By and large, medical education in India has been a closed profession. Out of millions who aspire to get an MBBS/BDS seat in a prestigious medical school, only few end up being in one of the 800 odd MBBS/BDS colleges that we have in the country. The competition becomes stiffer when it comes to obtaining a postgraduate seat in ones preferred area of medical specialisation. Even after the recent addition, the postgraduate seats remain around 30% of the total number of MBBS/BDS seats.
Despite this constraint, medical graduates have somehow been reluctant to venture into new occupational terrains. This contrasts sharply with engineering graduates who have historically dominated the management education. One may argue that medical profession is such a niche area that movement across disciplines becomes unproductive and a waste of acquired specialised training. However, the engineering graduates have demonstrated the complementarity of technical and management education by excelling in their chosen profession.
Healthcare sector is at the cusp of multipronged changes. The way medical education is presently organized falls short of addressing the new opportunities and challenges. Gone are the days when one merely looked for a kind-hearted family physician or an expert medical consultant. The recent times have witnessed major corporatization of the delivery of medical services especially in the tertiary sector. Not only are these corporate chains big in scale, but also fundamentally different in their organizing philosophy. They take pride in the efficiency and standard of their services and customer orientation like any other business.
The global benchmarking of operations combined with the competitive edge that India provides for medical tourism has further opened up possibilities in the healthcare sector. The concomitant growth of allied enterprises such as pharmaceutical, medical equipment, insurance, medical consulting does necessitate new type of skillsets outside the traditional domains of medical colleges.
Cumulatively, these changes portend the need for growing alignment of specialized medical training with management education. Managerial training will surely bring in skills that are bound to augment healthcare professionals capabilities given their intimate involvement with people besides equipping them with entrepreneurial insights. Viewed thus, it is likely that management institutions will see customised healthcare management programmes to accommodate the specific needs of medical professionals.