Govt To Evaluate Standard Of Medical Teaching Institutes

ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 18th Aug, 2019 ) :The Federal government has planned to evaluate the facilities at public and private medical teaching institutes and hospitals throughout the country to improve the quality of service delivery system as per required standard.

According to an official of the Ministry of National Health Services, Regulations and Coordination, the federal government has also proposed certain amendments in existing laws to maintain the quality of teaching hospitals.

He said that Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PMDC) will issue warning to all those public and private medical teaching institutes and hospitals with having deficiencies in delivery of medical treatment to patients across the country.

He said that the PMDC will offer assistance to all such hospitals which are deficient in terms of practices to improve delivery of medical treatment by doctors.

He said that the council has already advised hospitals to strictly implement the recording of all procedures and availability of a patients' medical notes for considering cases of negligence.

He said that the council has decided to show zero tolerance against negligence of doctors and planned to complete the hearing process of pending complaints against doctors.

He said that in recent 52 negligence cases of doctors, the council has suspended the registration of 25 doctors besides lifetime cancellation of two medical practitioners due to preparing false or negligent postmortem reports while warnings were issued to 11 doctors.

He said that the council on receiving 50 complaints against colleges on charging excessive fee took serious notice and directed all the medical or dental colleges to charge only PMDC prescribed fee which is Rs 950,000 for local students and USD 18,000 for foreign students.

He said all such colleges have been asked to refund fee to the students at the earliest otherwise strict action will be initiated in respect of these violations.

He added proceedings against violation will be initiated after verifying compliance on complaints in June. He said that the council has also advised the medical students to report any such complaint of extra fee charging on PMDC's email address.

In order to make inspection criteria of medical and dental colleges in line with the international practices and to ensure quality education, the council has prepared two separate inspection and evaluation performas.

He added the Initial Recognition Framework 2019 is applicable for inspection of all colleges seeking first time recognition while the Performance Evaluation Framework 2019 is applicable to all existing medical and dental colleges to evaluate their performance and to determine their status as ongoing colleges.

He said that as many as 34,702 applications for grant of licenses have been received out of which 31,478 have been disposed of and deadlines have been fixed for disposal of all remaining applications.

The Council also issued necessary directions to fast track all pending equivalence cases of post graduate and additional qualifications and up till now 1401 out of 1648 cases have been disposed of.

He said that a deadline has been fixed to dispose of all pending cases of provisional licenses, permanent licenses, renewal of licenses, post graduate and additional qualifications and faculty registrations and experience.

He said that PMDC has introduced for the first time an annual quality categorization of all public and private medical colleges in Pakistan.

The colleges will be graded into five categories from A+ to D based on performance and facilities and faculty. He added the purpose of the grading is to assist students in making their choices as well as enabling colleges to improve their quality.

As a first step the Council has decided to inspect all existing public and private medical and dental colleges in the single largest inspection every undertaken where all 167 colleges will be inspected on the new frameworks 2019.

He said that the inspection system has been developed to provide for a transparent and merit based system. He added inspections will be carried out on a periodical basis of the colleges on an annual or two or three year basis.

The Council has formulated a policy to impose a revalidation requirement upon doctors in line with best international practices rather than merely renewing their license after a specific period.

He said that this step will help doctors to have update on modern developments and techniques to ensure best quality treatment to patients. He said that the Council has initiated major IT reforms.

He said that currently there is a definitive lack of digital enablement at the PMDC. Steps have been taken on an urgent basis to further improve efficiency by implementing a policy of immediate automation and digitization of all resources, he added.

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