Home healthcare demand surges as Dengue, Chikungunya cases rise

The demand for home healthcare services has increased 20 to 30 per cent as government as well as private hospitals have been flooded with Dengue and Chikungunya patients.

According to the service providers and the health experts, healthcare at home was helping the hospitals in balancing the flow of patients.

The patients subscribe to the home healthcare services after the doctors provide initial consultation to them, the experts said.

Health Care At Home (HCAH), one of the major home healthcare providers, has recorded between 150 and 200 Dengue and Chikungunya patients subscribing to the services.

HCAH, which has an annual subscriber base of three lakh patients every year, said the services were best used during the epidemic situations of Dengue, Swine Flu and Chikungunya whose cases have suddenly risen manifold.

"Health Care at Home Services are helping in a big way. During epidemic situations, not even the nurses are able to attend to all the patients admitted in the hospitals. Such services allow patients to recover faster and comfortably at home itself," Gaurav Thukral, Vice President of HCAH, told IANS.

Medical superintendents of Safdarjung and Ram Manohar Lohia hospitals said they recorded over 100 suspected patients every day who insisted on admission even when the beds in the Dengue wards were only between 120 and 130 in each hospital.

According to Vishal Bali, chairman and co-founder of Nightingales Home Health Services, home healthcare gives immense mental peace and satisfaction helping in faster recovery.

"With plenty of advantages our team ensures holding hands of patients and family, gives facility on time by maintaining protocols, constant personal attention towards health which saves expensive hospital treatment and treats you better," said Bali.

Bali's company has recorded over 25,000 subscribers in the past one-and-a-half-year.

The services are not only affordable but also help in improving the patient's health faster as they spend time with their family, unlike in a hospital.

Apart from setting up the ICU infrastructure, such organisations also provide post-surgical care, post-joint replacement care, post-cardiac surgery care, pulmonary care, elderly care and physiotherapy.

Commenting on the home healthcare services, Piyush Jain, a senior doctor of internal medicine at Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital, said: "No doubt such services help during the outbreak of Swine Flu and Dengue every year."

"Patients hardly understand that we have limited beds. Through such services they undergo treatment at home comfortably after initial consultation with the doctors," Jain said.

--IANS

rup/py/bg