National Medical Register to keep Count of Doctors, their medico-legal contacts
The government will soon introduce a National Medical Register to maintain a complete record of all medical professionals, Indian and foreign origin, practising in hospitals or holding teaching and research assignments in medical colleges in India.
The centre has framed part-rules under the newly-enacted National Medical Commission Act. Two sets of rules have been framed so far namely National Medical Commission (Submission of List of Medical Professionals) Rules 2019 and National Medical Commission (Manner of Appointment and Nomination of Members, their Salary, Allowances and Terms of Conditions of Service, and Declaration of Assets, Professional and Commercial Engagements) Rules 2019. With the states maintaining their registers and sharing the records with MCI, even the apex medical body doesn’t have the record of an exact number of doctors. But, under the new commission, there will be a centralised list of registered medical practitioners possessing recognized medical qualifications enrolled in state register or national register as well as a list of medical professionals possessing medical qualifications from outside India and permitted to work in India for a limited period.
With the rules, the government has sought to address the problem of malpractice at the medical college level. The newly formed commission would be required to report data on doctors employed by colleges at teaching and research positions. The ministry has also made it mandatory for every hospital to report a person-in-charge who would be held responsible in case of legal issues about a case. This would go in the central database and would help the patient in medical negligence cases.
“It is a common practice in some colleges to show a large number of teaching faculty in MBBS courses so that they can seek more seats and grants from the government. With a streamlined database which differentiates between a medical professional in a hospital and one who is employed by a college in a teaching position, this fraudulent practice will be checked,” said an official involved in the framing of rules.
Source: Medical Dialogues, ET Health World.