Central Government Health Scheme provides comprehensive health care to the families of Central Govt. Employees , Pensioners , MPs & Ex. MPs, Judges of Supreme Court of India and High Court of Delhi , etc., in 24 Cities including Delhi/NCR through 248 Allopathy Wellness Centres and polyclinics , AYUSH dispensaries , units and Laboratories. CGHS provides OPD consultation (including Specialist), provision of medicines, hospitalisation at Govt. and empanelled private hospitals and laboratories. There is also a provision for reimbursement. CGHS caters to about 32 Lakhs beneficiaries all over India.
Central Government Health Scheme (CGHS) provides OPD facility through the Dispensaries (Wellness Centres) and first aid posts to the Central Government Employees and Pensioners, MPs, Ex-MPs, Judges of Supreme Court & High Courts, Journalists, etc. It also provides referral facility to its members in specialized hospitals & diagnostics centers authorised by CGHS for IPD treatments and diagnostics purposes respectively.
Excerpt of the letter from the Joint Secretary Sh. Vineet Chawdhry, IAS, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare
The Central Government Health Scheme caters to approximately 32 lakhs beneficiaries across 24 cities. The operations in CGHS Delhi have been totally computerized with the help of NIC. The use of IT has benefited operations of CGHS in terms of MIS, inventory management, monitoring of claims etc. A plethora of data is now available to the CGHS for planning its operations in a more scientific manner. We have been greatly enthused and encouraged by the success of Computerisation in CGHS Delhi. Computerisation of other cities is under way and over the next one year, CGHS will perhaps be the biggest health network in the country.
It is aimed at providing computerised environment for registration, prescription, issue of medicines, indents, stores, lab etc, there by improving the quality of health services and minimize the overall service delivery time to the CGHS beneficiaries in a typical Wellness Centre (OPD) environment. The provision of inter-Wellness Centre movement of patients has been made possible using this system, which facilitates a patient of X Wellness Centres to get serviced in Y Wellness Centres in case of emergency with issue of medicines and updating the history of medicines issued on the central server. The transparent system enables the CGHS to take timely decisions on inventory management, patient management etc using various MIS and statistical reports.Journalists, etc. It also provides referral facility to its members in specialized hospitals & diagnostics centers authorised by CGHS for IPD treatments and diagnostics purposes respectively. Other modules are being added from time to time and it is targeted to have end-to-end computerised solution for all CGHS functions in near future to come.
The system has been adopted well by the doctors and the staff of the Wellness Centres. The hand holding is the crux for the successful computerisation. The crucial support and training while the live operation is on, becomes very important. The very support makes the system work with doctors and the staff adept to the new environment fast.
The users once they realize the benefits generated out of computerisation, and seeing the live operations of the system, build confidence in them and that makes thing work. Two well trained supporting staff (DEO) has been provided in the first year in each Wellness Centres to hand hold the system and provide critical support in case of problems. The DEO strength has been reduced to one per Wellness Centres after one year of operation.
The software application has been designed in such a way to make it scalable. Supported by the NIC Data Centre, security and back-up are part of it.
Project Highlights: The CGHS Computerisation has following features
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Average daily patient attendance is over 17500 which get online treatment
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Over 68.17 lakh patients have been registered in online CGHS Wellness Centres since January 2008 till date (21/05/09).
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About 400 doctors write prescriptions online per day.
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Over 800 users including doctors access the online system per day.
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Web Based application (http://cghs.nic.in)
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Open Source environment with Redhat Linux Clients
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Development environment used : PostgreSql / Java technologies
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Only Allopathic system is covered currently
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Pharmacist distributes medicines to patients online
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Store keeper issues the medicines to the pharmacy counter based on online stock availability
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Stocks of the Medicines in the Wellness Centres gets updated at real time basis when Medical Stores depot (MSD) supplies the medicines online
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The Authorised Local Chemist of the Wellness Centres checks the indent status online and starts preparing the patient wise medicines and supplies the medicines next day.
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The lead time of indented medicines from Local Chemist came down from 4 working days to 1 day, with no manual work at the Wellness Centres for preparation of indents.
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MSD of the CGHS checks status online of the stocks of the Medicines in the Wellness Centres and takes necessary actions to supply the same online
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Inter-Wellness Centre facility introduced to facilitate patients to get medical help in any of the CGHS Wellness Centres with records maintained on the central server.
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Introduction of ICD-10 codes for the diseases in the doctors’ prescription module
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Facilities of permission to pensioners for treatment/diagnostic tests in the authorised hospitals/labs of CGHS
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Online Authority letter to the patients for urgent supply of emergency medicines from the MSD / Local Chemist
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Beneficiary plastic card is under printing with a barcode facility. About 5 lakh plastic cards have been distributed so far.
