Thursday, March 19, 2015

MCI orders faculty surveillance to rein in doctors

HYDERABAD: It would be no longer easy for teaching staff in medical colleges to take up lucrative private practice on the city outskirts by leaving the campus before the stipulated 4 pm deadline.

With many medical teaching staffers in both Andhra Pradesh and Telangana known to leave by noon for their private clinics, the Medical Council of India has now made it mandatory for all medical colleges to switch over to Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) system.RFID is a fool-proof system under which the regulator of medical education seeks to create a database of all teaching staff by integrating their Aadhaar cards, photographs and fingerprints. "There would be sensors to track the movement of faculty members of all medical colleges. Each of them would have a high-end computer system installed and connected to a central server stationed at MCI headquarters," said Dr K Ramesh Reddy , MCI member.

Dr Ramesh Reddy , a member of MCI sub-committee on RFID system, said that the new surveillance system on faculty members is mandatory for both private and government sector colleges.

Most importantly , it would be equally difficult for private medical colleges to resort to the dubious practice of recruiting ghost faculty for a day at the time of annual Medical Council of India (MCI) inspection, a common phenomenon witnessed across majority of 33 private medical colleges including 15 in Telangana.

"The new surveillance system would create havoc in our functioning if it is implemented as due to shortage of qualified faculty members, we are forced to hire ghost faculty from outside. Their services remain only on paper," said a dean of a private medical college, on conditions of anonymity .

It is estimated that private medical colleges in the two states are faced with 60% faculty shortage for their postgraduate, specialty and super-specialty seats, but they continue to escape MCI's radar due to poor monitoring.However, the scene in government medical colleges is said to be comparatively better.

Speaking to TOI, a senior office bearer of state medical council said that private medical colleges find the 1:1 (one professor for one student) norm fixed by MCI for postgraduate and specialty course seats difficult, compelling them to hire the services of ghost faculty , who actually exist but never teach.

Even in government medical colleges, it is pointed out that they too often resort to hoodwinking MCI by largescale transfers of teachers from one government medical college to another just before inspection, only to be repatriated to their parent institution after inspection.

Interestingly , in its notification on RIFD system addressed to all deans principals of medical colleges and released on Tuesday , MCI's deputy secretary Ashok K Harit acknowledged that a previous attempt to implement the faculty surveillance system did not work out.

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