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Chandigarh admn probing ‘excess’ oxygen use by private hospital
UT spokesperson says the hospital is using 400 cylinders per day and even senior doctors couldn’t find a reason behind the high consumption
The Chandigarh administration has initiated an inquiry against a private Covid hospital for consuming an “abnormal” quantity of oxygen, which is being supplied to it from the centrally-allocated quota of 20 metric tonnes (MT).
Officials said on Saturday that an inquiry has been marked against Eden Hospital in Industrial Area, Phase 2, which has been using 400 oxygen cylinders everyday.
They added that previously, a private hospital had been found using 400 cylinder per day, while another hospital of around the same capacity was using about 90 cylinders.
However, Dr Sanjiv Bansal, the hospital’s owner, denies any foul play and said that oxygen is being utilised according to the needs of patients.
“The oxygen consumption is high, as some Covid patients need a very large quantity of it. Some suffer from Happy Hypoxia, in which oxygen saturation drops to 50 or 60, without the patient being aware of it. In such cases, immediate hospitalisation and high quantity of oxygen is needed. Why will our hospital waste such an important resource?,” he added.
A UT spokesperson said, “It has been decided that a detailed inquiry will be carried out and action will be taken against the hospital authorities as per the findings of the probe.”
Senior doctors say that some reasons for oxygen wastage could be leakage in pipelines and outlets, valves left open and oxygen masks not fitted property over the face of the patients.
“The consumption of each private hospital was determined with regard to capacity and beds reserved for Covid patients. Even senior doctors from the government hospitals could not find out the possible reason for such high consumption by the hospital. It seems almost impossible to consume such a quantity, even if all the patients were on ventilators,” the spokesperson said.
