City doctors say they need an emergency medical services plan to know real-time updates of city hospitals' capacity u00a0 Last year on February 13, as victims of the German Bakery blast were rushed to hospitals in the city, those involved in rescue operations hardly had any idea of the availability of the beds and ventilators. In the ensuing confusion, many patients were shifted from one hospital to another, some in search for a burns ward or some in search of a super speciality ICU. Had the city hospitals been linked by an emergency medical services system, the real time updates of these hospital beds would have been available making it easier for the rescuers. A year after the blast, doctors say that the city is still waiting for a formal and effective emergency medical services plan. "We have a district level disaster management committee which is supposed to prepare an EMS plan or a template for entire city. The research has been done three years ago and data was collected regarding hospitals, services available, capacity among others. This exercise was done by the Collectorate along with two other national level agencies. But the EMS plan is yet to be prepared based on this data. I do agree that communication between hospitals is minimal and we don't have an effective disaster management plan in place," said Dr Devendra Shirole, member of the district collectorate's disaster management cell. Dr Sharad Agharkhedkar, president of Indian Medical Association pointed out how even basic information is not shared between hospitals. "We need an EMS service like the helpline 108 to link all private and public hospitals. In cities, where this helpline is available we can know in seconds which hospital has a pediatric ICU bed free or where a particular rare blood group is available. For patients, instead of calling random ambulance numbers they can call one number which is manned by an agency that has information of all hospitals available," he said. Dr Renu Bharadwaj, dean of Sassoon hospital, said that city doctors are reduced to being crisis managers and need an EMS service to reduce load on a few big hospitals. "During a disaster, people usually rush to the nearest well known tertiary care hospital. What happens in such case is that one hospital gets burdened where others could have helped. In this case, we need a plan on how to handle crisis situations. That's why people should be trained to deal with such situations. Basically we need co-ordination between the hospitals and a more formal management of crisis rather than an impromptu case to case strategy," she said.

City doctors say they need an emergency medical services plan to know real-time updates of city hospitals' capacity

No disaster management plan in place

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No disaster management plan in place

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