CHANDIGARH: Premier medical institute PGI will start an MBBS course with an initial intake of 100 students soon. Union minister of health and family welfare Mansukh Mandaviya on Friday approved the proposal after he had recently discussed the matter with institute director Prof Vivek Lal in a meeting in New Delhi.
It shall be the first time in PGI, which has been teaching postgraduate courses, that an undergraduate programme will be started on the lines of AIIMS. "MBBS course at PGI has been the vision of most of the directors. But it was never taken ahead. This decision is a game changer for the institute," said an official in the health ministry.
Prof Lal had planned to start the MBBS course as soon as he took charge last month. The city has only 92 seats for MBBS in general category. Preference is given to residents of city that has over lakhs of applicants for the course. "With this decision, there will be another medical college in the city that has been relying on GMCH only for the intake of MBBS students," said a faculty member at PGI. He said, "This will overcome the limitation of shortage of doctors in the institute."
Also, the standing finance committee has agreed in-principle to start the hospital information system II at PGI. Under this, the hospital will be digitalised and enable all payments and prevent queuing up for OPD cards.
"This patient-friendly facility was also stuck in the files for a few years. With this, the admitted patients need not to queue up for payment of fee/investigations/test. They will be issued a card which will be used at the end of tests at the time of payment. This will also facilitate timely discharge," said a senior official in the PGI administration. He said, "PGI will also start the facility for the OPD patients."
