New Delhi: Delhi High Court has asked the Delhi Medical Council (DMC) to file a status report on whether patients have satisfactory means to access the medical qualifications of a doctor and to suggest measures required to enable this.
The court stated that, “it is important for respondents (DMC and NMC) to ensure that a patient who is either approached by a doctor or who approaches a doctor for medical treatment has the means to access the medical qualifications of the said doctor and to ascertain whether the said person is entitled to practise medicine”.
Many patients struggle to find the medical qualification of a doctor as hospitals do not display the registration number of the doctors they employ, either on their website or in the hospital. Patients who approached the DMC seeking help in getting details of doctors’ educational qualifications have complained that they were stonewalled or given the runaround.
A public interest petition was filed in Delhi High Court last year seeking directions to the DMC to verify the medical qualifications and educational certificates of all doctors practising in Delhi in a time bound manner and to make it mandatory for all doctors and medical establishments to prominently display compete credentials of the practitioner including registration number, photo identity card, and certificates of their recognized qualifications. Raising the issue of many doctors practising in fields they are not trained for, the petition also sought a formal declaration from doctors regarding their eligibility to practise a particular specialty.
Nearly 70,000 doctors are registered with the DMC. However, knowing just the registration number will not be enough since two doctors can have the same registration number. In the “Verification of Doctors’ Registration” on the DMC website, there are two categories called Fresh Registration and Re-Registration and the same number would give you different doctors in the two categories. The fact that most hospitals and nursing homes do not have the registration number of the doctors working there prominently displayed makes it difficult for patients to look for details. In the “Search Your Doctor” link on the website, a search returns so many doctors with similar names that it is impossible to know which might be the one you are searching for.
Himanshu Singhal, father of a two-and-a-half year old child who died due to alleged medical negligence, impleaded to be part of the petition. He pointed out in his application that when he had asked DMC in January 2021 for the registration details and qualifications of the treating doctors, the council asked him to provide “better particulars” of one of the doctors such as “father’s name, his address, his specialty”. He again requested in March 2021 and suggested that the council ask the hospital for further details of the doctor. DMC provided details of another doctor with the same name, forcing Singhal to apply again to DMC for the information. This went on till March 2023 when the council said that from the records provided by Singhal the identity of the doctor could not be ascertained. It closed his request in April 2023.
However, after he was impleaded in the PIL, the DMC’s reply in court in April 2024 revealed that the council wrote to the concerned hospital in February 2024, to which the hospital responded after two weeks and gave the council the registration and qualification details of the doctor. Thus, after claiming inability to get the registration and qualification of the doctor for over three years, the DMC was able to get the information within weeks.
Yet another patient’s son who was impleaded in the petition, Jatin Sharma, pointed out in his application that on his complaint regarding alleged negligence of a hospital, the DMC kept issuing notices asking him to provide all the treatment records, instead of asking the hospital to submit them. The DMC closed the matter citing “absence of aforementioned documents” even though it is empowered to direct the hospital to submit the documents.
