Addressing the concerns of COVID-19 patients in home isolation, Deputy Commissioner Girish Dayalan informed the private hospitals in the district would extend medical care to COVID-19 patients in home isolation.He said that a large number of patients have mild or no symptoms, and do not require hospitalization. As per the guidelines from the Centre, patients who have mild symptoms, no co-morbidities and have enough space in their home to remain quarantined in a separate room can consult their physicians while being under home isolation. But people have apprehensions about home isolation and insist upon hospitalization. This in turn puts unnecessary pressure on beds meant for critical patients.With the exponential rise in COVID-19 cases, “rolling out the home care packages will help reduce avoidable overcrowding at hospitals”, said Dayalan.In a meeting with the representatives of the private hospitals, the Fortis and Max healthcare have offered to extend home care packages to novel coronavirus patients with mild symptoms while other hospitals are also exploring the possibility of extending this service, informed Dayalan.Broadly, the home care would involve patients under home isolation to be monitored remotely by the concerned hospital.
Patients would get to talk to the doctors on video chat and nurses and paramedics would also be available for video consultation to ensure constant monitoring. They would be provided with medicine and medical care kits that will help to detect if their condition deteriorates.The hospitals have been asked to roll out the packages and advertise the same extensively so that “people in home isolation if over and above the government medical follow up, are desirous of additional consultancy for self-reassurance, they may have the option open to them”, said Deputy Commissioner.The hospitals informed that different types of home care packages like a basic package entailing services like daily monitoring of the vitals by a trained nurse twice a day, a tele-review with a doctor every third day as well as a medical kit (with a thermometer and an oxygen saturation metre) and an advanced more thorough ‘complete covid care’ package including the Covid-19 test; N-95 and other masks, gloves, sanitisers, a pulse oximeter, a digital thermometer, a blood pressure machine, a PPE kit, as well as vitals monitoring tools with built-in critical alert system are being worked out. Besides the consultations with doctors, services of psychiatrists and dieticians can also be extended, if need be, they informed.