Private hospitals’ Association launches bed availability portal

Bengaluru: On Sunday, Private Hospitals and Nursing Homes Association launched its portal named ‘searchmybed‘ where citizens can check the availability of beds in several hospitals in Bengaluru for the treatment of Covid-19.

The portal is similar to that of BBMP’s bed status portal and is regularly updated. People can book the beds in hospitals where they are available. The portal also displays the contact numbers and addresses of hospitals. Dr Prasanna HM, president of PHANA stated that 136 hospitals in the city have registered for the service and the portal displays the status of 1,699 beds.

At the moment, only three are vacant. He said, “We expect to reach 10,000 beds after more hospitals join the service. Among them, at least 1,000 beds will be intensive care unit (ICU) beds and we would add 150 to 200 ventilators.”

Dr Rajashekhar, secretary of PHANA informed that hospitals are required to update when the beds fall vacant. In the upcoming days, more hospitals will be registered in the portal and all will be required to show the updates in real time.

In Bengaluru, as of Sunday, 2,179 beds were available under BBMP quota whereas, no ICU and ventilators were available.