PESHAWAR: The administration of Lady Reading Hospital has made it compulsory for patients to show their Computerised National Identity Cards while visiting the outpatient departments of the medical teaching institution, according to sources.

The condition of showing identity card at OPD is aimed at ascertaining the reasons as to why people are visiting the hospital instead of seeking treatment in their own areas.

“We have made it compulsory for patients to display CNICs at OPD because we want to collect a data regarding the patients, who are coming to LRH directly from their districts.

The statistics would be shared with health department, which is planning to put in place a referral system,” Dr Khalid Masud, the hospital director of Lady Reading Hospital, told Dawn.

He said that the condition was applicable only to the normal patients.

Hospital director says they want to collect data of patients and share it with health dept

He added that critically-injured or ill patients were exempted from showing CNICs.

Dr Khalid said that patients with cold illnesses would have to show CNICs prior to issuance of OPD slip because they wanted to reduce patients’ load at the hospital. The hospital is receiving 5,000 patients in 24 hours.

“We have been facing problems in coping with the patients coming with minor sicknesses that can be treated in the local facilities. We have more than 30 specialties but still the patients with chronic illness face hardships in getting treatment as more beds are occupied by those patients, who can be treated in their own districts,” he said.

Dr Khalid said that it was also part of the National Action Plan to document all the patients coming to the hospital. “After two months, we would be carrying out an exercise to know about the number of patients coming from various districts. It would give us an idea about the causes of patients coming here directly. We will provide details about them to the health department,” he added.

The hospital director said that if more patients were coming from a district owing to lack of cardiology-related services there, they would inform the health department to check the situation there.

He said that patients without CNICs were not refused treatment but they were told to bring the same for next visit.

He said that in near future, they would set up cabins where people would insert their registration number in computer to get OPD slips.

“Recently, we have introduced medical record system under which patients are issued registration number and they get quick services in follow-up visits as their medical history is displayed on computer screen to doctors at the OPD,” said Dr Khalid.

He said that patients did not need to walk with bundle of documents. “We have planned to do away with X-ray films on which we spend about Rs50 million per year.

The patients would be given images of their MRI, CT and X-rays in CDs which can be seen anywhere,” he added.

Dr Khalid said that health department was in the process of strengthening emergency, gynecological, cardiology, mother and child services at the district level to facilitate people and let the tertiary care hospitals focus on the chronically-sick people.

Published in Dawn, January 1st, 2018