Sunday 21 December 2014

Paying high MBBS admission fee is not linked to producing dishonest doctors



It is often an argument that paying a high entrance fee for MBBS admission will produce a dishonest doctor. The activist says that they will have to recover the cost of capitation fee.

But it is not a reality. One does not buy a Mercedes car, travel in first class, buy a house in posh colony to grab money.

It is true that when the entrance fee is high for those seats only the rich will go and students from this class of the society will have enough money to build corporate practice which will be costly like any other corporate set ups.

Corporate culture of medical practice is not the need of hour in the country as still 80% of the people still lives in rural areas. We still need healers and not western cultured doctors.

Today the ethics of doctors and corporate culture are different

1.       For doctors there are  MCI ethics regulations but for corporate culture they do not come under MCI

2.        Corporate culture today are not under any medical regulations

3.       Doctors are not suppose to hire agents or touts but all corporate establishments have marketing departments.

4.       A doctor can be prosecuted under a criminal complaint but a company cannot.

5.       A doctors is not allowed to give rebates and commissions but to a corporate medical establishment there is no bar

6.       A doctor can not advertise but for a medical establishment there is no bar.

7.       If an estimate give is for 50,000 and bill comes to 150,000 the corporate culture is not blamed. The one who is blamed is the treating doctor.

[The author Dr K K Aggarwal is Senior National Vice President Indian Medical Association and President Heart Care Foundation of India]

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