Scan, share service for faster OPD registrations gaining success: NHA

The National Health Authority's Scan and Share service for faster OPD registrations has been adopted by 365 hospitals within five months of its launch, an official statement said on Thursday.

The service has helped over five lakh patients save time by drastically reducing wait times in OPD registration areas, it said.

The Scan and Share service is currently live in 125 districts across 25 states and UTs in the country. Karnataka (2.5 lakh tokens), Uttar Pradesh (1.1 lakh users) and Delhi (72,000 users) are the leading states in the adoption of this service for better patient experience, the statement by the NHA said.

The QR code-based rapid OPD registration service is being implemented by the National Health Authority (NHA) under its flagship scheme Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM).

Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya hailed the quick and queue-less OPD registration.

"Quick & Queue Less OPD Registration! Under Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission, more than 5 lakh patients availed the benefit of faster OPD registrations using the Scan and Share service. Within five months of its launch, the service has been adopted by 365 hospitals across the country," Mandaviya said in a tweet.

The participating hospitals (government of private) display their unique QR codes in patient registration areas.

The patients can scan the QR code using any health application of their choice (such as ABHA, Aarogya Setu, EkaCare, DRiefcase, Bajaj Health, PayTM) and share their ABHA profile (demographic information like name, age, gender, and ABHA number) with the Health Management Information system (HMIS) of the hospital.

This enables paperless registration and thereby instant token generation. The patient saves time and the health facility is able to optimise the need of resources deployed for registration. The patient's health records also get digitally linked to their ABHA (Ayushman Bharat Health Account) which they can manage and access from their phone anytime anywhere, the statement by the NHA said.

"The Scan and Share service is a typical example of how technology can be leveraged to provide better services to patients and to improve the system efficiency. With increased adoption, patient registrations can be made effortless, seamless and accurate. Our focus is to work closely with the stakeholders to maximise the impact of ABDM-enabled digital health services," it said.

The real-time benefits of the service are being leveraged by patients across the country. Apart from government hospitals, several private hospitals are also enabling ABHA-based registrations for their patients, the statement said.

Earlier this week, NHA also achieved the milestone of registering two lakh health facilities like hospitals, clinics, diagnostic laboratories and imaging centres, pharmacies etc in the Health Facility Registry (HFR), it said.

The HFR is a core building block of ABDM that aims to serve as a single source of truth for verified information on health facilities across the country.

Among the verified facilities, around 75 per cent belongs to the government sector. Karnataka (46,179), Uttar Pradesh (31,417), Maharashtra (13,789) and Andhra Pradesh (13,345) top the list of health facilities on HFR, the statement said.