CPI Concern On Commercialisation Of Health Care And Deteriorating Medical Education

Ludhiana, September 10, 2015: The district unit of the Communist Party of India has demanded regularization of the charges by the big hospitals. Expressing concern at the rising burden on the patients because of increasing out of pocket expenditure on health, the party has demanded that a regulatory authority should fix the charges by the health care facilities of different categories. Com D P Maur, Assistant Secretary CPI Ludhiana informed that the district unit has welcomed the communication by the party general secretary Com Sudhakar Reddy to the Union Health Minister Shri J P Nadda for the streamlining of the healthcare services and medical education in the country.

In his letter, he has expressed deep concern at the deteriorating standard of medical education in the country particularly in the private medical colleges that charge exorbitant tuition fees in addition to underhand money at the time of admission. Those colleges unfortunately do not have requisite facilities to train the medical students. We are being informed, he has written, that even the faculty in most of those colleges is not full time. Many doctors go to those colleges at the time of inspection only.

If it is so this is a criminal default as it affects the quality of doctors which those colleges produce. The Medical Council of India is aware of this and has asked the state Medical Councils to take appropriate action. It is also true that most of the state Medical Councils have not done anything while some of them have taken cognizance of the issue.

He has further said in his letter that the Punjab Medical Council is one such council that has found 187 doctors registered with it working as ghost faculty in Punjab and neighbouring states of Haryana and Himachal Pradesh. They have been served notice to appear before a committee formed by the president to inquire into this by giving those teachers opportunity for personal hearing.

He has further written “We also learn that the Punjab minister of medical education, Shri Anil Joshi has put his foot down and ordered the registrar of the council to put on hold the inquiry process for the reasons best known to him. Thus in fact he has acted against his constitutional obligations to promote the medical education in the state. We request you to intervene and tell Shri Anil Joshi to stop meddling with the Medical Council’s functioning. He must be told to withdraw his directive to the registrar”.

He has drawn attention of Shri Nadda at the growing commercialisation in health care delivery system, particularly by the corporate hospitals. The corporate hospitals are charging exorbitantly and sometimes it goes up to 100% to 200% more than what they give as estimate at the time of admission. We demand that a regulatory authority be formed to fix their charges which should be displayed by them at appropriate places in the hospitals.