MCI has published a set of guidelines to set up or maintain a medical college depending upon the number of students taken in each class. To ensure these are maintained, annual inspections are undertaken by MCI for upcoming colleges and an inspection every 5 years for the established colleges. I reckon it is a good system. If at all there should be issues, that should be what is in the guidelines!
However, the conduct of these inspections has come under the scanner, and rightfully so. I will not go into each and every detail of acts of commission or omission during these inspections to ensure that this blog is crisp, I expect readers to put in their comments. My views here are based on conversations I have had with colleagues in institutes which have been inspected over the last decade and could be termed hearsay, but are genuine bits of information I recall!
These inspections are announced at a very short notice and thus do not allow an institute to recall its employees on leave or on academic trips. This results in staff shortage on 'face presentation' and thus disqualify an organization. This rule only applies to a private organization; medical colleges run by the government are exempt from this rule.
The inpectors do not make their own arrangements of lodging and boarding; arrangements have to be made by the college being inpected and lot of these colleges put them in 5 star facilities which in legal parlence is trying to influence the inspectors.
The colleges bring in bogus patients during the inspections, thus filling up beds and falsely showing the hospital to be full. Likewise fictitious medical records are created to show the required average bed occupancy. The only way to pick up this fraud is surprise inspection.
There are other issues which relate to the guidelines and thus would be a subject of another blog. I expect readers to put in their views about these inspections.
Sunday, May 16, 2010
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Sir,
ReplyDeleteIn addition to the fake patients and cooked up Medical records, during a MCI inspection, also presented are certain "faculty members" or the "medical teachers" who are not permanent employees of the institution being inspected.They surface only on the day of inspection in lieu of money. I guess one can rightly call them the "fake faculty". They are actually hired by the upcoming Private Medical Colleges just for face presentation every year at the time of MCI inspection. I reckon that it is also time for the Medical Teachers to say NO to these practices.
I agree to your comments. the onus is on the medical faculty to say NO to these practices. While we discuss this, one has to look at why this practice started. One of the reason could be that these medical colleges are remotely located and thus are unable to attract faculty; the other reason could be that the hospital attached is substandard or unable to attract clinical material. It could also be that the owners of the medical college do not want to pay well. Whatever the reason is, it is a very bad practice and has a telling effect on the quality of medical education.
ReplyDeleteIn the western world, there are part time teachers for teaching hospitals. In other words, these doctors have two or 4 sessions in a teaching hospital per week. 1 session is equivalent to half a day. The remaining days are for private practice. On the days the doctor is in a teaching hospital, his/her services are used for teaching as well as clinical work. In India there are lot of experienced medical teachers who have resigned or taken premature retirement, so that they can earn more. These people can be offered part time work.
The remuneration for any doctor working as a clinician and as a medical teacher should be significant to prevent them from leaving a teaching hospital for private practice.
Thanks for your comment!
If you go through the minutes of the MCI meetings, you will see that inspections sometimes seem to have been done thoroughly ( one surgeon at a particular college is reported as not knowing where the Operating Theatre was!!). Whether these inspections are always as thorough, or whether that is dependant on the influence/incentive provided is anyones guess. Certainly, when the President of the MCI is accused of fraud and corruption,re-instated as Prresident, and then arrested on new charges, there is a considerable credibility issue
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