HMIS services to resume at govt medical colleges, hospitals

The system has been shut since July 5, 2022, as the private firm hired to digitally record patients’ data stopped providing services after alleged non-payment of dues of ₹100 crore

After a one-and-half-year-long inconvenience and hardship faced by patients caused by the abrupt closure of the healthcare management information system (HMIS), the medical education department will resume the online system at Sassoon General Hospital (SGH). The HMIS will commence in the last week of December, the officials said.

The legal tussle over pending payment to the contractor has allegedly led to the sudden termination of HMIS. (HT PHOTO)

The system has been shut since July 5, 2022, as the private firm hired to digitally record patients’ data stopped providing services after alleged non-payment of dues of ₹100 crore. The legal tussle over pending payment to the contractor has allegedly led to the sudden termination of HMIS. However, officials claim the system was stopped due to technical problems in it.

The abrupt closure of HMIS has affected the daily working of 16 state-run medical colleges and hospitals. Following this, the hospital staff were forced to keep manual records of patients’ treatment data and diagnostic reports as the medical education department failed to find an alternative.

Dinesh Waghmare, secretary, Maharashtra Medical Education, said the HMIS was stopped as there was a problem in the system and it was not working properly, however, it has now been renewed with the help of the National Informatics Centre and is ready to be used.

“The HMIS will be made operational in all 25 government medical colleges and hospitals of the state. Till the last week of December, the HMIS will be launched in all government medical colleges and hospitals.

The absence of the system across the state including SGH has reported chaos due to the offline system which was started to bring relief to overburdened hospital staff and ease serpentine hospital queues. The patients are forced to run from one department to another to collect reports which were once available at a click. SGH has around 3,500 patients visiting the Outpatients Department (OPD) daily. Several patients complained of long queues, directed to the wrong department, and other issues. This has also caused inconvenience to the hospital staff due to overburdened record keeping.

Dr Kirankumar Jadhav, medical superintendent of SGH, said, the medical education department on a trial basis will start the system in Six medical colleges and hospitals and later it will be expanded to all government medical colleges and hospitals.

“The HMIS is an absolute online system and once the patient is registered all details of the patient along with lab reports, diagnostic tests, and history are available at one click. This will be a win-win situation for both the hospital and patients,” he said.