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Each Wellness Centre has
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An MLDN connectivity with 2 MBPS Leased line as primary and broadband as backup has been implemented in all Wellness Centres in Delhi.
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LAN Nodes with Manageable / Un-Managed Switch
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Desktop Clients and printers for every Doctor & Paramedic staff in the Wellness Centres
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UPS with 2 hours backup in the Wellness Centres
Benefits observed/expected from the computerisation
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Full transparency in the entire process in the Wellness Centres
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Integrating modules such as Local Chemist, Medical Stores Depot making it more transparent
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Reduced time for preparation of Indents for the Local Chemist, as it’s instantly available.
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MSD sees the stocks of the Wellness Centres online and supplies the medicines to the Wellness Centres as soon as the Wellness Centres indents online. Wellness Centres receives the MSD indents online and the stock gets updated online.
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Patients’ history is maintained. Subsequent visits to the Wellness Centres by the patient provide help to the attending doctor diagnose the problem more effectively.
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* Printing of indent report at the Wellness Centres is not required. Local Chemist brings the print-out along with the indented medicines. The indents are available next day instead of 4 working days when manual operation was in place.
* The overall servicing time for a patient in the Wellness Centres has been significantly reduced.
* Doctors and other staffs in the Wellness Centres have learnt the online system to prescribe medicines online
* The ICD-10 codes will help in diseases profiling of the patients
The Pilot Project
The Pilot Project was successfully completed in the CGHS Wellness Centre, Laxminagar, New Delhi and the Wellness Centre is fully computerised since January 2006. The average no. of patients per day is 675 in the Wellness Centre. Subsequently the VIP Wellness Centres were taken for computerisation viz. North Avenue & South Avenue, which are also working successfully since October 2006.
many times the CGHS doctors change the medicine written by the specilisted doctors of the hospital when they reffer the patient to the hospital why is this?
I entirely agree with Mr B.K. Sinha’s view. Ever since the Bhopal C.G.H.S dispensary has been computerised ,the beneficieries are having a tough time as they have to visit several times to get their quota of medicine.Either the server is down ,or the operator had forgotten to save the prescription or some other problem with networking. It is a nightmare every month to go and get the medicine, inspite of the fact that the local doctors, generally,need to only copy the medicine written by the specialist doctor.
I also have a querry: I would like to know the answer thru this post. Many times the medicine prescribed by the specialist is not supplied as the local doctor calls it nutrition supplement. The case in question is the medicine named Gencart. It has two components; Diacerin and Glucosamine.This is the only therapy for arthritis. But the patient is denied the medicine as Glucosamine is considered a dietary supplement by C.G.H.S. Had Glucosamine been prescribed alone as a diet supplement the argument would hold but in old age how can one be denied a therapetic medicine? I was told that a supreme court judgement says that any medicine prescribed by a specialist doctor must be supplied, I would like to know whether anyone knows that case?
Thanks
In indore there are number of central govt. offices but their is no cghs dispensary for central govt. employee and their pensioners. There is a cghs dispensary at bhopal, central gov. employee and pensioners if want to avail the cghs facility , they will have to go to bhopal which may be required 6 to 7 hr. journey from indore. Some time back probably in the year 2008 or 09 there was hight court judgement regarding the opening the cghs dispensary at indore also, the said order is still to be implemented. Due to non-availability of CGHS dispensary at indore the central gov.employee especially pensioner are facing difficulties. There is great need to start CHGS dispensary at indore also.
Today on 08.01.2010,I visited the cghs hospital situated at Buddha Marg, Dispensary No-1, Patna and found all the doctors & staff are standing outside the hospital and taking sunbath in very ease manner. On being asked, the Medical Officer has briefed all the cghs beneficiary that due to server down, no registration will be done and accordingly , no Doctor will offer any medical advice. Server is down till 11.00 hours. I find that the medical advice by doctor must be free from such networking operations as would create more difficulty for the cghs beneficiary rather to help them. Instead, it is my suggestion that the supply of medicine either from the cghs counter or from the local purchase must be restricted through on line system for enforcing transparency & accountability and stop nefarious design to make money by such acclivities. I further reiterate to stop such on line registration before giving medical advice as is harmful to the beneficiary in general. B.K.Sinha, General Secretary, All India Association of Central Excise Gazetted Excutive Officers Association, Patna, Ranchi, Jamshedpur(BIhar & Jharkhand).
This is a great initiative to manage beneficiaries and stocks at CGHS.But i don’t know if this system has adopted open standards in barcoding i.e GS1 standards for uniquely identifying beneficaries and medicines.
If its not there then it is uselss claiming the system is scalable and open.
This is A Very Old News Almost more than one year old. Also they are not using Any Software.. They are only using web based Services provided by their site.. http://www.cghs.nic.in