Context: In a significant step towards affordable medical education, the National Medical Commission (NMC) has notified its first major regulation.
About 

• Titled as “Minimum Requirements For Annual MBBS Admissions Regulations (2020) under which it replaces the “Minimum Standard Requirements for Medical Colleges, 1999 of the erstwhile Medical Council of India (MCI).
• The new Regulation shall be applicable to all new medical colleges proposing to be established, and to the established medical colleges proposing to increase their annual MBBS intake from the academic year 2021-22.

Key highlights of the new Regulation

• The new Regulation has deleted the quantum of land required for setting up a medical college and its affiliated teaching hospitals.
• A well-equipped “Skills Laboratory” for training students is essential now.
• It also defines a Medical Education Unit for training medical teachers in educational pedagogy.
• The space required for Library and the number of books and journals have been rationalized and reduced.
• Student counselling services has been mandated recognizing the increasing stress observed amongst medical students and residents in recent times.
• The new regulation now mandates the availability of a fully functional 300 bed multi-speciality hospital for at least 2 years at the time of application for establishing a new medical college (the earlier regulations did not specify the period of functionality).
• Over and above the minimum prescribed faculty, provision for “visiting faculty” has been made to enhance quality of training.
• Two new teaching departments have now become mandatory in all medical college hospitals for the training of undergraduate medical students. These include the Department of Emergency Medicine and the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation.

About the National Medical Commission:

• The Centre has recently notified the 33-member NMC, which will be chaired for three years by Suresh Chandra Sharma.
• Apart from the Chairman, the NMC will consist of 10 ex-officio members and 22 part-time members appointed by the Central government.

Functions of NMC

• laying down policies for regulating medical institutions and medical professionals.
• assessing the requirements of human resources and infrastructure in healthcare.
• ensuring compliance by the State Medical Councils with the regulations made under the Bill.
• framing guidelines for determination of fee for up to 50% of the seats in the private medical institutions.