Bihar's quiet digital revolution: At govt hospitals, 91% of patient registrations are now paperless
The number of users of this feature stood at a mere 4 percent in April 2024.
The facility, Scan and Share, under the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare's Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM), was launched in 2021 and has now been rolled out widely in public hospitals for outpatient department (OPD) registration in the state. It is aimed at solving the problem of long queues at health facilities and entry of incomplete and inaccurate data by patients.
Patna/ New Delhi: Over 91 percent of patients who walked into a government hospital in Bihar this May used a QR code to share their demographic details and health records, before seeing a doctor.
The turning point, state health department officials said, was a decision taken by top health administrators to harness the features of Centre's ABDM and Mukhyamantri Digital Health Yojana (MDHY) in order to streamline the entire hospital journey for patients and ensure faster access to care.
Bihar, show records shared by the state health department and authenticated by the Union health ministry, now ranks at the top nationally in paperless registrations at government hospitals.
'This adoption has reduced waiting time for the majority of the patients in the hospitals and enabled us to provide a more organised and transparent healthcare experience to them,' said Rajesh Kumar, administrative officer of the Bihar Health Society, who oversees the implementation of the project.
In August last year, a patient had to wait 58 minutes on average in a hospital before seeing a doctor and spent an average of 70 minutes inside a facility. Last month, these figures stood at 35 minutes and 47 minutes respectively, according to data from the state health department.
In the state, all 592 government facilities—from district hospital downwards—now facilitate electronic OPD registration, enabling patients to generate a unique health ID, the Ayushman Bharat Health Account or ABHA, that will contain their medical history in a longitudinal manner in the form of electronic health record (EHR), a key component of ABDM. The government is also maintaining a repository of healthcare personnel and health facilities in the form of the Health Facility Record and Health Personnel Record.
The ABDM dashboard maintained by the National Health Authority (NHA), the agency under the Union health ministry, which implements the project, shows that the total number OPD registrations under the mission since its inception in 2021 stands at 11.41 crore.
Of these, Bihar accounts for 2.95 crore, followed by Uttar Pradesh at 2.26 crore.
In Bihar, the implementation process has been supplemented by the launch of BHAVYA (Bihar Health Application Visionary Yojana for All)—as part of MDHY—which saw the roll out of the state's own health information management system
The system integrates hospital workflows, digitises patient journeys, and enables evidence-based policy decisions by using real-time healthcare data and is being used to implement ABDM.
Also Read: How Bihar is ramping up AB-PMJAY health infra to keep patients from turning to Delhi, Vellore
First state to start a control & command centre
In 2023, a Control and Command Centre was started in state capital Patna—later also replicated in Uttar Pradesh—to monitor healthcare facilities data maintained as part of the ABDM in real time.
For instance, it is possible for state-level health authorities to see in real time whether a doctor is available to treat patients at a given time at a remote primary health centre.
'Real-time visibility enabled through digitisation has significantly strengthened the administrative efficiency and monitoring of healthcare services,' said an official.
The statistics shared by the government said that the average first patient registration time has also advanced to 8:31 am last month compared to 8:41 am in August last year, reflecting improved punctuality.
Manpower is now being utilised more efficiently, leading to improved operational effectiveness, while doctor consultation times have also improved, with enhanced presence and accountability at the facilities, officials of the state health department said.
Nearly a year ago, the Centre also started real time monitoring of all Special Newborn Care Units (SNCU) in district hospitals. This, according to officials, was aimed at ensuring required treatment to newborns and reducing Infant Mortality Rate (IMR).
Bihar, as per the Sample Registration Survey 2021 released by the Registrar General of India in May this year, recorded 27 infant deaths per thousand live births—exactly the same as the national average.
But some public health activists ThePrint spoke with underlined that while the state was working on improving healthcare services, it was still a long way before it could compete with most developed states.
'In terms of infrastructure, resource deployment and adoption of digitisation, Bihar has come ahead remarkably over the last few years but the quality of services are still not up to mark in many government and private facilities,' said Navin Srivastava who is associated with Jan Swasthya Abhiyan in Bihar, a patient rights group.
(Edited by Sanya Mathur)
Also Read: Over 40% hospitals below district level lack basic diabetes, hypertension drugs—ICMR-WHO survey of 7 states
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