National Medical Commission has denotified the Maintenance of Standards of Medical Education Regulations, 2023. With the denotification, all specific penalties against medical institutions that fail to comply with any of the statutory provisions and regulations or minimum standards are no longer applicable.Any action taken while the regulations were in force would not be affected. However, NMC has not taken any action against many colleges flouting regulations as in the case of non-payment of stipend to MBBS interns and doctors doing PG. Colleges will now have little to fear if they do not pay stipend as the penalty for is not specified in the NMC Act.

Without evaluation, med colleges’ disclosure would just be unverified claims

The Act only states that the Medical Assessment and Rating Board shall take such measures, including issuing warning, imposition of monetary penalty, reducing intake or stoppage of admissions or recommendation for withdrawal of recognition against a medical institution for failure to maintain the minimum essential standards specified.“Notwithstanding such denotification, the requirement of furnishing the annual disclosure report shall continue to operate” in accordance with relevant sections of NMC Act 2019, read the denotification announcement gazetted on Oct 14. NMC Act stipulates that the UnderGraduate Medical Education Board and the Post-Graduate Medical Education Board shall specify norms for compulsory annual disclosures by medical institutions.

The 2019 Act also states that MARB may conduct evaluation of any institute at any time without prior notice. However, with the denotification, the aspects that need to be included in the evaluation report, such as verification of physical infrastructure, availability of the required number of faculty and review of feedback from students, have also been removed.Without evaluation by MARB, the mandated annual disclosure would just be claims by a medical college unverified by an independent assessment.