Medical Council of India likely to be scrapped in favour of a single council for medical education

Close on the heels of the Yashpal Committee report a task force of the Union health ministry has decided to scrap all regulatory bodies, including the Medical Council of India, Dental Council of India, Pharmacy Council and the Nursing Council.

There will instead be a single regulatory body – National Council for Human Resources in Health – which will oversee seven departments related to medicine, nursing, dentistry, rehabilitation and physiotherapy, pharmacy, public health/hospital management and allied health sciences.

The move now needs a formal government notification. Sources said the Centre will now take this move to all the states before implementing it. On its part, the Union health ministry has already readied a draft bill titled The National Council for Human Resources in Health Draft Bill, 2009.

This will not only perform the regulatory functions but also carry out assessment and accreditation of medical and health institutions across the country. The council will be constituted as an autonomous body independent of government controls with adequate power, including quasi-judicial.

Simply put, the council will coordinate the entire gamut of medical and health education in India. This will include drafting courses and the period of study, including practical training, subjects of examination and standards of proficiency, conditions for admissions to courses, provide guidelines on curriculum planning, monitoring and overseeing implementation of UG/PG courses with flexibility for local specific modules.

The Times of India writes:

Medical education today is dictated by bank balance and caste. The existing councils, besides being unwieldy, have failed to provide a synergistic approach. There is an urgent need for innovation in health-related education. It is unfortunate that medical seats are auctioned in front of students today. This is the best surgical solution for cleansing the system.

The report which was discussed with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on August 26, 2009 by the task force states: “Professional councils such as the MCI/ Nursing and Pharmacy Councils have been set up to regulate the practice of their respective professions, including education. However, many of these councils have drawn criticism from all sections of society and got judicial censure on several occasions.”

Private medical colleges also place a heavy burden of fees on students and their admissions procedures are not transparent. The curricula of medical schools both public and private are not designed for producing `social physicians’, the report said.

Though all central and state universities shall conduct their own examinations and award degrees, the national council will conduct national-level exit examinations to standardise UG/PG medical and allied health courses. This screening examination shall be mandatory for students who have successfully completed UG from a foreign institution that is not recognised by the council. With this, the National Board of Examinations (NBE) shall be archived.

With a mere 9% of the UG medical students offering PG, the task force has proposed that prominent hospitals across the country be allowed to offer post-graduate courses. “PG seats are so few that students have no option but to study what is given to them rather than what they want to pursue,” a source said.

On its part, the Medical Council of India has come out with a point wise rejoinder to the Yashpal Committee report which goes on to say (excerpts only here):

It is observed that the conclusion which has been drawn by the Committee to the effect that the creation of the Regulatory Bodies like MCI have resulted in the fragmentation of the higher educational sector from policy perspective is erroneous, in as much as, that it is indeed a modality for specific focusing of attention on specialized areas like medical education.

As the Medical Council of India is a sole regulatory body in the field of medical education, the kind of embarrassing situation postulated in Yashpal Committee Report is not likely to arise. However, at this juncture, it is pertinent to note that the Ministry of Health & F.W. rather than respecting the autonomy of the Council has over-ruled the recommendations of the Council on several occasions, granting letter or renewal of permission when the Council has recommended otherwise because of the deficiencies of teaching faculty, clinical material, infrastructure etc. without assigning any reason thereof. Such erosion of the autonomy has created more damage to the quality of medical education rather than lack of coordination. This can be certainly be avoided if greater and meaningful autonomy is granted to the Medical Council of India as has been observed before the Parliamentary Standing Committee.

It is regretted that the Council has never been granted the optimal autonomy which is desirable for a national regulatory body. It is reiterated that if the Council is granted the same autonomy which has been proposed for the de nova regulatory body by the Yashpal Committee, more effective results towards regulating medical
education can be delivered by the Medical Council of India in times to come.

It is therefore observed that contemplating that the professional
Councils should be divested of the academic function and the gamut of the academics be vested with the universities would be ‘utopian’, basically because the aims and objectives of the medical education model are subtle and defined. Out of this model the trained health manpower is required to be generated to cater to the efficacy &effectivity of health care delivery system at large. This therefore mandates and contemplates a desired uniformity of course contents and curriculum including identification of the competencies which are required to be acquired by the graduates at the end of the curriculum. This being left to the multiple universities in the country could end up in several dichotomies and would be an ‘antithesis’ to the desired uniformity.

The bickering continues…. or are these the last gasps from a Council from which we expected so much?

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