Union health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad on Friday asked the Medical Council of India (MCI) to prepare a series of medical reforms within a month. One of the crucial reforms is regarding land required to start medical colleges.
Now, the ministry allows a medical college to start on a 10-acre plot in nine cities – Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Kanpur and Pune. It is planning to expand this list and include state capitals of Orissa, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan, which are not only facing acute shortage of human resources, but also have poor health indicators.
The ministry will allow these states to have split campuses – hospital and medical college within 10km of each other. This facility is available only in north-eastern and hill states, which require 20 acres of plot to start a medical college.
… The high-power expert group (HLEG) of the Planning Commission working on universal health coverage has proposed a phased addition of 187 colleges. The HLEG said by 2015 under phase A, 59 new medical colleges will admit students in the 15 states of Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Haryana, Jammu and Kashmir, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Meghalaya, Orissa, Punjab, Rajasthan, UP and West Bengal.
By 2017, 13 of these states will have an additional 70 medical colleges, and by 2022, 58 additional colleges will be built in two additional phases (2017-20 and 2020-22). By 2022, India will have one medical college per 25 lakhs in all states except Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal.
"The implementation of HLEG’s recommendations will enable the additional availability of 1.2 lakh doctors by 2017 and another 1.9 lakh doctors between 2017 and 2022. With this rate of growth, it is expected that the HLEG target of one doctor per 1,000 will be achieved by 2028," the report said.
These easing of norms would indeed help. In particular, the plan to expand Capital Hospital in Bhubaneswar to a medical college is stuck because of the land requirements. With the ease of the norms many large hospitals, which already have or are close to having the required number of beds, can have an associated medical college.
The ease of the norms should be such that many district hospitals can also have medical colleges. That will spread the medical colleges to other districts.
The State Government on Saturday decided to provide 20 acres of land free of cost and Rs 10 crore as incentive to Sahayog Healthcare and Research Foundation for its proposed 650-bedded medical college and hospital at Keonjhar. The city based foundation has estimated to spend Rs 80 crore for the project.
… It is to be noted that the Foundation had earlier signed an MoU with the State Government. The Foundation had given proposal of setting up of two medical colleges and hospitals, one at Keonjhar and the other at Jagatpur near Cuttack.
It was known that the Foundation would set up Jagatpur medical collage and hospital at its own cost. The Government would not give any land or financial incentive for the project.
A medical college in Keonjhar is Godsend. But the number "80 crores" and "650 beds" does not add up. Making a medical college costs much more. Also, in an earlier report that in Business Standard (see also https://www.orissalinks.com/archives/3900 ) different numbers were reported. So with doubts in my mind, I looked for any additional information on this foundation. I came across the following links:
The company Call for Care (web page at http://www.call4care.org/ ) which is mentioned as a part of the Sahyog Foundation
The supposed web page of Sahyog foundation at http://www.sahyagoaindia.org/ which did not work when I checked (Note: A foundation which is planning to make 2 medical colleges should not be listing a web site which does not work)
The address of the foundation at Sahyog Foundation, 2nd floor, Plot – 6, Unit III, Kharvel Nagar, Bhubaneswar, Odisha – 751001, (O) +91-674-2390033
I sincerely hope that this is for real. Unfortunately, the non-working website of the foundation http://www.sahyagoaindia.org/ is a warning bell. Also the working web site of its unit http://www.call4care.org does not list the management of the foundation and their background. It does have a list of doctors that they say are part of the program and it lists some health insurance products.
Sahyog Foundation, a city-based non-profit organization, would invest Rs 1100 crore in setting up a medicity spread over 300 acres at Jagatpur near Cuttack as well as a medical college and hospital at Keonjhar.
The amount will be raised by the foundation through a mix of debt and contributions from the promoters and Non-Resident Indians (NRIs).
The Keonjhar project which is being taken up on the public private partnership (PPP) mode at an investment of Rs 200 crore will have a medical college with an intake of 50 seats to begin with and a 300-bed hospital.
