NEW DELHI:
The Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI) has directed life insurance companies in the country to only accept laboratory test reports signed by a medical practitioner with a postgraduate qualification in pathology following a recent Supreme Court ruling. The insurance regulator’s move comes amid concerns raised by medical practitioners and hospitals’ association about shortage of qualified personnel to sign lab reports.
With the IRDAI order, medical lab reports reviewed and signed by MD degree holders in microbiology or biochemistry and MSc or PhD holders in microbiology and biochemistry, won’t be acceptable to health insurers. Despite the top court verdict, many medical laboratory technology diploma holders (DMLT) in the country have been performing tests and signing reports on their own without appointing pathologists. Patients who obtain reports from such labs won’t get insurance cover.
The authority to issue a lab test report became a hot topic when the Medical Council of India (MCI) issued an order last year stating that only postgraduates in pathology could put a final signature on a test report. A pathologists’ association in Gujarat challenged the order in the top court, which upheld the MCI decision.
According to hospital associations, which have been prompting the health ministry to look into the issue, the court ruling will have far-reaching consequences as there are three lakh medical testing laboratories and only around 5,500 qualified MD pathologists in the country at present.
In its letter dated October 10 to heads of all life insurance companies, IRDAI cites the Supreme Court ruling and instructs officials concerned to take necessary action.
“The insurance regulator must have followed the Supreme Court ruling. But the fact remains that we have a massive shortage of pathologists. At the end of the day, it will be the patients who suffer,” Director General with the Association of Healthcare Providers in India (AHPI) Girdhar Gyani said.
“It is a fact that the number of authorised signatories available to the labs has come down dramatically as we have a serious shortage of qualified doctors,” says Dr Govind Tripathi, Madhya Pradesh state secretary of the All India Medical Laboratory Technologists Association.
According to healthcare industry experts, those who have masters or PhD in Biochemistry and microbiology are competent enough to countersign medical reports. Besides, overworked pathologists may start lending digital signatures to hundreds of test reports which could hamper authenticity, they say.
Such fears about malpractice are substantiated. The Maharashtra Medical Council has recently suspended the licence of a Navi Mumbai-based pathologist for allegedly signing reports for more than 200 pathological laboratories across the state without personal supervision. The pathologist is accused of lending his digital signatures to multiple laboratories without even visiting them. The reports were signed by technicians while patients thought an MD pathologist was signing them.
