The National Board of Examinations in Medical Sciences (NBEMS) has revised its accreditation and admission process for accredited hospitals and medical institutions and launched 11 new postgraduate and fellowship programmes in various medical specialities.
According to the official notice, the revised framework focuses on enhancing transparency in postgraduate medical education, strengthening document verification during admissions, introducing new NBEMS courses, and updating the minimum accreditation criteria for institutions.
Mandatory disclosures by accredited institutions
The NBEMS has directed all accredited hospitals and medical institutions to create a dedicated "NBEMS Mandatory Disclosures" section on the homepage of their official websites. Institutions must publicly disclose details related to training infrastructure, faculty, clinical workload, bed occupancy and stipends in a prescribed format.
The information must be reviewed and updated during the first week of every quarter. The NBEMS said failure to comply, update information or displaying incorrect or misleading details could adversely affect accreditation processing, renewal and inclusion of seats in the centralised counselling matrix. Newly accredited as well as existing institutions have been asked to comply with the directive within three months and submit the direct disclosure webpage link through the Online Accreditation Application Portal.
Stricter document verification before admissions
The Board has also instructed accredited hospitals to strictly verify candidates' eligibility and original documents before allowing them to join NBEMS courses through the Online Portal for Joining and Registration (OPJR).
The NBEMS observed that some institutions had permitted candidates to join courses without proper verification of original documents and eligibility criteria. To address this, the Board has decided to impose a monetary penalty of Rs 1 lakh per candidate on hospitals found to have admitted candidates without proper verification or submitted false, fabricated, misleading or unverified documents during the admission process. Hospitals have also been advised to strictly adhere to timelines for registration and document uploading on the OPJR and Medical Counselling Committee (MCC) portals.
NBEMS launches 11 new courses
The following programmes have been introduced:
- Diploma in Nuclear Medicine
- DNB Trauma and Acute Care Surgery
- DrNB Paediatric Hemato Oncology
- DrNB Pulmonary Medicine
- DrNB Head & Neck Oncology
- FNB Paediatric Rheumatology and Clinical Immunology
- FNB Upper GI Surgery
- FNB Hepato Pancreato Biliary Surgery
- FNB Asthma, Allergy and Applied Immunology
- FNB Interventional Pulmonology
- FNB Breast Surgery
The notice specifies the eligibility criteria, course duration, faculty requirements, infrastructure norms, patient load and accreditation requirements for each newly introduced programme.
Accreditation criteria revised
NBEMS has also revised certain minimum accreditation norms. While there is no change in the clinical establishment requirement for broad speciality courses such as DNB and Post MBBS Diploma programmes, the eligibility criteria for hospitals seeking accreditation for DrNB and FNB courses have been tightened.
Under the revised norms, hospitals applying for DrNB and FNB accreditation must have at least three years of standing as a clinical establishment and should have completed a minimum of two years of clinical operations before applying for accreditation.