Patient admissions: PIMS lacks data backup system

Numerous registers are lying in storerooms in some departments.

ISLAMABAD:

The capital’s largest public hospital lacks an online patient registration facility at two of its important inpatient departments.

The facility is lacking at the Children’s Hospital and the Maternal Neonatal Child Health (MNCH) Department. The hospital administration even lacks a system to backup data on patients admitted in these departments, said official in the MNCH department of Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (Pims).

Sharing details with The Express Tribune, official sources said that only the name of the patient was entered in the register at the time of admission in the MNCH department and no other record of treatment was being maintained.

“If a patient asks for a 10-year-old hospital record, it would not be easy for the administration to provide it,” said the sources.

A number of registers are lying in the storerooms of these departments and the administration has no clue condition they are in, said the official sources.

“This is one of the main reasons behind factual errors in the inquiry report compiled by the hospital administration on the recent theft of a newborn baby from the MNCH department,” said the sources.

If someone removes or misplaces a patient’s file, the hospital would have no means to reproduce it or compile it again, the sources added.

The same situation exists at the Children’s Hospital, sources said.

Pims spokesperson Dr Ayesha Ishani said that in almost all departments, patients were being registered online, adding that the system would be introduced in the inpatient departments of MNCH and the Children’s Hospital “soon”.

She said that all efforts were being made to maintain and secure patient’s record.

“It will improve once recordkeeping is shifted from physical to digital,” the spokesperson added.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 11^th, 2015.