Portal launched for info on availability of hospital beds
KOLKATA: Bringing respite to people running from pillar to posts or calling up helpline numbers in search of hospital beds to admit Covid patients, the Bengal government on Wednesday introduced an exclusive portal, icms.wb.gov.in, to provide real-time information about availability of beds in hospitals and accept online applications for admitting Covid patients.
By clicking the link (icms.wb.gov.in), users can enter the portal and find a circular button with 'check bed availability' written on it. A single click on the button will route the user to the webpage to select the district where they are searching for a hospital with beds available to admit Covid patients.
There are also options to select government hospitals, government requisitioned private hospitals and private hospitals separately. It will show all the hospitals in a district along with its address and contact numbers besides the total number of beds and number of beds available for both male and female patients. Break-up of Covid beds for both male and female patients are also available for each hospital.
For easy understanding, 'colour coding' of the hospitals has been done in the portal based on the number of beds available. In case of more than 20 available beds, the name and details of the hospital appear against a green background. Similarly, if the number of available beds is up to 20, then the colour is light blue. If no beds are available, the background will be light pink.
A link named as "Fill Online Form for Admission" is also available beside the name of the hospital. The user needs to click on the link and will receive a one-time password (OTP) on his or her phone number. A subsequent simple process of entering minimum details of the patient will help the user to secure a bed in a hospital for the patient.
A senior official of the state government said the portal has been introduced beside round-the-clock efforts to augment the number of beds in both state-run and private hospitals for Covid patients. At present there are around 13,000 beds at state-run and state requisitioned hospitals while there are around 7,000 beds in private hospitals. "The number is constantly increasing with a series of efforts taken in this regard," the official said, adding that this is the first time when such a portal has been introduced.
The state government has already set up an Integrated Covid Management System for better coordination among officers involved in Covid management to take stock of all aspects in every district. "Today, the separate portal has been launched for people. More features will be added to it. But, the bed availability and admission procedure have been introduced today (Wednesday) to help people on an immediate basis," the official said.
This comes when a record single-day spike of 17,207 cases were reported on Wednesday with as many as 77 fatalities in a single day.
