Bengalureans can now check hospital bed availability on the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike dashboard. The real-time tracking went online on Monday, announced by BBMP. The civic body had been saying for a while that it would set up an online system to track bed availability in the city.
The dashboard comes after much public demand. As many complaints emerged so far on hospital refusing to admit patients and bed shortage, the government has been trying to combat the problem.
Real-time data on hospital beds goes online
As Bengaluru reports the highest number of cases in Karnataka, among all the problems related to the pandemic, two emerged as the main concerns for the general public. One was the unavailability and lack of clear data on hospital beds which became a reason for hospitals to deny admissions, another was the delay in ambulances. Videos and reports of the same seemed to be coming in from all quarters.
BBMP had earlier assured that it would set up a real-time database and tracker to help citizens have a clear picture of the situation at hospitals in Bengaluru. Moreover, they were setting up an app as well to track the data. Now after a long pause, the BBMP dashboard has now gone live with the data on hospital bed availability in the city.
BBMP made the announcement on Monday. The dashboard showcases the total number of reserved beds in various categories— general, High Dependency Units (HDU), ICU beds, and ICU ventilators. The breakdown is shown as to the number of occupied beds in the various categories, the available beds and beds blocked by BBMP in real-time across the 102 hospitals in the city.
So far there have been many demands for accurate data on the matter. However, since it has gone online the website does have a few glitches, it can't be refreshed and sometimes doesn't load, complaints of it, not loading has already begun to pour in. This could pose an issue for those who urgently need to view the data.
On Friday, the BBMP has provided an alternative link to use after complaints emerged about the page not loading and the page not refreshing. So far the hospital bed availability as shown on the site has been 55.8% of the beds as vacant contrary to reports of hospitals refusing to admit patients. Complaints emerged also about hospitals not having ventilators, however, as on Saturday the ICU ventilators bed showed 66.3% beds as vacant in Bengaluru.
Check hospital bed availability on the link here: http://chbms.bbmpgov.in/portal/reports/
If the link doesn't work, here is an alternate link that can be used- http://chbms.bbmpgov.in/portal/reports1/
The bed status can be accessed on the COVID-19 war room dashboard as well- https://covid19.bbmpgov.in/
