To Increase Access to Medical Education & Care, Govt to Allow Setting Up of Colleges in Small Hospitals

To improve access to medical care in remote areas, the central government may soon allow opening of medical colleges in small hospitals, News18 has learnt.

At present, only large district hospitals are used to set up medical colleges, but the National Medical Commission (NMC) has started working on a plan to ease the process, News18 had reported on May 19.

The NMC has discussed the infrastructural requirements at these hospitals with the ministry of health and family welfare, which has cleared the proposal.

The draft is in the last phase of fine-tuning, and the announcement is likely to be made this month.

“Until now, small hospitals were not being used for imparting medical education. NMC used only 20% beds for teaching students, whereas 80% remained unused,” a senior government official from the ministry told News18.com.

The objective of the move is to “increase access to medical care” in remote areas as well as “increasing seats for medical education,” the official added.

The official further said the Central government’s idea is to distribute medical education and students across majority of districts.

“India will be able to deliver quality care better even in remote areas. We have taken into consideration the infrastructural requirements for opening these colleges. A list has been drawn about the requirements such as CT scan machines, microscopic equipment and a variety of surgical equipment. Everything will be taken care of,” the official explained.

Also, the official indicated that the health ministry is already on a spree to add more seats to expand the scope of medical education.

Nearly 50 new medical colleges were approved this year, adding 8,195 more undergraduate seats and taking the total number of such seats in the country over 1,07,658.

With the addition of these 50 colleges (30 government and 20 private), the number of medical colleges in the country now stands at 702.