Ailing Aarogyasri woes
The Aarogyasri health scheme suffered a three day paralysis because of a ‘website renovation’. Patients were left in the lurch as hospitals refused to admit them.
While the chief minister went about making tall promises of extending Aarogyasri’s coverage and pushing 70 new ambulances into the service, the Aarogyasri health scheme suffered a three-day paralysis because of what officials termed as a “website renovation.”
The backend processes of the Aarogyasri medical health scheme works like this — the patient gets registered under the Aarogyasri scheme using the Aarogyasri card.
The concerned doctor who treats the patient’s ailments is registered with the Aarogyasri trust which handles and bears the entire cost of the patient’s treatment.
Trouble began when the Aarogyasri Trust’s website went for upgradation causing all financial transactions to be put on hold. Following this, many private hospitals in the City refused to admit patients seeking treatment under the Aarogyasri scheme.
Strangely, the medical trust’s website has been running with no signs of upgradation. Not so surprisingly, the minister for medical education Kondru Murali Mohan was busy entertaining Ghulam Nabi Azad during his visit to the City, as thousands of patients continued to await treatment in hospitals.
At Gandhi hospital, patients who had come from as far as Warangal were seen waiting for the treatment.
Sathaiah, a patient from Warangal said, “We have been waiting since morning for our medicines to be dispensed. No one has attended to us so far and it’s been over half a day.”
Mariam, another patient suffering from a chest disorder was denied treatment at a private hospital. “They asked me to wait until tomorrow or come back on Monday. I am in no state to move but they do not seem to be willing to help,” she said.
The Aarogyasri Health Care Trust handles 15,000 medical treatments everyday, with over 2,000 fresh registrations that include emergency treatments. Right now, the only saving grace in this situation is that emergency treatments are not being postponed but are duly being attended to.
“Emergency treatments are being dispensed with the help of emergency telephonic intimation but fresh registrations are not being done because the IT staff are upgrading the website,” said an Aarogyasri ward member at the Osmania Hospital.
“We have registered 20 emergency cases with Aarogyasri today, but other registrations like neurological, renal and cardiac treatments have been postponed till Monday. We expect the website to be working by tomorrow morning. This being a private hospital we have not seen so much rush as the other government hospitals have seen,” said Devi, Aarogyasri ward member at Yashoda Hospital.
Minister Kondru Murali Mohan was unavailable for comment either on his office contact number or his personal mobile number.
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