The health ministry is working on establishing additional token counters and doctor chambers at the National Referral Hospital. This is to reduce waiting hours for patients. Health Minister, Tandin Wangchuk shared this during the meet the press session, today. With this initiative, the waiting time for tokens is expected to be reduced to 20 minutes, which currently takes more than two hours.
Currently, there are 25 token counters at the national referral hospital for various services such as medical, general, dental and pediatric among others.
According to the minister, the medical counter is the one, which is mostly crowded.
The government plans to establish two additional counters, one each for medical and general services, along with two more doctor chambers.
“If patients get a token within 20 minutes, they do not have to come to the hospital at 7 AM. Now they will get tokens even if they come 20 minutes before 9 AM as there will be enough counters. Moreover, none of the patients will be sent back now. For this, we have added two doctors in the medical department.”
Currently, patients giving both blood and excreta samples for tests face the inconvenience of having to wait in two separate lines. To streamline this, these services will now be merged through a single counter.
“We will club the counters for blood and excreta samples into a single counter so that patients do not have to queue separately. We will also increase the token count to around ten, with tokens being dispensed by machines similar to those at airports and currency exchange counters. Patients will press a button to receive a token and can proceed when their number appears on the screen, avoiding the need to stand in line.”
For now, patients line up at the hospital as early as 7 AM hoping to get a token while the hospital opens only at 9 AM. This often results in exhaustion of tokens with most of the patients having to return home.
The ministry plans to provide these new services by the end of September.
Namgay Dema
Edited by Kipchu
