Panel favours medical colleges by corporates

A high-level committee has recommended to the government to allow corporates or business houses to set up medical colleges across the country. The panel said such colleges would be free to determine the fee for a majority of the seats.

The committee has also suggested replacing the Medical Council of India (MCI) with a 20-member National Medical Commission (NMC), which will have four autonomous boards for separate tasks.

The boards will look after undergraduate medical education, postgraduate medical education, assessment and rating of medical institutions, and registration of doctors and enforcement of medical ethics.

The three-member panel was set up in March in the wake of a scathing report from the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Health. The House panel asked the government to scrap MCI because of the regulator’s abject failure to check corruption in medical education and improve the level of medical standards.

In one of its remedial suggestions, the panel has proposed to do away with the current system of allowing only “not for profit” organisations to set up medical colleges.

“Given the shortage of providers and in recognition of the fact that the current ban on for-profit institutions has hardly prevented private institutions from extracting profits, albeit through non-transparent and possibly illegal means, it was felt that any restriction on the class of education providers would be counter-productive,” the panel stated.

The committee recommended allowing for-profit entities like corporate or business houses to set up medical colleges. The government, however, will have to suitably modify the existing rules to usher in the private sector.

The panel also noted several suggestions from experts on tapping the vast resources of private doctors – who are not associated with any hospital – for teaching jobs. A mandatory entry and exit test has been mooted to improve the quality of doctors. On the fee structure, the panel’s recommendation is to let the private colleges decide for 60% of the seats, while the government will have a say on the remaining 40% seats to ensure that poor but meritorious students don’t miss out on medical education.

Headed by P K Mishra, additional principal secretary in the Prime Minister’s Office, the panel proposed professional selection of NMC members, rather than filling up the regulatory body with elected members, which is the norm at the moment.

This would avoid conflict of interest issue that is common now, while giving recognition to new colleges. A draft of the proposed NMC bill is now available for the public to post their comments.