After 4500 License Cancellation, DMER to track Compulsory Rural Postings with digital software

Mumbai: The Directorate of Medical Education and Research (DMER) has finally found a way to plug in loopholes related to doctors giving rural posting tenures a miss through a software digitization process.

Medical Dialogues team had earlier reported that The Maharashtra government had cancelled the registration of over 4,500 doctors for failing to serve in rural areas for a year, which is mandatory. Following the harsh move, the state government is now introducing the digitised move to ensure that such lacunas are not repeated again

Read Also: 4,548 doctors lose Medical Council registration for not serving in rural areas

TOI reports that the said software will keep a tab on the academic journey a student undertakes once enrolled in any of the 14 government and 5 BMC colleges of the state.The software will be able to track and keep a check on whether the student has completed his or her 1-year rural posting stint.

According to Medical Education Secretary, Sanjay Deshmukh, the software is in the final stages of completion. Students will be issued a number, which will be linked to their Aadhar Cards.

"We had two trials. We suggested a few alterations to Maharashtra Knowledge Corp Ltd (MKCL) that are being incorporated. The manual system will run simultaneously till the programme is foolproof," he said. The software will make the list of vacancies, including those in hospitals run by Directorate of Health Services, public so there is no room for ambiguity.

The state has more than 2,800 MBBS seats and nearly 1,000 post-graduate seats on offer. After completion of these courses, candidates have to serve a one-year bond in any public hospital.

Students are given an additional six years to pursue MD/MS degrees or super-specialization and are not expected to serve the bonds at the cost of higher education. "Unfortunately, they take advantage of this rule and dodge the bond service. Many don't pay the bond money. The state never had a mechanism to track these students," a senior official told TOI.