New Delhi : AIIMS to offer same-day ultrasound report to patients

Beginning Monday, the hospital will open 35 such spots, and treating doctors will be asked to present reasons why the patients require the urgent test. Patients in the OPD currently have to wait two to three months for an ultrasound.

The head of the department of radiology Dr. Deep Narayan Shrivastava has recently submitted a letter to the Director regarding the issue. "As part of our endeavor to improve patient care, radiology is starting same-day ultrasound facility. Films and reports will be issued on the same day. 35 slots have been designated for same-day ultrasound in New RAK (Rajkumari Amrit Kaur) OPD basement to cater to patients with appropriate clinical conditions as given below. 1. Ultrasound examination is required urgently for deciding clinical management 2. The patient is a senior citizen, physically handicapped or very sick," read the letter.

According to the letter, the request form must be signed by a faculty member confirming the urgency of the situation and including the treating doctor's phone number so that the radiologist can contact him if necessary. Patients who require same-day ultrasound must arrive by 1 p.m. at the radiology department. Ultrasounds that require patients to fast overnight or make additional preparations, as well as doppler scans and pregnancy scans, will not be permitted at the same-day ultrasound facility.

The letter also confirmed that those ultrasound which require patient preparation like overnight staying to those who need Doppler ultrasound scan will not have the ultrasound on the same day. Obstetrical Ultrasound scans will also not be offered on the same day. Every day, the hospital does roughly 150 ultrasounds for OPD patients. During the experiment, he said, they decided to offer the services to the elderly and differently abled because travel is difficult and expensive for them.

AIIMS shared the news on their social media platform stating, " starts pilot project on ZERO waiting for ultrasound examination in OPD for senior citizens, people with disabilities, and patients in whom urgent clinical decision support is needed." 

" This initiative is being done to bring down the waiting period for an ultrasound at the hospital. We have increased the number of ultrasounds being done each day by doing it for long hours and working through the lunch hour. No manpower or machines were increased. We did a similar thing for plain X-ray a few months back and now there is no backlog for the test," Dr. Shrivastava told The Indian Express.

"For the X-rays, we streamlined the process by segregating patients based on whether they needed a chest x-ray, abdomen x-ray, or limb x-ray. There are a couple of people who have been trained to just segregate patients and some who do the x-ray. We were able to increase the numbers by 20% to 30% without any increase in manpower or machines. This, however, will be difficult for ultrasound but we will slowly increase the number of walk-in slots," said Dr. Shrivastava.