MCI to regulate institutes offering hospital management courses

Rita Dutta - Mumbai

Around 18-odd institutes in the country offering full time courses in Masters in Hospital Management (MHA), Diploma in Hospital Management (DHA) and MD in hospital management will soon have a uniform curriculum to be formulated by Medical Council of India (MCI).

Said Dr M Sachdeva, secretary, MCI to Express Healthcare Management, “Earlier it was left to the institute having deemed university status or affiliated to a particular university to formulate its own syllabus for post graduate courses. Now, we have taken up the task of laying broad guidelines for post graduate courses.” This is a part of MCI’s endeavour to set standard syllabi for 35 post graduate degree, diploma and MD courses of medical sciences. As of now, Armed Forces Medical College (Pune), Nizam’s Institute of Medical Sciences (Hyderabad), AIIMS (Delhi) and Kasturba Medical College, Manipal (Bangalore) have been following MCI’s syllabus for post graduate in hospital administration.

To formulate the syllabus of hospital administration, MCI has formed a 12- member committee of experts with representatives from All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Indira Gandhi National Open University, Academy of Hospital Administrators, Indian Institute of Health Administration and Armed Medical Courses. The curriculum which has been recently approved by the committee members is awaiting the final nod from MCI. Says Dr Shakti Gupta, chairman of the syllabus-committee, and additional professor of hospital administration, AIIMS, “Having a uniform and updated syllabus for all the institutes is the first step in regulation of various hospital management institutes.” The suggested syllabus contains topics like IT solutions, patient management, hospital information system, consumer protection act, marketing and others new entrants that have gained prominence with the changing profile of hospital administration, added Dr Gupta.

The curriculum has been devised by gleaning syllabi of various institutes across the country and abroad. The syllabus would be proposed to various hospital management institutes in the form of a booklet as a standard to be followed, said Dr Sachdeva.

The regulation has evoked mixed response from the hospital administrators and academicians. Few experts say that it is necessary to regulate the various institutes, with around 1,000 students coming out of the various hospital management institutes every year. Most of these institutes are expanding by leaps and bounds to cater to the sudden demand of professional hospital administrators. Opines, Dr C A K Yesudian, HOD, department of health services, Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), which offers MHA and DHA under UGC, “Regulation is necessary with some of the institutes not following minimum standards.” However, the regulatory body should lay down the minimum standards, and allow the institutes to teach more, he feels.

Another school of thought says that MCI’s regulation is uncalled for for hospital management. Avers Joe Curian, CEO of P D Hinduja hospital and member of advisory board of the Indian Institute of Health Management Research (Jaipur) and Hinduja Institute of Health Care Management ( Hyderabad), which offers diploma in hospital management, “MCI has no business to formulate syllabus for hospital management institutes. What does MCI understand of management principles? It is like engineers devising the syllabus of medicine. If at all the hospital management institutes have to be monitored, then it should be by the Indian Institute of Management.”

Experts are also not happy with committee which has devised the syllabus, under the aegis of experts from AIIMS.

“What expertise does AIIMS have to devise the syllabus, when its hospital administration course is not very active?” questions a teacher of a hospital management institute. The hospital administration course offered by AIIMS has received flak for admitting only two students (medico and non-medico) very six months. The non-medical seat has always been undisclosed; the last and only time a student was taken on the non-medical seat was in 1987 on WHO fellowship. Asked about the question raised about the selection of the committee, Dr Gupta said, “We had to restrict our committee member from the north as MCI did not give us any funds. Travelling would have been a problem for experts from other parts of the country.” While the move to have a uniform syllabus has snowballed into a debate, institutes offering distance education and week long programme will escape the baton of regulation. Experts express doubts about the quality of teaching imparted by institutes offering distance education and evening courses in hospital administration and future of the students passing out of these institutes. As of now Symbiosis Centre for Healthcare (SCHC-Pune), National Institute of Health Administration (Delhi)and IGNOU (Delhi) are offering distance education in hospital administration. Says a disgruntled student of SCHC, “Hospital administration cannot be learnt through correspondence at all.” Experts say students flock to the institutes, with the course fee being not more than Rs 12,000 in comparison of Rs 60,000 to Rs 90,000 for regular course. When EHM contacted Dr V Ranjan, HOD, SCHC, he said that he had already taken a note and thus introduced a mandatory 40-hour hospital in-house training programme for five disciplines. However, experts say that the future of these students are bleak, with the institutes not even offering placements and hospital HR sections preferring to recruit students of full time courses. According to the personnel manager, of a Mumbai-based hospital, “We always give preference to full time students with a medical degree.”

With the chaos that looms large on the discipline of hospital management, few experts feel that hospital administrators should come together to form a body to control the institutes. According to Major General (Dr) S K Biswas, founder-member of Academy of Hospital Administrators, “A measure to control the institutes would be to modify the syllabus proposed by us for these institutes.” Is MCI listening?

With MCI trying to regulate hospital management institutes, Express Healthcare Management seeks the opinion of a few experts - Read Voices >>