COVID-19: Portal for private hospitals shows most beds occupied

Information is not always uploaded in real time, say civic officials

The recently launched centralised database spearheaded by the Private Hospitals and Nursing Homes’ Association (PHANA) to track real-time status of beds in private hospitals appears to have done little to ease anxiety and panic among COVID-19 patients and their families. Most of the hospitals on the portal, , list their beds as occupied without updating the data in real time, said senior Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) officials. As a result, family members and friends of COVID-19 patients are still in the dark over how many beds are actually available. Many people said they have no choice but to call multiple hospitals or hire an ambulance and knock on the doors of individual hospitals, defeating the purpose of the database. “My father-in-law needed a bed as his oxygen saturation levels had dropped. When a BBMP bed did not come through, I checked the private hospital portal. It showed zero beds available in the city. Then a friend said the data was not reliable. We started calling hospitals listed on the portal. We found a bed in one of the hospitals even though it had reported no beds available on the portal,” said Chandrashekhar, a resident of Banaswadi.