Do patients have means to access doctors' qualifications? HC Seeks Status Report from Delhi Medical Council

New Delhi: Highlighting the importance of ensuring that patients are being treated by genuine doctors, the Delhi High Court has asked the Delhi Medical Council (DMC) to file a status report specifying whether the patients have satisfactory means to access the medical qualifications of a doctor.

Asking the DMC to suggest the required measures to enable this, the HC bench observed, "it is important for respondents (DMC and National Medical Commission NMC) to ensure that a patient who is either approached by a doctor or who approaches a doctor for medical treatment has the means to access the medical qualifications of the said doctor and to ascertain whether the said person is entitled to practise medicine."

The High Court issued these directions while hearing a public interest petition filed last year seeking directions to the delhi medical council to verify the medical qualifications and educational certificates of all doctors practising in Delhi in a time-bound manner.

Further, the plea sought directions to make it mandatory for all doctors and medical establishments to prominently display the complete credentials of the practitioner including the registration number, photo identity card, and certificates of their recognized qualifications.

Alleging that many doctors are practicing in the fields in which they have no training, the plea also sought a formal declaration from the doctors regarding their eligibility to practise a particular specialty.

Also Read: Unqualified individuals, doctors treating patients: DMC directs hospital owners to check employees credentials

Times of India has reported that nearly 70,000 doctors are registered with the Delhi medical council. However, due to the fact that two doctors can have the same registration number, knowing just the registration number would not be enough.

The DMC website has two categories in the option of "Verification of Doctors' Registration"—called Fresh Registration and Re-Registration. Therefore, the same number would give you different doctors in the two categories. 

Since most of the hospitals and nursing homes do not have the registration number of doctors working there prominently displayed, it becomes difficult for the patients to look for details. When someone clicks on the link of "Search Your Doctor" link, the search returns so many doctors with similar names. Therefore, it becomes difficult to know which might be the one doctor that you are searching for.

TOI reported that the father of a two-and-a-half-year-old child, who alleged died due to medical negligence, impleaded to be a part of the plea, pointing out that when he had asked DMC in January 2021 for the registration details and qualifications of the treating doctors, the Council had asked him to provide "better particulars" of one of the doctors such as "father's name, his address, his speciality". 

Again in March 2021, he suggested that the council ask the hospital for further details of the doctor. However, medical council provided the details of another doctor with the same name. After more attempts by the Complainant, DMC in March 2023 informed that from the records provided by the complainant, the identity of the doctor could not be ascertained and closed his request in April 2023.

After the complainant was impleaded in the PIL, the response from DMC before the Court in April 2024 revealed that the Council wrote to the concerned hospital in February 2024 and after two weeks the hospital provided the council with the registration and qualification details of the doctor. Therefore, after claiming the inability to get the registration and qualification of the doctor for more than three years, DMC was able to get the information within weeks.

Another complainant's son, who was also impleaded in the plea, pointed out that on his complaint regarding the alleged negligence of a hospital, the DMC kept issuing notices asking him to provide all the treatment records, instead of asking the hospital to submit them. Citing "absence of aforementioned documents", DMC closed the matter.

Medical Dialogues had previously reported that earlier this year, while taking cognisance of the instances where unqualified/underqualified individuals and doctors were treating patients in many hospitals, nursing homes, and other clinical establishments, DMC had directed all Hospital owners to check out the credentials of their employees.

Further, the Council had also asked the doctors visiting such hospitals or nursing homes to ensure that the patients were receiving medical care from qualified persons.

Also Read: Verify credentials! Delhi Medical Council warns hospitals against unqualified doctors, medical staff treating patients