Telangana to introduce You Quote, We Pay scheme to address faculty shortage

Hyderabad: To address the acute shortage of senior faculty at government medical colleges, the Telangana Health Department is planning to implement the "You Quote, We Pay" scheme of the National Medical Commission (NMC).

Under this initiative, specialist doctors will be allowed to quote their expected monthly consolidated salary, and the government will appoint the candidate who agrees to work for the lowest quoted amount within an approved ceiling. The pay could go up to nearly three times the regular starting salary of a professor.

This means that the doctors will get a chance to negotiate their remuneration, unlike the traditional government practice of fixing salaries based on payscale. The move is mainly aimed at high-demand and hard-to-fill specialities, where a lack of faculty is affecting both medical education and patient care.

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This follows the Telangana Health Secretary's approval of the Director of Medical Education’s (DME) proposal to recruit associate professors and professors under the proposed “You Quote, We Pay” scheme of the NMC.

The scheme is aimed at attracting specialist doctors to posts that have remained vacant for years. Once a formal proposal is submitted to the commissioner of health and family welfare, the scheme will be rolled out.

Speaking to The Hindu, Director of Medical Education (DME), A. Narendra Kumar, said, "For instance, while the initial consolidated pay of a professor at a government medical college is around Rs 2 lakh, the government is prepared to offer up to Rs 6 lakh under the scheme, depending on demand and availability. If multiple candidates quote different amounts, the candidate willing to work for the lowest quoted pay will be selected."

He further added that the scheme is aimed specifically at specialities where demand far exceeds the supply, including radiology, cardiology, neurology, obstetrics and gynaecology, paediatrics, anatomy, biochemistry and physiology. It is also intended to attract faculty to medical colleges in far-off districts such as Adilabad and Nizamabad, where institutions have struggled to retain specialists.

Apart from specialist shortages, the government is also concerned about poor faculty attendance, which has put some colleges at risk of action by the National Medical Commission (NMC), including possible de-recognition. The scheme will not be implemented in all medical colleges, but only where there is an urgent need.

Therefore, the scheme will be implemented only in 10 government medical colleges identified based on low attendance data from the Aadhaar-based Electronic Bio-metric Attendance System (AEBAS). Dr Kumar said, "This is not a blanket policy for all departments but a targeted intervention where it is absolutely required."

He further told Deccan Chronicle, "Recruitment into the DME cadre begins only at the level of assistant professor, while associate professor and professor posts are filled through promotions. Unless candidates are eligible, we cannot promote them. Recently, around 300 doctors were promoted as professors. We are also in the process of recruiting 2,000 assistant professors. Of these, 607 results will be released soon, and about 1,300 posts are still in the pipeline."

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