The National Health Authority (NHA) under the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission has implemented QR code-based rapid OPD registration in more than 300 public hospitals, reducing the waiting time from 50 minutes to four minutes.

“We have introduced a system wherein we have tried to simplify the OPD registration process in large public hospitals. Around 4.06 lakh people have availed the facility in around 347 hospitals so far,” Additional CEO of the NHA Dr Basant Garg said at the Apollo Hospital‘s annual conference, “International Health Dialogue”, on Monday.

OPD registration in large public hospitals, such as the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in Delhi and the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER) in Chandigarh, is a huge problem as patients have to stand in a queue for hours to get themselves registered before they see a doctor, Garg said.

“With this QR code, we have been able to reduce the average waiting time from 50 minutes to four minutes. This is convenient for pregnant woman, elderly and patients. Standing in a queue for an hour is a pain. Moreover, one has to turn up at the hospital actually two hours before the registration window opens,” he explained.

The initiative was launched as a pilot project for a faster OPD registration service at the new OPD block of the Lady Hardinge Medical College (LHMC) and Smt. Sucheta Kriplani Hospital (SSKH) in New Delhi in October last year and has now been extended to 347 hospitals.

The QR code-based OPD registration service allows the patients to scan a hospital’s unique QR code with their mobile phones (using the phone camera or the scanner or the ABHA and Aarogya Setu applications or any other ABDM-enabled app) and share their profile details with the facility.

Once the profile is shared, the hospital provides a token number (queue number). The token generated is sent as a notification to the patient’s selected app and also displayed on the screens placed at the OPD registration counters for the ease of patients. According to their token numbers, the patients can go to the registration counter and directly collect their outpatient slips (OP slips) for consultation with a doctor as their details are already present at the registration counter.

“We have identified similar bottlenecks when a patient actually goes for laboratory services and has to queue up there and make a payment. Even the discharge does take a lot of time in the best of private hospitals. We are working on these aspects,” Garg said.

He further informed that more than 22 crore health records have been linked digitally to the Ayushman Bharat Health Accounts (ABHAs) under the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission.

More than 32 crore citizens have so far generated their unique ABHAs.

With the health records linked to their ABHA numbers digitally, citizens will be able to access and manage these records.

This enables them to create a comprehensive medical history across various healthcare providers, thereby improving clinical decision making. They can also share the relevant records with the ABDM-registered healthcare providers digitally.