Healthcare in India

The days of doctors’ prescriptions being parallel lines of illegible scrawls punctuated by the odd circle to indicate dosage, may soon be a thing of the past.

The executive committee of the Medical Council of India has decided that doctors should only write prescriptions in capital letters.

If the prescription also includes other remarks such as dietary advice or recommended tests, then at least the drug names and dosages should be written clearly in capitals, the committee has ruled.

Letters to this effect will soon be sent to all medical colleges, MCI chairperson Dr Jayshreeben Mehta told The Indian Express Monday.

“The executive committee has just passed this proposal. The committee unanimously felt that drug names and dosages are at times not clearly written in prescriptions causing a lot of confusion among both chemists and patients. That is why we have decided that all prescriptions should be in capital letters. Once the order comes out, it will be sent to all medical colleges,” Mehta said.

Committee members, sources said, made a strong pitch for all-caps prescriptions on the ground that misreading even a single letter can alter the name of a drug dramatically and lead to disastrous consequences for the patient. 

Doctors have welcomed the move but health ministry sources said they had no information about the decision.

more at http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/mci-tells-doctors-use-block-letters-when-you-write-prescriptions/

R Srinivasan’s credible government document on healthcare in India titled ‘Health Care in India – Vision 2020’ draft published in 2004, sub-titled ‘Issues and Prospects’, has suggested four criteria that make a just healthcare system 

1. Universal access, access to an adequate level, and access without excessive burden.

2. Fair distribution of financial costs for access and fair distribution of burden in rationing care and capacity and a 
constant search for improvement to a more just system.

3. Training providers for competence empathy and accountability, pursuit of quality care and cost effective use of the results of relevant research.

4. Special attention to vulnerable groups such as children, women, the disabled and the aged.
 
Srinivasan's  draft is dated; but the criteria are relevant even today as India’s healthcare system remains in a very sordid state.

A recent study by IMS Institute of Health Informatics (19 July, 2013) has revealed that 72 percent of the rural Indian population has access to just one-third of the country’s available hospital beds while 28 percent of urban Indians have access to 66 percent of the total beds. The study also notes that those living in remote pockets have to travel more than five kilometres to access an in-patient facility, 63 percent of the time.