Govt to take charge of 50% of Bengaluru hospital beds from April 8

Private hospitals in Bengaluru are in turmoil over the state’s demand that they allocate 50% of their beds for government-referred Covid-19 patients.

N Jayaram, the IAS officer in charge of bed allocation from private hospitals, said that from Thursday, officials would move to claim all 50% of the requested beds for government-referred patients.

“Through the allotments, we will get about 5,000 beds in the city for the treatment of Covid-19 patients and these numbers are required. The daily numbers are nearly hitting 5,000 per day. If out of this, 500 people require hospitalisation for a period of 10 days, then the number of available beds will rapidly run short,” he said.

As of Wednesday evening, as per data from the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), municipal authorities had access to 2,300 beds, including 90 beds from private hospitals and 445 from private medical colleges. Out of this total, 556 beds were vacant.

Unprecedented situation

Hospital administrators said that a combination of high numbers of Covid-19 patients and equally high numbers of non-Covid patients has created an unprecedented bedding crunch on a scale not seen even last year at the height of the outbreak.

“There are two aspects to hospital care. One has been a rising number of Covid patients in the last month or so and the second is the huge influx of non-Covid patient care. They had no care for almost a year and many of them have come for care and we cannot ignore them,” said Dr Sudarshan Ballal, chairman of the Medical Advisory Board of Manipal Hospitals Group.

He added that this combination of large numbers of patients meant that hospitals could not simply give up 50% of their beds by forcing existing patients out.

Jayaram, however, said that the government was not trying to put out any existing patients. “Hospitals are obligated to block off a bed for the government as soon as a patient is discharged — until the 50% allotment is reached,” he said.

Meantime, a doctor at Sakra Hospital cited staff shortages and incidents of reinfection among staff who had been given two doses of the vaccine as adding problems which would have to be tackled if private hospitals were to take on numbers of Covid-19 patients.

“We are in a situation that we did not see even last year. If the government demands the beds, we will give up the beds, but it is going to impose challenges,” said Dr Deepak Balani, Chief of Medical Services at the hospital.

The Private Hospitals and Nursing Homes’ Association (Phana) described the government’s demands as a knee-jerk reaction.