AIIMS Delhi grants self-prescription facility for EHS beneficiaries from next year

New Delhi: Starting next year, beneficiaries under the Employees Health Scheme (EHS) in AIIMS would be able to avail the "self-prescription" facility for some specific over-the-counter drugs.

The move would come into effect from 1st January 2023, which would help them to skip over the tedious process of waiting in long queues and going through registration and consultation to get medicines.  

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The office memorandum notes, "It has been noted that employees have to wait in long queues for fetching their prescribed medicines from the EHS pharmacy. This causes inconvenience to the employees and their family members. It also compromises patient care as employees are away from duty to collect their medicines." The long wait in the EHS pharmacy causes them to leave empty-handed due to the nonavailability of medicines at times. 

Speaking to The New Indian Express about the self-prescription facility, an AIIMS official said, "A staff member has to pass through three counters of registration, consultation and pharmacy of EHS facility even to take basic medicines like paracetamol. The beneficiaries had to wait for hours to get the medicines which resulted in a lack of patients care. Now with the new order, there will be no need to consult a doctor or get a prescription to avail certain drugs."

From 1st January 2023, the doctors, staff and nurses at AIIMS would be able to self-prescribe medicines from a pre-defined list of medicines slated to be finalised by the EHS facility by 31st December 2022. The notification states, "To make EHS more employee-friendly and to increase transparency, self-prescription facility from within a pre-defined list shall be extended for all EHS beneficiaries who are permitted by law to prescribe medicines. EHS facility shall finalise this pre-defined list by 31 December 2022." 

The order however added, "Outside the defined list of medicines will also be permitted under self-prescription in case of the first instance of any illness. Later appropriate consultation from the department concerned will be required."

For this purpose, the administration would appoint an 'in-house senior resident' known as EHS SR, who would be responsible for consulting and prescribing medicines to the staff members so that the latter would not have to visit the EHS facility, reports the Times of India. 

Further, beginning next year, the functioning time of the pharmacy would be changed to 7 am-10 pm from the current timing of 8 am-8 pm so that employees would be able to collect their medicines outside their duty hours. When the medicine package becomes ready for collection, an SMS alert would be sent to the beneficiary. The notification read, "Medicine collection from EHS pharmacy will be under video surveillance in order to know which person is collecting medicines against respective EHS cards." 

According to Senior resident Dr Vinay Kumar, the move would save time for the employees and doctors and also improve the patient care facilities since medical practitioners and staff would not have to take a leave for the same.

The move was also appreciated by the AIIMS nurses union, who stated that it would improve the EHS service. Harish Kumar Kajla, president, the AIIMS nurses union said, "We thank the institute's director on behalf of all beneficiaries of EHS in AIIMS. Nurses Union has been demanding all these administrative measures to strengthen EHS services for a long time."

Meanwhile, the directive issues by the director observed, "All consultations and prescriptions in EHS will be electronic and a record of the same will be available to the employee in his smart card from April 1, 2023." The EHS books for serving and retired employees and their dependents are set to be replaced by a smart card and would be linked to phone app / web portal by March 31, 2023. 

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