No plan for multi-year approval system for medical colleges: Minister justifies yearly inspections in parliament

New Delhi: Justifying the requirement of yearly inspection of medical colleges by the National Medical Commission (NMC), the Union Minister of State for Health Smt Anupriya Patel informed the Rajya Sabha recently that the Apex Medical Commission is not considering any proposal to implement a multi-year approval system for medical colleges.

The issue of yearly inspection was raised in the Parliament by Shri Vivek K Tankha, who sought to know the rationale behind the policy requiring medical colleges to seek annual renewal of permission to admit students and whether the Ministry considers this policy fair and non-arbitrary, given that this annual permission impacts the stability of medical institutes and limits colleges to single-year approvals.

Further, parliament member Shri Tankha also questioned the Ministry whether it was considering to implement a multi-year approval system for medical colleges, potentially allowing them to admit students continuously and supporting the growth and stability of medical education in the country.

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In response to these queries, the Union MoS Health informed that the National Medical Commission (NMC), established under the NMC Act, 2019, is responsible for framing policies and regulations to maintain high standards in medical education.

"As informed by NMC, the requirement for annual renewal permission by medical colleges has been included in the guidelines framed by NMC to ensure effective compliance and to uphold high quality and standards in medical education," informed the Minister.

Minister Patel further specified that the annual renewal permission "aims to enhance the quality of medical education" by ensuring ongoing monitoring for continuous improvement and "provides a transparent assessment of the necessary clinical resources and faculty within the institutions."

"Further, there is no proposal under consideration with NMC for implementing a multi-year approval system for medical colleges," clarified the Minister.

While there is no plan to implement any such multi-year approval system for medical colleges, earlier this year, NMC had notified about its decision to do away with physical inspections. Medical Dialogues had earlier reported that even though the surprise inspections would continue, the Apex Medical Regulator would implicitly rely on data from the Aadhaar Enabled Biometric Attendance System (AEBAS) portal.

This 'digitally driven' initiative was being considered to reduce manual interference and data manipulations during the inspection process. Earlier, NMC Secretary Dr B Srinivas had informed, "We are facing a lot of issues in physical assessments, the dignity of the doctors was also there to make it more transparent. The new portal will be helpful for more transparency in NMC."

NMC has time and again urged the medical colleges to adopt the AEBAS system to bring authenticity in the faculty attendance. With the biometric system, all the data would remain available an any time and it can be used by NMC, putting an end to the requirement of manual inspections.

"With this portal, the institutes will be out of ‘inspector raj’ and will be digitally driven. Hence, there will be no issue of manipulation of data, which is groundbreaking," Dr Srinivas had earlier said.

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