The Indian Medical Association’s Kerala State branch has taken up the issue of an organisation, claiming to be an autonomous commission, asking hospitals to get their doctors registered with it or pay a huge penalty.
The organisation, Bio-Chemic Education Grants Commission (BEGC), claims to be headquartered at Krishnanagar of Nadia district in West Bengal, with offices in Bangalore and Kochi. It also has a medical centralised processing cell with which doctors are asked to register.
Suspecting a scam, the IMA has started collecting details of communications sent by the organisation to hospitals. State secretary of the IMA A.V. Jayakrishnan said on Thursday that a complaint would be lodged with competent authorities soon.
The IMA said doctors had been asked to register by paying Rs.3,000 each, with the yearly renewal fee fixed at Rs.1,000. Hospitals were also warned of penalty up to Rs.5 crore if doctors did not register. Dr. Jayakrishnan said individual doctors registered with the Medical Council of India. Hospitals got licence to function from local bodies and the Central government’s Clinical Establishment Act, 2010, had laid down rules for their functioning.
“As per the Act, national, State, and district-level committees are to be formed to oversee the functioning of healthcare establishments. Since healthcare is a State subject, the State governments can pass their own Acts in line with the Clinical Establishment Act and put in place the recommended monitoring mechanism. With such an Act and MCI guidelines already in force, an organisation could not appear on the scene and ask doctors to become its members,” Dr. Jayakrishnan pointed out.
An alert over this seemed to have come after a hospital in Kochi received a note from the BEGC and, in turn, the doctors took it up with the IMA early this month.
When contacted, BEGC’s “National Officer” in Bangalore Boaz Babu and regional officer in Kochi V.S. Rajeesh claimed that it was an autonomous body that the government had tasked with preparing a national registry of doctors.
Mr. Babu said the proposed registry was for practitioners in all systems of medicine, and that only doctors in modern medicine registered with the MCI.
An organisation seeking doctors’ registration has raised its hackles
