AIIMS strives to become best low-cost healthcare facilitator

All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) was started in Nagpur two years ago and was intially housed at Government Medical College and Hospital (GMCH). In about one-and-a-half years it was shifted to sprawling 150 acre land in MIHAN. It is proving to be a low-cost healthcare facilitator.

The main building of AIIMS Nagpur in MIHAN. 

 

Maj Gen Dr Vibha Dutta, SM, herself a staunch Pathologist, told ‘The Hitavada’, “An institute of national importance, conceived with an objective to ‘serve as a nucleus for nurturing excellence in all aspects of healthcare’. AIIMS Nagpur was established as a dream project of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfareunder Pradhan Mantri Swasthya Suraksha Yojana (PMSSY) to correct the regional imbalances and to fulfil the dire need of affordable and reliable tertiary and super-speciality healthcare services in the Vidarbha and surrounding regions of Central India.”

 

Patients have to pay mere Rs 10 as OPD charges. Rest most of the tests including blood, lipid profile, ECG or other some microbiological tests are conducted for free. Some of the facilities like Radiology unit that would house CT Scan, MRI are to be developed. But the charges for the tests also would not be beyond the common man’s limit.

AIIMS Nagpur stands tall on a sprawling lush green campus of 150 acres, at Special Economic Zone (SEZ), MIHAN, with a total project cost of Rs 1,577 crore envisaged as one of the largest college campuses in Central India.

 

Dr Dutta, who had visited several AIIMS in India to stury the arrangement there, gave a deep thought about introduction of new facilities at AIIMS Nagpur to ensure people get best healthcare.

 

“I have observed in government hospital, people mainly suffer at OPD registration. They don’t get proper answer because of crowd. I tried to bridge the gap by appointing two persons who guide the patients and their relatives. Right now, our OPD is of 400 per day. The system that I introduced will pay dividend when crowd gets increased,” elaborated Dr Dutta.

 

AIIMS Nagpur is probably the first government institute in India that has created the facility for the stay of patients’ relatives which one can found only in big corporate hospitals.

 

In record time, under the visionary and charismatic leadership and untiring efforts of Maj Gen (Dr) Vibha Dutta, SM, to integrate exemplary and holistic healthcare services with quality transformative medical education under one roof, has finally taken shape.

 

The first phase of the project is nearing completion. The OPD and AYUSH Complex, Dharamshala, lecture halls, laboratories, libraries, multi-storied residential quarters and hostels for the faculty and students, sports facility is up and running. The multi-storied OPD is modern yet patient-friendly in design and spans over 32,520 Sq. m. The OPD services for broad specialities such as General Medicine, General Surgery, Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Paediatrics, Ophthalmology, ENT, Orthopaedics, Dermatology and Psychiatry have started and Super-speciality services such as Gastroenterology, Cardiology, Neurology, Neuro-surgery, Oncology etc will start by end of this year and complete by July 2021.

 

The OPD complex is equipped with state-of-the-art diagnostics and imaging techniques and in-house Pharmacy with medicines dispensed at affordable subsidized costs. The OPD has been functioning since September 2019, with an average footfall of 400-500 patients and rising with each passing day. Day care services has begun this month and the construction of the 300-bed In-Patient Department (IPD), equipped with 24 modular OTs, ICUs, Imaging facilities such as MRI, CT Scan, Linear accelerator etc. is in full swing and be completed by the year end.

 

AIIMS Nagpur, has adopted three schools and an Urban Primary Health Centre (UPHC) at Nandanvan whose OPD strength has quadrupled to 2,451 patients in the 1 year of its adoption. Specialists are attending to patients at the UPHC and Stress Clinics have also been started to cater to the mental health needs of the population.

 

With an intake of 50 MBBS students to a batch of 100 students at newly established campus in MIHAN is a fantastic journey for AIIMS Nagpur. Post Graduate courses in pre-clinical and para-clinical subjects will begin mid-2020 and MD/MS courses by 2021.