Debasis Sahoo, director, Sahyog Foundation said, “We will sign the MoU … with the Orissa government for setting up the medical college and hospital at Keonjhar by the end of this month. Apart from alloting 20 acres of land free of cost, the state government has also given us an incentive grant of Rs 10 crore for the project.”
Construction work on the proposed medical college and hospital at Keonjhar is set to take off in April this year and the first batch of students for the MBBS course will be admitted in 2011.
“While the hospital at Keonjhar will offer treatment in various super specialties, the focus will be on malaria ad tuberculosis. Seventy per cent of the beds in this hospital will be reserved for the BPL (Below Poverty Line) families.”
… The medical college and hospital at Keonjhar will offer direct employment opportunities to 3000 people.
For its Rs 900-crore medicity project at Jagatpur, Sahyog Foundation has started the process of land acquisition. The medicity project is expected to be operational by 2014.
Besides a 150-seater medical college and a 700-bed hospital, the medicity will have a homeopathic college, an Ayurvedic college and other public amenities like a shopping mall, gymnasium, swimming pool and food court.
… Apart from generating around 5000 direct jobs, the medicity will also create indirect employment for 150000 people.
Similar news was reported earlier (for example here) but the numbers in those early reports did not make sense.
Similarly there have been news reports (see here and here) about a US based group called Euthenic Group consortium that wants to set up a 1000 bed super speciality hospital in Orissa. However, after seeing the webpage of Euthenic Group (see http://euthenicgroup.com/) I don’t have a good feeling on this. Also I don’t understand what is meant when expressbuzz says the following:
After completion of the project, it will be handed over to the State Government. The hospital will be the property of the State Government.
It does not quite make financial sense that this group will make an hospital and then hand it over to the state government at the end of the completion of project. May be by "at the completion of project" they mean after a long long time; say 30 years.
About 80% of the net profit of The Samaja is spent for the welfare activities of the people of Orissa by way of extending stipend to needy students, by helping the patients and victims of natural calamities and through miscellaneous charity and donations. A large amount goes to the Gopabandhu Institute of Medical Science and Research which is in the verge of completion at Athgarh, Orissa.
Accordingly, three medical colleges at Cuttack, Balasore and Rayagada, in the PPP mode, are on the anvil. Acharya is also interested in providing similar facility at Jharsuguda. Private partners will set up the medical colleges and hospitals as per the Medical Council of India guidelines.
The State Government will provide 25 acres of land, and agreements will be signed with the private promoters accordingly. As per the guidelines, a medical college in the KBK districts will attract one-time Government grant.
The Government is eyeing private partners having hospitals of national and State presence, charitable, religious groups managing hospitals and groups of doctors, interested to set up and manage hospitals. Lands for the hospitals have been identified by the PPP Cell with the help of the district administration.
Lets see how these go. Considering that the earlier proposed WODC supported PPP medical colleges in Bhawanipatna, Balangir and Rourkela have not yet commenced classes I will keep my fingers crossed.
Following is an excerpt from a report in Statesman.
Keonjhar will soon have a medical college and an engineering college, said Bombay Oriya Mahasangha president Mr Bipin Bihari Mishra here recently. The Mahasangha will also take steps for the beautification of the major tourist spots, he added while addressing the media here today.
“As a man from Keonjhar, it deeply shocked me to see how miserable is the living condition of the people living in the remote villages. In Keonjhar, the villages are still away from the government’s various developmental programmes,” Mr Mishra lamented while explaining his plans for overall growth of the mineral-rich district. “We will adopt a village and work for its overall development. Then another village will be adopted and developed and so on,” Mr Mishra pointed out. He discussed with the media about the various problems the district is presently facing and possible ways to get rid of the problems.
… “We ensure that the cancer patients from Orissa are being treated at Tata Memorial Hospital and Cancer Research Institute free of cost, and we will also arrange for the stay of the attendants at a very nominal price as low as Rs 10 a day,” he said adding that an ‘Utakal Bhawan’ is going to come up on a land of 30,000 sq feet in Mumbai with the initiative of the Maha-sangha.
