Bhubaneswar, June 10: The idea of giving special attention and care to home isolation patients by categorizing them into Red Flag and Green Flag cases has provided a great relief to the healthcare delivery system of the COVID-19 affected in the city.
From the 1,839 cumulative calls made to 645 Red Flag patients identified from three zones since May 18, till yesterday, 116 have been admitted to hospitals and rest were given special care by the rapid response teams (RRT) through their frequent home visits.
While the daily calls for three consecutive days to a patient identified as Red Flag, is made from the 1929 Call Centre, RRT teams under the respective administrative zones visit the patients regularly and monitor their health status. While the home isolation patients with no or mild symptoms of COVID are termed as Green Flag cases, the moderately-affected ones are termed as Red Flag patients.
In order to know the health status of the Red Flag patients, BMC Commissioner Sanjay Kumar Singh had directed to make calls every day to the patients for three days at a stretch, so that their health monitoring could be done effectively and efficiently.
The 1929 Call Center executives, manning the outbound call stations situated inside the Bhubaneswar Operations Centre of the Bhubaneswar Smart City Limited office, on May 19 first made calls to 22 patients on May 19 identified as Red Flag patients. Now, on an average, the Call Centre calls more than 100 such patients on daily basis.
Sushama Mohanty (47) of EPF Colony, Maharashi College Road, who tested positive recently had a good experience to share under the Red Flag categorization. The RRT team not only visited her multiple times, but also provided with the Faviflu tablets and instructed how to take them.
“I am extremely happy with the seriousness with which the medical team is doing its duty and following-up the improvement in my wife’s health condition and also the way the 1929 people are enquiring to know the details,” her husband said.
Sangita Mohapatra (44) of Kedargouri Apartment, Garage Square said “the RRT teams are doing a great job and also the 1929 desk in following up the patients who are on the danger line. I have recovered from the disease and happy that the civic authorities have taken special care for the citizens during the pandemic.’’
It can be mentioned here that the Red Flag patients’ list is prepared after going through the inputs of the RRTs at the zonal level. RRT teams include experienced doctors. As the civic body is now divided into three administrative zones for achieving better citizen-centric service delivery goal, the list from the respective Zonal Deputy Commissioner’s office is being prepared by a senior official deployed for monitoring the COVID situation. After receiving the list, the executives at 1929 24X7 Call Centre in BSCL office contact the Red Flag or moderately-affected patients, to know their health status.
Interestingly, through this innovative exercise the moderately-affected (Red Flag) patients, in case of any urgent development, could have a conversation with the doctors available at the 1929 24X7 Call Center. Now, while seven doctors are available at 1929 24×7 Call Centre during the morning and afternoon shifts, during the night shift four doctors are available.
