PANAJI
Online appointments now account for nearly one-fourth of all outpatient department (OPD) appointments at Goa Medical College and Hospital (GMC), with 34,578 patients booking their slots digitally since the facility was introduced in February, indicating a growing preference for accessing hospital services without having to queue up for appointments.
According to GMC’s patient registration and appointment data for February to August, a total of 34,578 OPD appointments were booked online during the period.
In order to facilitate ease of booking of appointments for OPD services thereby eliminating the requirement of physical presence in queues for getting token of appointments for OPD services, the hospital had launched online booking slots for OPD services on trial basis from February 4. Initially a total 100 OPD slots in each of the General Medicine, General Surgery, ENT, Orthopedic and Dermatology (Skin) Department were made available.
Subsequently, the facility was expanded from May 11 to seven additional departments, including Endocrinology, Paediatrics, Plastic Surgery, Neurosurgery, Cardiovascular Thoracic Surgery, Geriatric Medicine, Paediatric Surgery and Nephrology. Total 50 slots per day were allotted for each department.
The data shows a steady increase in the use of the online facility. Online appointments rose from 1,801 in February to 2,898 in March, 3,531 in April and 4,206 in May. The number crossed the 5,000-mark in June at 5,911 and increased further to 7,895 in July and 8,336 in August.
Of the online appointments, around 23,996 patients actually visited the hospital, while 10,580 bookings were marked as patients not visiting, based on the monthly figures in the GMC report. This means roughly seven in every 10 online bookings resulted in an actual OPD visit.
The hospital also recorded 16,003 online registrations during the period, compared to 56,857 walk-in registrations.
The shift to digital appointments gained further importance after GMC’s Super Speciality Block discontinued on-the-spot OPD token generation in July. Patients without online registration are now required to report to the offline counter, including senior citizens and persons with disabilities, wherever applicable.
The online booking slots are made available for the general public for booking for the immediate next 7 days and the booking for the subsequent day stands closed on the preceding day at 5.00 pm.
