Kolkata: Private hospitals across Kolkata are getting ready to handle a surge in patients as two new state health insurance schemes — Ayushman Bharat and Mukhyamantri Swasthya Bima Yojana (MMSBY) — get flagged off this Sunday. Special teams have been formed, spaces earmarked and wards identified for the patient surge. Some will be diverting their Swasthya Sathi staff to handle MMSBY patients, though the latter will not be discontinued till the new cards are distributed.Charnock Hospital has earmarked teams to handle the surge and guide patients with new cards. “We already have the teams which were earlier handling Swasthya Sathi. Now they will be deployed for Ayushman Bharat. Swasthya Sathi will continue till the time beneficiaries switch over to Mukhyamantri Swasthya Bima Yojna. We have five-seven member teams each for the two schemes who will handhold patients during the initial phase,” said Charnock MD Prashant Sharma, also the chairperson of the Indian Chamber of Commerce health committee.Some hospitals are worried about space crunch, though. Additional beds and OTs are being planned. At Ruby, for instance, five additional OTs will be inaugurated by Aug-end. “There is bound to be an initial rush and we would need to accommodate more patients, though we already have Ayushman,” said Ruby chief operations manager Subhashis Datta.Woodlands Multispeciality Hospital will use its insurance desk to guide patients. “There will be a surge and we will handle it as the schemes start rolling,” said Rupak Barua, CEO.At RN Tagore Hospital Narayana, final touches are being given to preparations for the rollout of both Ayushman Bharat and MMSBY from Aug 16. “Our hospitals have robust patient-support and claim-processing teams, while ensuring operational readiness across all units. We have the necessary manpower and capacity plans in place to manage the inflow efficiently. Our focus is to provide eligible beneficiaries with seamless access to quality healthcare,” said R Venkatesh, Group COO, Narayana Health.Even with a few more days left for the launch of Ayushman Bharat, the names of many private hospitals are yet to be on the list of empanelled hospitals on the portal. As of Wednesday, the portal had a list of only 68 private hospitals across the city, with some big hospitals’ names yet to be uploaded. Hospital administrators who had already completed their onboarding procedure but whose names were yet to be enlisted said they expected these last-minute glitches to be solved during a Thursday meeting.“We finished our registration procedure from our end. But we were asked to submit few more documents which we have done. Hopefully, our hospital name should appear in the portal within the next few days,” said an administrator of a corporate hospital.A total of 189 private hospitals in Kolkata were empanelled for Swasthya Sathi while across the state, the number is around 2,800. For Ayushman Bharat, so far the number is 68 for Kolkata and 1,329 throughout the state.Desun Hospital, which already offers Ayushman Bharat, has ‘trained teams and established processes in place’. “We have also completed the necessary onboarding and our clinical, administrative and digital processes are aligned to ensure a seamless experience for eligible beneficiaries. We have further strengthened our coordination and support teams,” said Desun chairman & MD Sajal Dutta.At Ruby General Hospital, three people have been put in separate teams for AB and MMSBY each.
