Focus on building a good hospital before medical college, not vice-versa: Dr VK Paul

New Delhi: “The best medical training is not through a college but the hospital, said Dr VK Paul, Member (Health), NITI Aayog, Government of India, in the key note address during the inaugural session of ‘13th FICCI HEAL 2019 – Health of healthcare in India’. According to him a consortium can build and run medical colleges but the heart and the soul of a medical college is a good hospital. He further urged on the need to first build a functioning hospital and then think of converting it into a medical college.

“The doctor to population ratio goal that we have set is 1:800 but for that, we also need optimum service and human resources which are the most difficult issues, said Dr Paul while stressing on the need to increase the number of a qualified doctor. The World Health Organisation recommends a doctor-population ratio of 1:1,000. With the number of registered medical practitioners of both modern medicine (MBBS) and traditional medicine (AYUSH) the distribution of doctors in different regions vary. It is estimated that around 9.26 lakh doctors are in active service, which makes India’s doctor-population ratio 1:1,457, minister of state for health and family welfare, Ashwini Kumar Choubey, told the Lok Sabha in May.

Dr Paul soon took to clearing the doubt on National Medical Council’s provision of training and licensing nursing and allied health professionals as community health providers, he said, “The provision for mid-level service provider taking licence has no connection with quacks as this will upgrade the trained professionals making them above nurses but below doctors.”

Empowering the community health providers will help reduce the dependency on doctors for primary healthcare service hence freeing them to effectively manage the secondary and tertiary care services. Talking on the ongoing projects driven by the Niti Aayog and GOI, Dr Paul said, “Emergency departments to be made available in all hospitals from 2020, building a compulsory online course for all PG students and looking at making India as a medical device hub.”

Strengthening the primary healthcare services has been a major focus even in Ayushman Bharat with around 3.5 lakh community health providers being trained to work in Health and Wellness Clinics being set up for every 5,000 population across states.

Speaking on developments in the scheme, Dr Paul said, “About 10 crore Ayushman Bharat golden cards have been made and 3.8 million individuals have availed of health services till date.”According to Dr Paul, there is simply no way that scheme can be successful if the rates are lot viable. "Private-public demarcations are over once and for all. We are working together on agreed terms and methodologies through dialogue and system with an endeavour to find solutions to the challenges of our healthcare system," he said.

One of the key challenges that he sees is the true beneficiaries for whom the scheme was formulated are still not aware of it.