Government to outsource CATS operation

NEW DELHI: The Delhi government has decided to outsource the operation and maintenance of its CATS ambulance service and control room in order to offer prompt and effective services, reducing the response time.

The health department has floated an expression of interest which says, “The Centralised Accident and Trauma Services (CATS), an autonomous body of the Delhi government, invites expression of interest from eligible bidders to shortlist them for issue of a request for proposal (RFP) for operation and maintenance of CATS services.”

The document also says that the health department will come up with a hi-tech control room at Rajiv Gandhi Super Speciality Hospital, Tahirpur.

“The proposed control room will have video wall for supervision of all CATS ambulances along with real time call in queue status, caller location identification system, application-based call transfer to ambulances at mobile data terminals, event log for all ambulance activities and pre-hospital notification system to alert hospitals concerned,” says the note by health department.

“The control room will have time data recovery through cloud technology and in case of its failure, the existing control room at Bela Road will function as back up control room,” said a senior health department official.

Presently, 197 ambulance officers and assistant ambulance officers are working in CATS on regular basis.

“CATS shall be administrative controlling authority for regular staff and also meet all expenses on account of their salaries, allowances and facilities, until their retirement,” says the note.