The UT Health Secretary has asked all government hospitals in UT, including PGI, GMSH-16 and GMCH-32, to recommend generic medicines to patients. These medicines can be obtained from the jan aushadhi centres in all government hospitals. Cheaper and government –approved medicines are available at the jan aushadhi shops. The registration slips of the government hospitals also bear the stamp ‘cheap and government-approved medicines are available at the jan aushadhi shop’. However, the government doctors are still not prescribing generic medicines, but branded ones.
The doctors are of the opinion that it is not always possible to prescribe generic drugs for serious ailments and emergency cases.
The mohalla clinics in Delhi work on the same concept of prescribing generic drugs which are way too cheaper than costly medicines available in private medical shops.
A generic drug is a medication created to be the same as a marketed brand-name drug in dosage form, safety, strength, quality, performance characteristics, and intended use but it is cheaper than the branded medicines produced by different pharma companies.
While brand name drug refers to the name giving by the producing company, generic drug’s name is based on the active ingredient of the drug.
Token system for registration at Advanced Cardiac Centre, PGI
We all have faced or been witness to the long queues at registration counter across government hospitals in Chandigarh. Post-Graduate Institute of Medical Education & Research (PGI) has now installed a vending machine at the Advanced Cardiac Centre through which a token is generated. As soon as the OPD registration counter opens, the vending machine shall become operational.
After getting the token, patients can relax in the waiting area for the token number to flash on the display. Once the number appears on the screen, they can approach the window for registration.
The manual token system will be later integrated with the online software through which patients will be able to get tokens for doctor’s room as well. For now, the token system is available for advanced eye and cardiac centres only.
Soon a mobile app will also be launched by the PGI which will prepare provisional OPD registration, reveal patient queue status and status of investigation reports, and online payment.
Free treatment to heart attack/ stroke, trauma patients at GMSH-16
Under a pilot project of the the Rogi Kalyan Samiti scheme applicable for a year only, GMSH-16 (Government Multi-Specialty Hospital, Sector-16) Chandigarh, free treatment will be provided to patients of trauma, stroke and heart attack for the first 24 hours in the hospital’s emergency ward, regardless of their financial status. The patient’s attendant will have to makes a request for the same. After 24 hours, poor patients can avail further free treatment after meeting the existing criteria, which includes recommendation from the head of the department concerned and approval of hospital authorities.
