ISLAMABAD: After a hiatus of two years, PolyClinic, the second-largest hospital in the federal capital, resumed its evening outpatient department (OPD) services on Saturday, reducing the burden on the emergency department by 70 per cent.

The service was discontinued because of Covid-19 in 2020 due to the increased burden on the medical staff.

Polyclinic was the only hospital that used to provide evening OPD for the last several years but during Covid-19, the service was discontinued due to an increase in patients suffering from coronavirus. Last year, an effort was made to start the evening OPD in the hospital but it could not bear fruit due to the poor management of staff and resources.

However, the newly appointed Executive Director (ED) of Polyclinic Dr IU Baig decided to start the evening OPD again. Dr Baig is the most senior staff member of the hospital and was appointed by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif as ED on September 29.

Outpatient department will remain open from 2pm till 8pm

Moreover, free mammography for screening of breast cancer of women aged 40 and above has also started at the hospital.

It is pertinent to mention that Polyclinic was established as a pioneer services hospital in 1966 as Central Government Hospital and it had only eight beds for emergency, surgery, medicine, and gynae. The purpose of this hospital was to provide free of cost health care services to the federal government employees. At present, there are over 600 beds dedicated to primary, secondary and tertiary curative care services for federal government employees.

Polyclinic Spokesperson Abdul Jabbar Bhutto, while talking to Dawn, said that the new ED, after the appointment, directed the officials concerned to make arrangements to resume the evening OPD.

“Moreover, in the past specialist doctors remained on call and junior staff used to remain present in the hospital but it has been decided that all specialist doctors will be present in the emergency from 2pm to 8pm to provide the best possible health services to emergency patients,” he said.

While replying to a question, Mr Bhutto said that the evening OPD will start at 2pm while the doctors will remain available till 8pm. He urged the masses to visit the Polyclinic and get free treatment rather than going to private hospitals.

“Earlier over 1,000 patients used to visit the emergency during evening hours but because of the evening OPD the number of patients in the emergency has been reduced to around 300 and other patients, having small issues such as cough and fever, have been going to the evening OPD.

It has provided an opportunity to emergency staff to focus more on the emergency cases,” he said.

He said that the wards which will remain open during the evening include medical, surgical, paeds, dental, ENT, eye, physiotherapy, and radiology.

Published in Dawn, November 6th, 2022