This practice is quite common states the 2009 Bengaluru Road Safety and Injury Prevention Programme released by Department of Epidemiology, NIMHANS.
Trauma care is an essential aspect when dealing with Road Traffic Injuries. Availability of first aid, mode of transportation, time interval between the occurrence of injury to reaching a hospital and referral patterns indicates the quality of trauma care. However, statistics show that the City has a long way to go in improving its trauma care facilities.
In 2009, 70 per cent of the patients visited more than one hospital. Fortunately, 90 per cent of these were not fatal. Some of the common reasons for hospitals to refer patients were nature or severity of injuries, nature of the hospital, availability of facilities in the hospital and affordability.
Interestingly, Government hospitals (54 per cent) scored more over private hospitals (22 per cent) in referring fatal injuries to other hospitals.
What’s shocking is that two thirds of injury deaths occurred in hospitals. Poor facilities in terms of first aid, frequent referrals, delayed time intervals and transportation problems figured as some of the prominent factors for this.
