LAHORE: Punjab’s public-sector teaching hospitals provided medical care to nearly 200,000 patients in a single day, according to a service-delivery report released by the provincial government.
The Specialized Healthcare and Medical Education Department has issued its one-day service delivery report for 7 September, according to which 198,637 patients received medical facilities at 57 public hospitals across the province in the space of twenty-four hours.
Of that total, 137,997 patients were seen in outpatient departments and 60,640 in emergency departments.
Within the same day, 2,221 surgeries were performed at government teaching hospitals. Diagnostic imaging included 693 CT scans, 1,959 MRIs and 454 angiographies.
The report puts the number of diagnostic tests conducted across the hospitals at 77,800, while free medicines worth Rs59.8 million were dispensed to patients.
According to the health department’s figures, the volume of medical facilities provided in a single day is a clear reflection of the scale of treatment services being delivered to patients at Punjab’s public teaching hospitals.
The figures repay closer attention than a press release usually gets. The most revealing ratio is between outpatient and emergency attendance: roughly 60,000 emergency presentations against 138,000 OPD visits in one day. In a well-functioning system, emergency departments handle acute cases while primary care absorbs routine complaints. A ratio approaching one emergency visit for every two OPD visits suggests that a substantial number of patients are using tertiary emergency rooms as a first point of contact.
That is a familiar pattern across South Asia and it has a straightforward explanation: emergency departments are open at night, do not require an appointment, and are perceived as more likely to yield a prescription and free medicine on the spot. It is also the most expensive possible way to deliver primary care.
The free-medicine figure — Rs59.8 million in a day — annualises to a very large number and represents one of the province’s most significant recurring health expenditures. Ensuring that the drugs dispensed are the drugs prescribed, and that stock does not leak, is the single most important audit question attached to that line item.
Punjab’s teaching hospitals include Mayo Hospital, Jinnah Hospital, Services Hospital, Sir Ganga Ram Hospital and the Lahore General Hospital in the provincial capital, alongside major tertiary facilities in Rawalpindi, Faisalabad, Multan, Bahawalpur and Sargodha. Each is attached to a public medical college and carries a dual mandate of patient care and clinical teaching.
They sit at the apex of a referral system that is meant to begin at Basic Health Units and Rural Health Centres. Where that lower tier underperforms, load transfers upward — which is precisely what a 198,637-patient day, in a province of well over 120 million people, illustrates.
Patients and attendants at Lahore’s major hospitals consistently raise the same three issues: waiting times at OPD counters, the availability of specific medicines against prescriptions, and the shortage of beds in emergency wards during peak hours. The volume figures released by the department do not by themselves speak to any of the three, and health-sector observers have urged the government to publish waiting-time and stock-out data alongside throughput.
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