Medical council seeks to regulate diagnostic labs

MCI has also issued an advisory to all other state medical council asking them to keep a stringent check on diagnostic centres

The Medical Council of India (MCI) has sought the Delhi government’s intervention to keep a stringent check on diagnostic centres in the national capital and penalise those promoting unethical practices. The council has written to the chief secretary and top health officials to take “appropriate action” under the applicable laws against erring diagnostic laboratories.

MCI has also issued an advisory to all medical councils, asking them to monitor diagnostic centres and take immediate action whenever there is a complaint for unethical practices such as accepting commissions or referrals for diagnostic tests.

The council has written to the Delhi government to enforce necessary legal provisions for registration of private diagnostic centres in the capital and put in place mechanisms to monitor and prosecute any unethical practices among doctors in prescribing diagnostic tests.

The move comes in the wake of Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan ordering an inquiry into the issue following a sting by a television channel exposing around nine leading diagnostic chains in an alleged nexus with doctors for prescribing tests.

The matter was reviewed by MCI’s ethics committee in an emergency meeting convened last week.

Currently, the law allows MCI to take action only against medical practitioners violating the law. However, there is no specific law regulating the $5-billion diagnostic industry.

Though Parliament passed the Clinical Establishment Act in 2011 to bring into its purview the diagnostic industry, the law is yet to be implemented in spirit. Moreover, it is left to individual states to implement the Act.

While some big players in the market depend on voluntary accreditation from organisations like the National Accreditation Board for Testing and Calibration Laboratories and the College of American Pathologists, the smaller ones operate more like mom-and-pop shops in the absence of any binding regulatory norms. Estimates show a mere one per cent of the total diagnostic laboratories are accredited.

According to the minutes of the latest meeting of the MCI’s ethics committee, officials from Delhi government’s health department were called by the committee. The government officials told the committee that since there was no legal provision in Delhi for registration of diagnostic centres, they could not take any action against these.

Estimates show there are at least 100,000 diagnostic laboratories across the country.

Of these, 70 per cent offer pathology services and the rest provide radiology and imaging such as MRI, CT scan X-ray and ultrasound. Though corporate players such as Dr Lal Pathlabs,

SRL Diagnostics and Quest Laboratories are gaining market share, the sector is largely fragmented, with 88-90 per cent of the market dominated by unorganised players.