Government asks 62 Private Hospitals to start medical colleges. Government is working to increase the number of medical colleges and healthcare facilities in the country, and that the private sector can play a crucial role in this effort. The move could potentially help address the shortage of doctors and medical facilities in India, but some experts have expressed concerns about the quality of education and potential conflicts of interest that could arise from such partnerships.
What Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya says?
During a recent meeting with the Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya, over 60 major private institutions were persuaded to begin medical courses on the promise of reducing paperwork and loosening some rules. Around 20 of the 62 hospitals that took part are probably going to start their courses this year.
Why Government asks 62 Private Hospitals to start medical colleges?
“Good private hospitals used to be uninterested in student training since the hospital was their primary source of income,” stated Mandaviya. Every city has four or five of these hospitals. They have now decided to begin classes.
Already training PG Students
“With the hospitals having specialised services, most would start by training PG students. Nonetheless, some will launch both UG and PG programmes, according to a knowledgeable official. Breach Candy, Amrita, Medanta, Reliance, and Satya Sai hospitals were among those represented during the conference.
Several hospitals have already filed their applications, and those that pass inspections will admit students from the current academic year, according to the administration.
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According to officials, the hospitals’ resistance was caused by a lot of paperwork and regulations on the needs for land and infrastructure. The official said that this was a challenge: “Of course, there cannot be an excess of land in the midst of the city.
What NMC Says?
The National Medical Commission (NMC), the top regulatory body for medical education, published a draft notification last year that permitted hospital chains with prior expertise in managing medical schools to build more campuses before even waiting for the hospitals to become established. As of right now, a 300-bed hospital can only be built beside a medical college if it has been operational for two years. In the case when the organisation has expertise managing a 1,000-bed hospital and medical college elsewhere in the nation, the proposed plan eliminates the two-year waiting time requirement.
According to authorities, this exemption would enable the recently opened Amrita hospital in Faridabad to begin offering courses right once because it already operates a reputable hospital and medical college in Kochi.
This is one among the steps the government is taking to boost UG and PG seats, which have nearly doubled over the past nine years. Now, the country has over 1 lakh UG seats and more than 42,000 PG slots.
The officials added that medical colleges have been instructed 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. They said that relaxing the norms are unlikely to have an impact on the quality of medical education. The NMC has previously ordered all medical institutions to set up a biometric attendance system and 25 CCTV cameras in key areas.