HMC outpatient clinics expected to work at full capacity soon: official
Outpatients clinics at Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) are currently working at 80% of their capacity and are expected to operate at full capacity soon, thanks to the declining number of daily Covid-19 cases in the country, Dr Yousef al-Maslamani, medical director of Hamad General Hospital, has said. He told local Arabic daily
Arrayah that the outpatient clinics currently receive all types of patients and are expected to work at full capacity soon. As part of the Covid-19 precautionary and preventive measures, patients have to continue wearing face masks, maintain adequate physical distancing, show the green code on the Ehteraz app and undergo body temperature checks before entering the hospital.
Dr al-Maslamani said that over the past few months, work at the outpatient clinics have been limited to phone calls while only emergency and urgent cases were received due to the need for close physical examination in such instances. Now, work has resumed and patients can visit the clinics and see doctors face-to-face.
Further, normal surgeries have resumed since May 30 while emergency surgeries and those related to tumours had not stopped and were continuing, in addition to other cases that could not be postponed.
He said there is a plan to further expand surgeryrelated operations and the specialised surgery centre at HMC was currently working at its full capacity, with surgeries prioritised according to the requirements of medical cases. Dr al-Maslamani said as the number of Covid-19 cases continued to drop in the country, doctors and other health workers who had been delegated to treat Covid-19 cases could return for resumption of their normal duties. Regarding organ transplants, he said the centre concerned has seen a considerable increase over the past few years. Within the past three years, 62 kidney transplant operations were done in addition to four liver transplants, he added.