AIIMS to boost use of Ayushman Bharat Health Account for OPD registrations

AIIMS has decided to promote the use of ABHA ID for out-patient department registration of new and follow-up cases

The All India Institute of Medical Sciences has decided to promote the use of Ayushman Bharat Health Account (ABHA) ID for Out-Patient Department registration of new and follow-up cases.

According to an office memorandum issued on November 15 this will entail adoption of 'scan and share QR code' solution of the National Health Authority in all OPDs at AllMS so as to facilitate quick registration and provide a registration queue number to the patient on arrival.

To facilitate the creation of ABHA ID for patients who do not have a smartphone, dedicated counters and kiosks shall be operated from at least 7 am to 10 pm to promote creation of ABHA IDs, it has been decided.

This project will be piloted in the new Rajkumar Amritkaur OPD with effect from November 21 and shall be taken up in a mission mode with effect from January 1, 2023 across all OPDs of AIIMS New Delhi.

"It has been noted that patients visiting AIIMS OPDs are standing in long queues for registration and a manual entry of patient demographics is being done for registration despite the availability of Ayushman Bharat Health Account (ABHA) with many patients.

"Also, at the time of registration by using ABHA ID, often OTP is delayed and maximum attempts to resend the OTP is also limited to 3 times," the office memorandum read.

Scan and Share QR Code solution of National Health Authority (NHA) has shown promising results in reducing the time taken for registration and has also helped in streamlining the patient journey on arrival at the hospital, the memorandum.

Also, the said solution is biometric and face-authentication enabled to allow sharing of ABHA ID details.

"Accordingly, it has been decided to promote the use of Ayushman Bharat Health Account (ABHA) ID for OPD Registration of new & follow up patients at AIIMS," the memorandum issued by AIIMS Director Dr M Srinivas said.

To further enhance the use case of ABHA ID, QR Code based sharing of digital health records of patients with healthcare professionals shall also be enabled by use of 'Personal Health Record (PHR) applications, it said.

The memorandum said eHospital shall also be integrated with appropriate framework of NHA so as to allow patients to store their health records like prescriptions, lab reports, discharge summaries, vaccination records, etc. in the "Digilocker document wallet.