Hospital ambulances now to be linked with police control room in Gurgaon

Gurgaon: Police have directed all hospitals with at least 50 beds to integrate their ambulance response mechanism with the district's emergency control room (112).

This will help reduce response time for ambulances and get timely medical treatment to victims of road accidents.

Currently, police rely on ambulances from the Civil Hospital in Sector 10 to ferry a person injured in an accident.

DCP (traffic) Rajesh Kumar Mohan on Monday held a meeting with representatives from 50 hospitals, govt and private, and asked them to collaborate with the Emergency Response Support System (ERSS), or 112, through a mobile data terminal (MDT).

MDT is a device installed in emergency vehicles to communicate with a central dispatcher.

With this tie-up, police can alert the nearest hospital from any accident site to send their ambulance.

"Our aim is to save precious lives in road crash cases. Apart from taking help from govt hospitals, we have also asked private hospitals to integrate their ambulances with 112. This will make our emergency response system more efficient," the DCP said.

Though there is no official data for Gurgaon, in 2020, that average response time for an ambulance to reach an accident site in the city was estimated at 16 minutes. The district's chief medical officer Alka Singh said on Monday that it was now down to five minutes.

The city approximately has 70 privately run and 34 govt ambulances, a health department official said.

In comparison, Delhi – which keeps official data – logged its latest response time at 17 minutes.

Vincent Augustine, CEO of a private hospital in Sector 109, said integration was a good move. "Several lives can be saved by providing timely treatment to accident victims in the golden hour," Augustine said.

In Jan this year, grocery delivery service Blinkit rolled out a 10-minute ambulance service in parts of Gurgaon – an announcement that was criticised by some residents as privatisation of the city's emergency response system too. Currently, the Blinkit service is limited to five ambulances, but the company had said it will expand after reaching agreements with hospitals.

On Monday, the DCP said that other than ambulance response, police are inspecting accident-prone areas in the city to assess if any road engineering improvements are needed.

"After conducting audits of the accident spots, we will inform the concerned engineering wing or the concerned officials to repair or improve the infrastructure to prevent accidents," the DCP said.

TOI had earlier reported that 37 accident-prone ‘black spots' were identified in Gurgaon, of which most – 19 – were on highways.

Police data shows that 479 people died in road crashes last year. The largest chunk of fatalities were that of pedestrians, 148, or almost one-thirds of the total. In 2023, fatalities were even higher, at 506.