Maharashtra Medical Council gets a new administrator

The gazette notification said while it will take some time to conduct MMC elections, the government has decided to appoint Dr Rughwani, former vice president of MMC as the new administrator to exercise all the powers and perform all the duties of the Council for the next one year or till the time MMC elections are held

Mumbai: The Maharashtra Medical Council (MMC), a quasi-judicial body that oversees the medical fraternity in the state, got a new administrator after the state medical education and drugs department issued a gazette notification announcing the appointment of Dr Vinky Rughwani.

Maharashtra Medical Council gets a new administrator

The 18-member committee of MMC was dissolved after its term expired on August 7, 2022, after which Dr Pallvi Saple, dean of Sir JJ Group of Hospitals was appointed as an administrator for a period of one year.

After Dr Saple’s term expired on October 9, 2023, the additional charge was given to Dr Dilip Mhaisekar, the director, Directorate of Medical Education and Research (DMER).

The gazette notification said while it will take some time to conduct MMC elections, the government has decided to appoint Dr Rughwani, former vice president of MMC as the new administrator to exercise all the powers and perform all the duties of the Council for the next one year or till the time MMC elections are held.

Dr Rughwani said that his focus will be to provide fast-track registration services as an MMC administrator. “Medical negligence cases will be decided in a time-bound manner in the near future. Will implement the “know your doctor” concept as a bogus doctor is a major challenge,” he said. He further said that an online continuous professional development platform will be strengthened to give the latest knowledge update training to doctors so that time doctors will be saved.

Indian Medical Association (IMA), which has approached the Bombay High Court, said the absence of the MMC committee has led to delays in the day-to-day MMC work like registration of doctors, holding hearings on medical negligence, giving permission to Continuing Medical Education (CME) are getting delayed.

At present, the MMC has close to 500 pending medical negligence cases waiting for the hearing. MMC has 1.8 lakh registered doctors and sees 9,000 new registrations annually.