Delhi High Court urges DMC to improve patient access to doctors’ qualifications, following complaints of inaccessible or incorrect information in hospitals.

Delhi High Court has asked the Delhi Medical Council (DMC) to make a report on patients’ access to doctors’ medical qualifications and suggest appropriate measures to improve them.
The court stated that it is important for a patient who is approached by a doctor or who approaches a doctor for medical treatment to access their qualification to confirm that they practice medicine.

Patients Struggle to Verify Doctors’ Qualifications

Many patients don’t find the medical qualifications of a doctor as hospitals do not provide the registration number of their doctors either on their website or in the hospital.

Patients have complained to DMC that the hospitals refuse or provide wrong information about the doctors’ qualifications. A public interest petition was filed in the Delhi High Court last year to verify the medical qualifications and educational certificates of all doctors practicing in Delhi.

The petition requested that it should be mandatory for the doctors to display their registration number, photo identity card, and certificates of their qualifications. It also had a formal declaration for doctors to practice a particular specialty.

Doctor Registration Issues and Duplicate Numbers

Nearly 70,000 doctors are registered with DMC. However, the registration number alone can not validate them because two doctors can have the same registration number.

There are two categories in the ‘Verification of Docotrs’ Registration’ on the DMC website. They are Fresh Registration and Re-Registration. The same number can different doctors in the two categories.

Since hospitals and nursing homes do not provide the registration numbers, it is difficult for the patients to search with the doctor’s name. In the ‘Search Your Doctor’ link on the website, a search with a doctor’s name provides a list of doctors with similar names making it difficult for the patient to access the data.

Father’s Fight for Doctor’s Details

Himanshu Singhal, father of a two-and-a-half-year-old child who died due to medical negligence was a part of the petition. He mentioned in the petition that he requested the DMC in January 2021 to provide the qualification details of the treating doctor. But the council asked him to provide detailed particulars of the doctor like his father’s name, his address, and specialty.

When he requested again in March 2021, the DMC provided him with the details of another doctor with the same name. Singhal was asked to apply again to the DMC for more information. He kept applying till March 2023 but his request was closed in April 2023 as the identities provided by Singhal could not be ascertained.

However, the DMC was able to provide the information of the doctor within two weeks after Singhal’s public interest litigation (PIL) to the Delhi High Court.

Source-Medindia