Journalism of Courage
Over 60 big private hospitals were urged to start medical courses during a recent meeting with the Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya on the promise of easing paperwork and relaxing some norms. Of the 62 hospitals that participated, around 20 are likely to start courses this year itself.
Mandaviya said, “Earlier, good private hospitals were not interested in training students; the hospital was their business. There are four or five such hospitals in every city. Now, they have agreed to start courses.”
“With specialised services available at the hospitals, most would begin with training PG students. But some will introduce both UG and PG courses,” said an official in the know of the matter. The hospitals that attended the meeting included Breach Candy, Amrita Hospital, Medanta, Reliance Hospital, and Satya Sai.
As per officials, many of the hospitals have already submitted their applications and those that pass the inspections will take in students from the current academic year.
Officials said that the reluctance of the hospitals stemmed from excessive paperwork and norms related to requirements of land and infrastructure. “Of course, there cannot be an abundance of land in the middle of the city, and that was a hurdle,” said the official.
Last year, the apex medical education regulator National Medical Commission (NMC), issued a draft notification that allowed hospital chains that have previous experience in running medical colleges to open more elsewhere without waiting for the hospitals to get established. As per the existing norms, a medical college can be established along with a 300-bed hospital only if it has been functioning for two years. The draft proposal does away with the two-year waiting period norm if the organisation has experience in running a 1,000-bed hospital and medical college elsewhere in the country.
Such a relaxation, officials say, would allow recently established Amrita hospital in Faridabad to start courses immediately as it already runs a well-established hospital and medical college in Kochi.
This is one of the measures being taken by the government to increase the number of UG and PG seats, with the numbers almost doubling over the last nine years. There are around 1 lakh UG seats and over 42,000 PG seats in the country at present.
Relaxation in the norms are unlikely to impact the quality of medical education, the officials said, adding that medical colleges have been directed to put in place a system, such as using CCTV cameras, biometric attendance, and AI through, through which the number of patients and faculty present can be monitored. The NMC has already directed all medical colleges to install 25 CCTV cameras at strategic locations and start a biometric attendance system.
There have been allegations in the past where medical colleges bring in the required number of patients and faculty members only during the inspections.
