The professional bodies of allopathic doctors from all over the country are contemplating on a new idea to put up before the Union government by demanding to form a Union Healthcare Commission for India (UHCI) to bring all the healthcare governance under the control of doctors.
With this demand the leaders of the associations, including those of specialties, will soon meet the Union health minister, Dr Harsh Vardhan, it is learnt.
A discussion in this regard is going on in the national level on an online forum of doctors chaired by Dr MC Gupta, a medico-legal consultant and the former professor from AIIMS, New Delhi.
All the associations of doctors are supporting the idea and the state chapters of Indian Medical Association (IMA) have been asked to unite and brainstorm on this. One Dr CV Rathore from Chandigarh is the mastermind behind this initiative.
According to him, the doctors must involve in every healthcare service and be in control right from strategy to planning to commissioning and delivery of all kinds of services. They should control the whole healthcare services. He says that all the policies should find the workable grounds for doctors, and the budgetary allocation, resource deployment and processes should come in the control of doctors who are the backbone of the delivery system.
However, there are disagreements with this idea of Dr Rathore as some doctors are of opinion that Union Healthcare Commission of India cannot be met through legal means. But, the IMA, which represents the whole medical profession, must take up this issue at the political and government level, said Dr MC Gupta.