Nitin Ayog to overcome the shortage of doctors in India has come up with a proposal. The proposal says that the government district hospitals will get upgraded into medical colleges with Private Public Partnership.
Under this plan, private players will design, build, finance, operate and maintain the medical college having an intake of minimum 150 MBBS seats and they will only operate, upgrade and maintain the associated district hospital.
“Scheme to link new and/or existing private medical colleges with functional district hospitals through PPP” contains 250 pages document and was released recently for feedback from stakeholders.
A meeting to discuss the same will be held in New Delhi on Jan 21. Meanwhile, there have been mixed reactions from medical education and health services.
As per the scheme, the district hospitals should have at least 750 beds. Out of these, 300 plus 20% of remaining beds should be reserved for free patients and remaining will be a source of revenue for market players. For example, there are 1000 beds in a hospital. As per the plan, 300 plus 20% of 700 i e 140 which comes out to be 440 beds will be reserved for free patients and the remaining 560 beds will be for private players and medical college to charge.
The free beds will be called as Regulated beds and remaining as market beds.
There have been mixed reaction from different places. some health activists are in favour while some are dubious about the plan.
As said by health activist Mohan Karemore from Nagpur, this will lead to the privatization of healthcare services. According to him, government hospitals are only hopes of poor patients coming from marginals situation. Giving 40 % of seats to private players will encourage discrimination.
Dr. Pradeep Chaudari, a retired medical officer from the district hospital in Amravati, said the government should pump more money into healthcare instead of promoting privatization. “In Jalgaon, district hospital was developed as a medical college and it’s running successfully with all government funds. The involvement of private players in government health set up is dangerous,” he said.
Academicians welcomed this proposal. This proposal has not been introduced but is already been implemented in Gujarat and Karnatak successfully. A senior member of the academic council of Maharashtra University of Health Sciences said that India needs more doctors and for that, more medical colleges are required.
He further said, if Maharashtra wants more medical colleges then the plan should get approval at the national level.
The proposal by Niti Ayog
- India is short of qualified doctors
- Bridging the gap to overcome the shortage of doctors is not possible with limited resources.
- This makes it mandatory to formulate a private-public partnership (PPP), model.
- This PPP will increase medical seats and will justify the cost of medical education.
- The comments and suggestions of stakeholders are welcomed until Jan 10, 2020.
Conclusion
Amid the limited resources, PPP will help in improvising the medical sector and will provide more job opportunities in the medical sector which will eventually create more doctors available for patients from all backgrounds including the marginal ones.
What do you think about this PPP model? please share your views.