Health Help Center (HHC) is an initiative under the Accelerating Bhutan’s Socio-economic Development (ABSD) program with performance compact signed by the Ministry of Health with the Prime Minister of Bhutan on December 12, 2009. HHC set-up and operation has been outsourced through open competition to the vendor consortium consisting of Regal Information Technology from Bhutan, ProCreate Techno Systems and Equant Technologies from India.

What is HHC?

HHC is an Information Communication Technology (ICT) enabled health care service which will be delivering services round the clock (24/7). The services delivered include Emergency Response Services and Healthcare Helpline Services. The services will be delivered through the toll free number 112 which is accessible from Mobile phones, fixed land lines, and PCOs.

Vision & Mission of HHC

The vision of HHC is “Access to Health Professional Services within one hour for 90% of the population by 2013, 24×7 from anywhere” with missions to:

• Provide appropriate response care for medical emergencies

• Ensure provision for access to healthcare services anytime: 24×7

• Ensure provision for access to healthcare services from anywhere: telephone/mobile phone based, online services

• Raise skill sets of paramedics and ensure effective use of scarce resources such as doctors and specialists

Objectives of HHC

• Provide universal access to health care professional and facilities throughout Bhutan.

• Strive to respond to any medical emergency within ‘golden hour’.

• Provide medical advice on any medical presentation.

• Provide information about any medical presentation and empower the citizens to manage their health effectively.

• Provide medical counseling for various medical presentations.

• Provide information pertaining to health care facilities and health

• care services available across Bhutan.

• Improve service quality by means of complaint logger.

Dial 112 – DOs & DON’Ts?

DOs
For Emergency Medical Services

• Call 112 for the ambulance and emergency care in case of Emergency.
• Call 112 for informing any accidents when you witness them.
• Teach your children how to use 112 wisely in case of an emergency…
  • If a parent or relative is sick or unconscious,
  • If your child or another child is injured.

Non – Emergency Medical Services

• Call 112 for any kind of health concern or health query.
• Call 112 for help in any kind of medical problem.
• Call 112 if you are suffering from mental illness like depression, anxiety & suicidal tendencies.
• Call 112 for knowing about medical facilities location and medical services available in Bhutan.
• Call 112 for registering any service complaint against health care services in Bhutan.

DON’Ts

• DON’T hang up when you dial 112 in an emergency; our dispatchers will need information from you in order to send the appropriate help.
• DON’T hang up when you dial 112 accidentally or our dispatchers will have to take time to call you back and verify if you have an emergency, taking them away from actual emergency calls.
• DON’T call 112 to Contact your utility company or monitor local radio and television of road, weather, and mobile phone problem and school information.
• DON’T play with 112 or make false calls.  It is a violation of the law that is punishable by fine or imprisonment.
• DON’T give miss call to 112.
• DON’T tease HHC staff by calling 112.

NOTE: All calls are recorded along with caller number and voice. HHC reserves the right to use this evidence against abuse and nuisance callers.

HHC – Emergency Response Services

In case of any emergency, one can avail the services of Health Help Centres services simply by dialing 112. The call will land at HHC Call Center, and after collecting basic details pertaining to the emergency incident like type of emergency, time of incident, age and gender of the victim, number of victims etc., the nearest located ambulance from the location of incident will be identified from HHC using GPS technology and the ambulance will be dispatched immediately to the incident location.

One can dial 112 for the following emergencies:

HHC SERVICES

HHC – Emergency Response Services

In case of any emergency, one can avail the services of Health Help Centres services simply by dialing 112. The call will land at HHC Call Center, and after collecting basic details pertaining to the emergency incident like type of emergency, time of incident, age and gender of the victim, number of victims etc., the nearest located ambulance from the location of incident will be identified from HHC using GPS technology and the ambulance will be dispatched immediately to the incident location.

One can dial 112 for the following emergencies:

HHC – Healthcare Helpline Services

Healthcare Helpline Services are essentially 4 different kinds viz…

1) Medical Advice Services,
2) Medical Counseling Services,
3) Health Care Facility Information Provider Services and
4) Complaint Logger Services.

Medical Advice Services

HHC encourages all the citizens to dial 112 for any kind of medical problem, all the calls will be medically triaged ( categorized ) by HHC paramedic who receives the call with the assistance of Clinical Assessment Software ( CAS ) as per the medical presentation, and determines whether the condition is emergency or non – emergency. If the condition is a medical emergency, an ambulance will be dispatched. If, the presentation is non- emergency, appropriate medical advice will be given to caller based on Evidence Based Disease Algorithms.

Depending on the type, severity of the presentation, the caller may be advised to go to right health care facility which can handle such medical presentations.
If the medical presentation is a minor ailment, an e-prescription shall be sent to the caller to the mobile or e-mail. All the e-prescriptions are essentially over the counter prescriptions which are regulated by the Drug Regulatory Authority of Bhutan.

Medical Counseling Services

nformation about existing nearby health care facilities and the services available in the same health care facilities can be accessed by dialing 112 from anywhere in Bhutan. The same information will be provided verbally from HHC which is collected by automated electronic information directory.

Complaint Logger

Complaint logger is an automated service improvement process. If any service is not available at the healthcare facilities like absence of resource person, Equipment malfunction etc. can be registered at HHC by dialing 112 by any citizen of Bhutan. The system will log the complaint and automatically send reminders to resolve the gap to respective first level authority. If due to any reason, the gap is not resolved at first level authority, the system will automatically escalate the process to next level authority. Totally the system is customized to three level escalations for effective & faster resolution.

Epidemic problems can also be logged, which will be communicated to all levels of authorities immediately for faster resolution