The Case of State Licensing in India: Empowering or Restricting Healthcare Professionals? PART 2

Contents

• Regulatory Landscape: Navigating India's Healthcare Licensing Regulations

• Common Challenges: Addressing Issues Faced During the Healthcare Licensing Process in India

• State-Specific Licenses

• The Hurdles of State-to-State Transition

• The Digital Health Dilemma

• Overcoming Obstacles

• Legal and Regulatory Challenges

• Technological Infrastructure

• A Vision for the Future

• Policy Recommendations

• Collaborative Initiatives

• Anastomos Suggests: Strategies for Streamlining State-Specific Healthcare Licensing Procedures

Regulatory Landscape: Navigating India's Healthcare Licensing Regulations

The intricate web of healthcare licensing in India involves an assortment of governing bodies, councils, and institutions—each with its own specified role and members. This often complicates the practice protocols for healthcare workers. While the fundamentals of the hierarchy are strong and established, they are becoming obsolete today, causing more hurdles than roadmaps.

Incorporating effective healthcare licensing processes can ensure smooth practice, better patient outcomes, global communication, and cooperation, allowing India to benefit from best practices around the world. With a fair idea of the present healthcare landscape, especially medical license requirements in Part 1 of this article, let us take this journey one step ahead.

Challenges in the Indian Licensing System in Healthcare

In India's expansive healthcare landscape, a hierarchical regulatory structure has been crucial for centuries. However, in our globalized era, it's imperative to modernize practices like state-wise licensing and physical record-keeping for a more streamlined and efficient system.

• State-Specific Licenses

Each state has its own Medical Council, which governs medical practitioner registration and licensing. This system was designed to minutely manage practitioners and healthcare organizations. Keeping the benefits aside, the system needs a facelift today because doctors licensed in one state are often forbidden to practice in another without re-registration. Modernizing this crucial aspect can boost a uniform national medical licensure system to allow healthcare mobility while still adhering to local norms and practices.

To learn more about state-specific licensing in Indian healthcare, click here:

“The Case of State Licensing in India: Empowering or Restricting Healthcare Professionals? PART 1”

• The Hurdles of State-to-State Transition

If we were to adhere to state-to-state transitions, the scenario would remain unfriendly. These include disparities in registration processes, eligibility criteria, and, in many cases, a lack of reciprocity between state medical councils. This results in delays in switching medical practices. In this context, upscaling would imply creating a more streamlined and uniform process for practitioners to migrate from one state to another, allowing faster access to healthcare services.

• The Digital Health Dilemma

Digital health services could significantly improve access to healthcare, particularly in rural and underserved areas. Although the 2020 Telemedicine Practice Guidelines were a significant step, not all states had yet adopted them. Regulation, fair access, and data privacy are still issues. Modernization initiatives should prioritize maintaining data security, expanding telemedicine services, and consistently implementing digital health policies to effectively reach excluded areas.

Overcoming Obstacles in Healthcare Licensing in India

There is no golden ‘standard prototype’ for medical education or medical license requirements. Examining a combination of legislative rules, regulations, and digitization can help identify potential loopholes and devise innovative solutions to contextual challenges.

Here are a few ideas that may offer a solution:

• Legal and Regulatory Challenges

Consolidated regulatory laws are easier to understand. A unified healthcare registration/licensing body with state-wise branches exclusively for customer support will reduce redundant applications, payments, and overlapped jurisdictions and encourage doctors to practice without the legal burden.

• Technological Infrastructure

A centralized online platform for a secure and user-friendly system for documentation, verification, and processing of applications in healthcare licensing will allow healthcare professionals to submit and track their legal procedures electronically.

The Indian government has already begun the journey; the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM) has established a Healthcare Professionals Registry (HPR) that collects information about healthcare practitioners and assigns them a unique Healthcare Professional ID (HPID). This ID offers benefits like online visibility, record access, streamlined regulatory tasks, etc. However, it does not address the issues of repeated paperwork, multiple NOCs, or the need to transfer the medical registration when changing practices.

The following challenges remain:

• Lack of a streamlined digital process for NOCs and registrations

• The requirement to re-register in a different state limits the freedom of inter-state clinical practice.

• Repeated registrations require time, money, and paperwork.

• The inability of healthcare professionals, particularly specialists, to hold multiple state licenses (except in exceptional circumstances) prevents them from treating complex cases across the country.

What we need is a portal that will create a roadmap for every healthcare professional's journey, from pre-university to licensing and fellowships, all under one roof. Removing paperwork and long lines at registration offices can save time, money, and hassles, allowing them to focus on patient care.

This also ensures strict data governance and encryption standards to protect personal and medical information. Governmental initiatives to invest in cybersecurity can be a game changer in protecting all healthcare workers' personal medical information across platforms.  

• A Vision for the Future

A unified hub for healthcare licensing can monitor renewals, updates, and the professional competence of healthcare workers very closely. Let us explain how:

• The credit points earned through CMEs, CDEs, etc. can be evaluated strictly. By enrolling in a pan-India portal of these gatherings, taking surveys, and responding to quick feedback forms, there will be less physical absenteeism in seminars/webinars/conferences and more professional value.

• Policy Recommendations

Official recommendations regarding legislative changes need to prioritize evidence-based medical education, the registration process, and practice regulations.

Policies involving investments in IT infrastructure, healthcare staff training, the development of user-friendly digital interfaces, and collaborating with technology experts in the design, release, and support of a cutting-edge digital licensing system are mandatory to materialize such policies.

• Collaborative Initiatives

Collaborative efforts for public and private healthcare institutions to leverage resources, knowledge, and expertise in licensing and accreditation can go a long way.

Initiating joint committees to delegate work to professionals from different areas will help standardize licensing requirements and procedures.

Anastomos Suggests: Strategies for Streamlining State-Specific Healthcare Licensing Procedures

Anastomos, as an online platform, offers more than career guidance in healthcare, and we offer a stage for you to share your thoughts on the global healthcare fraternity. Evaluating the full continuum, from healthcare courses to registration/licensing in healthcare, valuable feedback from the practitioners themselves counts. Whether you are a fresh graduate or a veteran, feel free to contact Anstomos for inquiries. We also welcome members to actively contribute to our newsfeed, videos, and on-and-around section—we take your voices to the masses.