Cost Analysis of Medical Specialty Training Programme in Sri Lanka

The lack of medical specialists in many fields is one of the major problems faced by the health sector in Sri Lanka over last few decades leading to inefficiency in health services. Successive governments have taken several steps to improve efficiency and effectiveness of the health services. Government spends substantial amounts of funds, including much scare foreign exchange in the country to train medical postgraduates. However, this important problem has not yet been resolved to a satisfactory level due to many crosscutting issues in the postgraduate medical education and in the health sector. This study objective is to analyze the programme cost of the postgraduate medical specialty training in Sri Lanka. Total programme cost and the Programme cost for Medical Microbiology training (as an example of postgraduate training) were analyzed. The study found that the largest potion (more than 50%) was utilized for the overseas training when compared with other stages in the training programme. This should be an area for further policy development to be strongly be considered by the management of the PGIM, as well as by the Ministry of Healthcare & Nutrition.