Leading healthcare provider Paras Healthcare has thrown open tele-consultation services at all its hospitals across India with an objective to allow a greater number of patients to seek medical consultation from the safety of their homes, as the country locks down to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 outbreak.
Paras Group of hospitals across Gurugram, Patna, Darbhanga, Panchkula, Ranchi and Udaipur are actively offering tele-consultations to patients seeking medical opinions for a wide variety of ailments including suspected cases of COVID-19 who require monitoring under quarantine.
Paras Healthcare is also working to scale up its preparedness for the impending rise in cases of COVID-19 by initiating a series of measures such as procuring adequate safety and protection equipment for doctors, ventilators as well as creation of isolation wards.
“In view of the COVID-19 outbreak, we have opened tele-consultation services across our 8 hospitals in the country. This will work to reduce crowding at hospitals and will ensure that a sizeable number of patients who need medical care for different health conditions do not need to visit hospitals at this critical time. In fact, the demand for our tele-consultation services has shot up by 30% in the past week as more and more people try to stay at home. To ensure faster accessibility, we have increased the number of executives manning our tele health helplines and have also strategically co-opted time from doctors to ensure faster availability,” said Dr Shankar Narang, COO, Paras Healthcare.
Patients seeking medical help virtually include a number of people with flu-like symptoms that overlap with symptoms of COVID-19. The symptoms of such patients are assessed carefully and they are advised to monitor their temperature and alert the doctors in case there is any worsening of the symptoms.
Among measures initiated to boost hospitals’ preparedness to meet any eventuality, the administration is training medical staff as well as doctors to make them abreast about the guidelines to be followed in treating COVID-19 patients.