Four reforms in COVID-19 bed allotment software: BJP MP

This was the result of 100 hours of work put in by the MP, a team of senior officers and tech architects sent by Infosys chairman Nandan Nilekani

Bengaluru South MP Tejasvi Surya, who had live streamed an ‘expose’ of an alleged scam in bed allotment for COVID-19 patients on May 6, said four reforms have been implemented in the software to prevent bed-blocking. This, he said, was a result of 100 hours of work put in by himself, a team of senior officers and tech architects sent by Nandan Nilekani, chairman, Infosys. Cases unearthed till now reveal several asymptomatic patients in whose names beds were blocked did not even know beds were booked in their name. “To prevent this, patients and the hospital concerned will get an auto-generated SMS as soon as a bed is allotted to them,” Mr. Surya announced at a press conference on Monday. An analysis of specific instances where beds were blocked show that they were manually changed to allot them to someone else later, at a price, as there was a window of 10 hours for the patient to report to the hospital. “The option to manually change bed allocation has been entirely dropped from the software, and the window from a bed being blocked to a patient reporting to a hospital has now been reduced to four hours,” he said. To bring accountability in bed allocation, the name of the person allotting a bed will be logged in with every bed allocation in the software, he added.