Parliamentary Panel Recommends Grading System At AIIMS To Treat Critical Patients First

A parliamentary panel has recommended to introducing the grading system at AIIMS in Delhi, to ensure that patients with severe diseases are treated first, as patients have to wait too long for surgeries and tests. "Straitjacketing" of surgeries on a first-cum-first-serve basis does not do "justice" to the patients having serious complications, the department related parliamentary committee on Health and Family welfare observed on the functioning of the All India Institutes of Medical Sciences (AIIMS). The panel also recommended that all essential medications should be provided free of cost by the institute to patients belonging to the economically weaker sections (EWS), reveal sources.

"The committee is of the opinion that a screening wing of each department should be opened which would, depending on the severity of the disease, put in place a grading system under which patients having disease of severe nature can be operated earlier. Those who have a less serious complication can be operated later as straitjacketing of surgeries on first-cum- first-serve system does not do justice to the patients having serious complications," the panel, chaired by Satish Chandra Misra, said in its report.

"The committee recommends that the institute should devise a screening wing of each department which the committee feels would be much better and practical than the current system of first-cum-first-serve," it said.

"As another patient-friendly step, the committee recommends that all essential medications should be provides free of cost by the institute to the economically weaker patients... Moreover, once a patient is admitted in general ward, she/he should not be compelled for any out of pocket expenditure," the report states.

Source-Medindia