Now, book your appointment online at AIIMS under ‘tatkal’ scheme

Now, you can easily book your appointments online at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) under its newly launched ‘Tatkal’ (instant) scheme.

Zee Media Bureau

New Delhi: Now, you can easily book your appointments online at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) at the comfort of your own home under its newly launched ‘Tatkal’ (instant) scheme.

The new scheme enables you to book an online appointment for the same day against cancellations and noshows at the institute.

The Tatkal booking system, which has become operational a fortnight ago, has a window period of about an hour from 10 am onwards every day, during which people can log on to www. ors.gov.in to check for availability of time slots with the doctor of their choice.

There is no charge for the Aadhaar-based online registration and appointment system.

“It is like the airport check-in counter where you can confirm who all are boarding the flight positively and try to accommodate people in place of the noshows,” said Dr Deepak Agrawal, additional professor, neurosurgery, AIIMS.

Since the online registration started at the hospital as part of the government’s Digital India initiative in July, more than 60,000 appointments have been made.

Data since July shows that as many as half of those who book online don’t turn up for appointments. “People often book appointments online, but do not show up for whatever reasons. Since patients almost never call to cancel an appointment, our call centre follows up with them and compiles a list of no-shows. These free time-slots are then opened up for people for the day,” he said.

The initiative is part of the Online Registration System, a framework to link various hospitals across India for Aadhaarbased online registration and appointment.

“We are just ensuring that no OPD slot goes waste as a highvolume hospital like ours can’t afford it, and also the method is helping in streamlining the registration process. We want to dissuade people from walking into the OPDs and this is the best way to check such crowd,” said Dr Agrawal.

The hospital gets nearly 10,000 cases in its OPDs each day. However, on the flip side, this facility can be availed by only a select section of people that is net savvy.