Over 80K docs to be issued ID cards

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Inder Malhotra [1]

In a new initiative, the Maharashtra Medical Council (MMC) has decided to issue identification (ID) cards to all its registered members, to help both patients and authorities.
The initiative will help patients verify a doctor’s credentials by requesting for his/her ID card. The MMC plans to issue identity cards to around 80,000 doctors registered with the council.
Apart from basic details of the doctor and his/her photograph, the identity card will bear his/her degrees and qualifications. “The doctor may claim to have some five degrees, but the card will reflect only those, which are from a recognised university,” said a senior MMC official.
Currently, the only way to ensure that a doctor is not a quack is to rely on the certificates that he hangs in his clinic. “There are doctors who have multiple certificates in their clinic, but patients rarely understand that all these certificates don’t translate into degrees. For instance, many doctors claim to be diabetologists, but they may not have any educational qualification in the field to back the claim. Such discrepancies can easily be exposed,” added the official.
Post MBBS, a candidate has to register with the MMC, only after which he is allowed to start practising medicine in the state. The identity card will also mention the validity of the licence of the doctor to practice medicine.
Dr Kishore Taori, president of MMC said, “We have put up information of all the doctors registered with the council on our website. So, patients can check if the doctor’s licence is valid or if he/she has been suspended.”