New Delhi: The number of undergraduate and postgraduate medical seats in the country is expected to see a cumulative increase of around 8,000 this academic year, and assessments of medical colleges are underway, National Medical Commission (NMC) chief Dr Abhijat Sheth has said.

Counselling for NEET-UG is already underway and the first round has been completed. The second round of counselling is expected to start by August 25.

There were concerns about the number of medical seats decreasing this year after the CBI busted a network of officials of the Union health ministry, NMC, intermediaries and representatives of private medical colleges allegedly involved in corruption and manipulation of the regulatory framework governing medical colleges in July.

When the CBI probe began, the NMC had put on hold the process for increasing the number of seats or starting new courses.

The agency had named 34 people in an FIR, including eight health ministry officials, a National Health Authority official and five doctors who were part of the NMC inspection team.

In an interview to PTI, Dr Sheth said, "Along with my appointment, the president of the Medical Assessment and Rating Board (MARB) also has been appointed. We have taken up completion of inspection of UG medical seats on a priority basis and the assessments are under progress."

"We expect an increase of roughly around 8,000 seats (UG and PG combined) based on the number of applications we have received this academic year," he said.

Presently, there are 1,18,098 UG seats — 59,782 in government and 58,316 in private colleges. The number of PG seats is 53,960, with 30,029 in government and 23,931 in private institutions.

On the total number of MBBS seats decreasing compared to the last academic session, Dr Sheth said, "Because of the ongoing (CBI) inquiry, the numbers of UG seats may have reduced. However, overall, the number of seats is eventually going to increase by 8,000 or even more after the completion of the total inspection process."

For PG counselling, Dr Sheth said the inspection process for medical colleges applying for new PG seats has been initiated and counselling will take place in September.

"We are confident that new seats will also be added to the PG counselling process," he said.

Asked about the National Exit Test (NExT) for final-year MBBS students, as envisaged in the NMC Act, Dr Sheth termed the exam a "novel concept" but stressed that consensus among all stakeholders has to be reached.

He said concerns of students about the exam need to be addressed before conducting it, saying its implementation "will take a while".

"NExT is a novel concept no doubt but there are many unanswered questions. We have to ensure that this model is compatible with the medical education that we are providing to our students," he told PTI.

Elaborating further, Dr Sheth said, "The main unanswered questions are — how we are going to transit from the state-level university examination to the central model. Second, we want to ensure what difficulty level we are going to set up with this examination. Third important question for us is how we will create a positive perception of this examination across stakeholders — both the faculties as well as the medical students. And in this direction we are working."

Dr Sheth said the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has worked in this direction for the last couple of years.

"However, I feel it will take a while to start the NExT exam. We need consensus amongst all stakeholders and student perspectives regarding any concerns for this examination should be addressed. Fear among students has to be allayed and their confidence level for this exam has to be created. Awareness has to be made that this examination is not going to be difficult for them but it is going to be a fair assessment for them," he said.

"Till we address all these ground-level issues and make sure that it is acceptable to all stakeholders to take this examination comfortably, to run across the country in a uniform way, it will take a little while. But we certainly support the NExT examination as a novel concept and eventually we will like to work for it," he said.

On the increase in the number of medical colleges since 2014 and concerns regarding the quality of doctors passing out from these colleges, Dr Sheth said both numbers of medical colleges and quality of medical education are equally important.

The increase in number is required to bring sustainable quality in medical education over the long term and to bring uniformity of healthcare delivery across the country, he explained.

"At the same time while increasing the number of colleges, we will have to ensure the quality of medical education doesn't get diluted," he said.

Dr Sheth said NMC has initiated strengthening the accreditation process to ensure that minimum standards in faculty requirements, infrastructure, and clinical material are met, which will help escalate the quality.

"Also, we have initiated a process of phygital model where we are encouraging our institutions to adopt a new solution beyond physical education that includes skill and virtual education to address competency-based training and digital and e-learning solutions to bring uniformity in medical training across the board," he said.

"At NMC, we strongly believe in innovation, integration and implementation. We are promoting innovative medical practices amongst our stakeholders, and NMC will be very happy to support the new innovative models to adapt into the medical education system," Dr Sheth stated.

On integration, Dr Sheth said a lot of clinical material in private and government hospitals is not utilised in the NMC programme.

"We want to tap this opportunity to integrate these institutions for the medical education purpose, to ensure that we can get better clinical resources for the aspiring medical students. And hence, the integration is very important, and this is the concept which my team would like to take forward, and we are going to stay very strong at the implementation of whatever the reforms are there," he stated.