Cuttack, May 5: Authorities of Sriram Chandra Bhanja (S.C.B.) Medical College and Hospital have outsourced the ticket registration process at the outpatient department (OPD) to deal with the rush of patients.

Now patients coming from far off places would not have to wait for several hours to get their tickets because the entire registration process at the outpatient department has been computerised. The new facility will be formally launched on Friday. Ten counters are already in operation on a trial basis and these have eased the rush of patients to some extent.

“It is good to see that efforts to streamline things at S.C.B. have begun because we had heard that there is a always a huge crowd at the outpatient department. This is really frustrating especially for patients from other parts of the state,” said Gajendra Satpathy (45), a patient from Keonjhar.

It was for the first time that Satpathy, who is suffering from a stone in his gall bladder, had come to the hospital. He was happy to get his ticket in a few minutes. Earlier, there were six counters to register patients and the work was done both manually and using computers. But due to the rush at the outpatient department, there was a demand from different quarters to open more counters.

“Though the registration process has now become fast, but we still have to wait for hours to seek medical attention in various departments despite getting the ticket early,” said Ajay Kumar (55), another patient.

“A total of 10 counters have been established and we hope that the rush of patients at the outpatient department can now be controlled,” said superintendent D.N. Moharana. This had been launched on an experimental basis and soon departments such as gynaecology and other wards at the hospital would be computerised, Moharana added.

The outsourcing agency Unisoft, an associate unit of National Small Industries Corporation (NSIC), would charge Rs 1.99 per ticket.

“We have appointed 20 operators and one manager for computerised ticket registration at outpatient department. As we are using the latest software, we are able to clear the rush of patients within one to two hours,” said Ashok Kumar Das, CEO of Unisoft.

Earlier, the feeding software which was being used, was much slower which caused a delay in registration. Efforts are also on to introduce e-OPD, where the patients can register their tickets online.

With the help of this facility, patients and their relatives will not have to stand in queues and wait for several hours for registration.

The necessary website and software was under process and the new concept would certainly help to provide easy and fast service to the patients, Das added.