Now BBMP can track delays by hospitals in admitting Covid-19 patients after ambulance drop-off

Previously around 665 ambulance drivers in the city would get instructions from the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) on where to go to pick up a Covid-19 patient over a phone call, which is now integrated into the BBMP's central hospital bed management system.

Once the zonal control room has allocated a bed to the patient, the control room can also block the ambulance. The ambulance driver then gets an SMS on where to pick up the patient. When the patient is dropped, the driver updates the control room and that information is updated in the system.

Track live updates on coronavirus here

The ambulance drivers have been given a mobile app to update this. This helps the Palike compare if the hospital has admitted the patient yet or not. If there's a gap between dropping the patient off and the hospital admission, the Palike can address the delay immediately.

The civic body has to track 103 Basic Life Support ambulances, 378 tempo travellers converted into basic life support ambulances and 184 tempo travellers, in all, 665 vehicles.

BBMP Special Commissioner D Randeep said that the GPS location of the ambulances is currently being tracked at the zonal control rooms. "This integration is a week old and 90 percent of them have tracking devices and have downloaded the app. It is called an ambulance dispatch control centre and tracking portal.

Also Read: Coronavirus India update: State-wise total number of confirmed cases

There are five to six personnel manning this in the control room and a representative each in the zonal control rooms. Most of the other personnel work remotely. If the ambulance driver is not updating the app, the personnel follow up with him," Randeep said.

Krishna Murthy, an ambulance driver stationed outside CV Raman Nagar control room said using the app while having seamless data network connection was a challenge.

He said the app called Tr-Dynamics does not offer them as many trips as the WhatsApp group created for ambulance drivers. "We are allotted more trips on the WhatsApp group rather than the mobile application. On the app we can update the trip status like 'accept', 'picked up', 'reached', and 'admitted'. If the patient allotted to us is already admitted in a hospital or has chosen home quarantine, we can update that too," Krishna Murthy said.

Currently, the west zone has the maximum ambulances with 141 vehicles, followed by the east zone that has 127 ambulances and the south zone that has 110 ambulances. Five other BBMP zones have ambulances in double digits.