For better bed management, BBMP turns CCCs into stabilisation centres

Acknowledging the need for more oxygen beds, the BBMP is turning a portion of the Covid Care Centre (CCC) beds into oxygen beds.

It is also turning the 14 CCCs into stabilisation centres as it experiments with ways of better utilising the available beds.

Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) Chief Commissioner Gaurav Gupta said the civic body aims to turn 20 per cent CCC beds into oxygen ones.

As of May 7, the civic body managed to convert 350 beds out of 2,064 into oxygen ones — 102 of them with oxygen cylinders and 248 with oxygen concentrators.

In their effort to streamline bed allocation at hospitals and prioritise them for the neediest, the civic body is mulling a proposal to send all patients mandatorily to stabilisation centres before hospital admission.

The stabilisation centres will act as the triage point, where doctors would determine the type of beds the patients would require after examination.

Depending on their condition, they would recommend some of them to home quarantine and retain a few at the CCC. “This will stop a patient from booking an ICU bed out of fear,” said a senior BBMP official.