The Government of Haryana, with support from Deloitte, has launched Sanjeevani Pariyojana (or ‘the life project’), a supervised, virtual home-care initiative to help people quickly access healthcare for mild-to-moderate symptoms of COVID-19. It provides individuals with support and resources to manage their care at home including access to virtual triage, as well as COVID-19 field hospitals and in-patient facilities, when deemed appropriate by the state-trained medical staff.
The Haryana-Deloitte collaboration builds on the state’s existing telemedicine and other virtual medical care services for home treatment.
The programme, designed and supported by Deloitte, the Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI) and the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences (PGIMS-Haryana), is a critically important step in bringing much-needed medical care to the people who need it the most. The pilot project will begin in the district of Karnal and may include a roll out to other affected areas shortly, thereafter.
Speaking about the initiative, Punit Renjen, CEO – Global, Deloitte, said, “Deloitte’s purpose is to make an impact that matters and supporting the people of Haryana as the government delivers much-needed medical care to COVID-19 patients is one of the most important impacts we can make. This collaboration will ‘expand the medical ward’ by delivering help to those who can recover at home, thereby preserving capacity at larger hospitals to treat the critically ill. This approach was designed to be ‘fit for purpose’ and may yield a model to enable broader health equity and access to critical health resources in the region and beyond.”
“Sanjeevani Pariyojana” will also extend medical care to rural areas where awareness of the second wave of the virus and how to treat it remains low. With the right processes and care, officials believe it may be possible to support home convalescence for nearly 90 per cent of the patients.
The initiative will help operate a remote command centre for managing scarce resources, including hospital beds, oxygen supply, ambulances, medical professionals and monitoring at-home patients; augment existing call centre capabilities with a COVID-19 hotline; mobilise 200 medical students to provide virtual health services for mild-to-moderate cases (with supervision) that includes distributing home-care kits consisting of mask, oximeter, thermometer and basic medicines; and deploy Advanced Life Support (ALS) ambulances and mobile pharmacies.
Besides, it will also equip a field hospital with medical equipment (e.g., oxygen concentrators) for surges in COVID-19 patients; launching an awareness campaign on home-care protocols and leveraging community workers (the Accredited Social Health Activist (ASHA) network) to support in home care and develop a playbook for other geographies to replicate.
These inter-related activities will also enable the Haryana government to provide three-tiers of medical infrastructure to patients, including isolation wards at the village level and sub-centre level and in some cases at Primary Healthcare Centres (PHCs) for patients with mild symptoms who are unable to isolate at home, staffed with a doctor (including Ayush doctors), nurses and volunteers; community health centres or field hospitals at a zila or sub-district level equipped with oxygen concentrators for patients with moderate symptoms in need of oxygen support and advanced medical centres at larger government, civil or private hospitals equipped with the Intesnive Care Unit (ICU) facilities for critical patients.
The learnings captured from these efforts will be used to drive new models of public health engagement and collaboration. In particular, reaching patients more quickly and empowering public health workers to collaborate with clinicians in new ways to deliver critical medical care.
