedding Kurat

Nobody likes to stay in hospital and patients eagerly wait for their day of discharge. After spending days or weeks in hospital the doctor’s order to discharge brings cheers to patient and their family members. The phase of troublesome treatment in hospital is over and patient wishes to go home as soon as possible. But wait, here are few things which must be taken care of before leaving the hospital to save you any troubles later on. 1.         Get your discharge summary –  Although it is a routine for any hospital to hand over the discharge summary of patient before they leave, it gets missed many time. The discharge summary contains all important details related to patient’s disease, tests results, condition at the time of discharge, treatments given, further treatments to be taken and follow up advice. This is a very important piece of medical document that will be required for future medical treatments. In hospitals the process of discharge is pretty comple...

Ambulance plays a vital role in emergency medical care. In-order to be able to provide best ambulance services to emergency cases, NABH has specified certain requirements to be met. As functionally ambulance is related to emergency care, it is suggested that this checklist be used in combination with checklist of emergency department . Specific points that needs to be taken care of for ambulance are The vehicle should be registered as an ambulance (for each vehicle being used as ambulance) Necessary legal documents should be available and within validity period. This includes vehicle registration, driver’s license, PUC and Vehicle Insurance. (Check this post on ' all legal documents required by a hospital ') The vehicle should comply with ‘Minimum standards and guidelines for ambulances, National Ambulance code issued by Ministry of Road and transport and Highways’ There should be an un-obstructed way for ambulance to reach till emergency entrance and take a U-turn An identi...

Emergency is an integral part of any hospital. Quality of emergency care depends upon several factors related to its infrastructure, design and processes. In NABH standards, there are several requirements that relates to the functioning of emergency and it must be taken care of by a hospital while preparing for accreditation. Below is the list of all such requirements which has been picked from NABH standards and observations made during assessments.       1.        Requirements related to Infrastructure and design of emergency department a.        Emergency department should be on ground floor OR its entrance should be easily accessible by ambulance b.        It should have a separate and dedicated entry. The road should reach till the emergency entrance for making it accessible to ambulance. The road should also allow for easy U-turn of the ambulance. ( Please also see the checkli...

W hen it comes to our healthcare we should not take chances with the hospital from where we are planning to get our treatment done. While recommendation (reference) from our primary doctor is important, following points must also be checked to ensure that the hospital we select is a good one and match our need. 1. How is the doctor?   This is the first thing one must check in a hospital. As the treatment outcome greatly depends upon the competence of the doctor, it is absolutely important to know how is the doctor in the hospital, who is going to treat you. Basic things that should be checked here is if the credentials of the doctor are right for the kind of disease you are seeking treatment for. There are several points that must be considered while evaluating this aspect and my post on ‘ How to select a good doctor? ’ explains these essential points that can help you in making a good decision in selecting a doctor. 2. Does the hospital have necessary clinical facilit...

D octor is the most important person on whom the fate of patient’s treatment depends upon. Hence for any major treatment it is absolutely important to select a doctor who is the best for you. But due to complexity and technicality of medical field, most common people find it difficult to decide about selection of doctor. Here are 5 points that one can use to select a good doctor for themselves.  (Also check my post on ‘ 5 points on how to select a good hospital ’) 1. Expertise of the doctor:  The first thing that should be checked is to see if the doctor has expertise in treating the type of healthcare problem you have. Here, I don’t mean his/her specialization (i.e. Medicine, Surgery, Gynaec etc.) but specific healthcare problems (diseases) the doctor has developed his/her expertise in treating. For example, within orthopaedic surgeons there are some who hold expertise in doing joint replacement. Similarly, amongst general physician there are doctors who have mastered ...

Hospitals are one of the most complex organizations ever built by human beings (Peter Drucker). A large number of functions happens in a hospital and each function is important for effectively delivering healthcare to patients. For common people it is virtually impossible to get information of these internal functions of the hospital or to understand how it affects their healthcare. This limitation on part of patient group, many time results in selection of hospitals that lack basic quality features necessary for providing medical care to patients. Thankfully, there is a solution to this problem in form of ‘accreditation’, which is a mark of quality in hospitals. Accreditation serves as an assurance to patients that the hospital is of good quality and safe for their medical care. This is the reason why one of the important point in my post on ‘ 5 points on how to select a good hospital ’ , is on accreditation status of the hospital. Here I am going to give some basic details of what is...