The Koustuv group which currently has a diploma college (Koustuv School of Engineering) and two operating engineering colleges (CoEB and KISD) has several more engineering colleges in the pipeline. They are Koustuv Institute of Technology (KIT), Khurda in Orissa and KITs in Ranchi and Kolkata. It also operates a plus two science college, Koustuv Institute of Science. It has plans for a medical college to be called Koustuv Research Institute of Medical Science (KRIMS). In regards to the medical college, there is a report in Telegraph regarding Koustuv’s success in its bid for a 400+ acres of land previously occupied by OTM. Following are some excerpts:
Koustuv Group, which recently got clearance from State Level Single Window Clearance Authority for a tin smelting plant at Khurda, has apparently emerged as front-runner in the auction of Orissa Textile Mills (OTM).
The state-owned composite cotton mill winded up in 2002.
Prabhat Ranjan Mallik, the chairman of Bhubaneswar-based Koustuv Group, was the foremost bidder with a fresh offer of Rs 43 crore for the OTM property and assets, including 422 acres of prime industrial land at Choudwar, in the final round of bidding in Orissa High Court yesterday.
The bidding vehicle set up afresh by Koustuv Group before the company affairs bench of Justice I.M. Quddusi plans to use the OTM factory complex for setting up a tin modulation unit.
“Moreover, a medical research centre comprising a state-of-the-art hospital and a medical college have been planned for the future,” said Koustuv Group counsel P. Mukherjee, while making a verbal bidding before the court. Mallik was also present in the company affairs court.
Samaja reports that BPUT will soon come up with an additional list and do additional round of counseling for that list to fill-up the left-over seats in Engineering, MBA etc. It says that out of a total 14,600 seats in engineering, of the 10,642 seats earmarked for JEE, 251 seats are left. Similarly, for MBA, out of 2500 seats, 1406 are earmarked for JEE and out of that 517 seats are left. In MBBS among the 300 seats in the private medical colleges, 210 are earmarked for JEE, and 143 seats are left. In architecture out of 119 seats 90 are left over. In BDS (dental) out of 350 seats 325 are left.
On AIEEE it mentions that the government will soon come up with the schedule. For AIEEE there are 2250 engineering seats, 325 MBA seats, 154 pharmacy seats, 325 MCA seats, 18 architect seats, 18 hotel management seats, 45 MBBS seats and 45 BDS seats.
In addition 15% seats are reserved for NRIs and they will be charged 4 times the amount charged for regular seats.
Schedule: GE (general) 1-580, SC 1-85, ST 1-110, PH (physically handicapped) 1-18, MI (military) 1-48, GC (green card- i.e. parents have less than or equal to 2 kids) 1-156
SCB (govt) Medical (GE 0, SC 0, ST 0, PH 0, MI 0, GC 0 )
MKCG (govt) Medical (GE 0, SC 0, ST 0, PH 2, MI 0, GC 0)
VSS (govt) Medical (GE 0, SC 0, ST 0, PH 3, MI 0, GC 0 )
KIMS Medical (GE 18, SC 5, ST 7, PH 0, MI 0, GC 4 )
IMS Medical (GE 36, SC 4 , ST 9, PH 0, MI 0 , GC3 )
HiTech Medical (GE 42 , SC 5, ST 7, PH 0 , MI 0 , GC 4)
SCB Dental (GE 0, SC 0, ST 0, PH 0, MI 0, GC 0 )
KIIT Dental (GE 51, SC 5, ST 8, PH 0, MI 0, GC 3)
IDS Dental (GE 49, SC 6, ST 8, PH 0, MI 0, GC 4 )
Hi-Tech Dental (GE 51, SC 5, ST 8, PH 0, MI 0 , GC 3)
Gandhi Dental (GE 26, SC 3, ST 4, PH 0, MI 0, GC 2)
Observations:
Orissa does not have enough rich families that can afford to send their kids to private medical colleges.
Thus there is a need for more government medical colleges.
Among the private medical colleges the order of preference seems to be KIMS followed by IMS followed by Hi-Tech. Its interesting that among these three Hi-Tech is the oldest and the other two only got MCI approval this year. However the other two are either part of or associated with deemed universities.
