NEW DELHI: The government will not compromise the interest of patients while handing over district government hospitals to private medical colleges through public-private partnership mode, health minister Harsh Vardhan said in the Rajya Sabha on Tuesday.Such experiments have successfully been implemented in the last 25 years and even government think-tank Niti Aayog has taken note of this and come out with draft guidelines, he said during the Question Hour . The minister asserted that the step is permitted under Sector 2(5) of the Medical Council of India ( MCI ) Act 1999 and made it clear that it is not being done to promote the private sector. Responding to a supplementary query, Vardhansaid: “We will offer district hospitals to the private sector without compromising the interest of patients.”“A private sector can have medical colleges but cannot have hospitals with patients. The government has many district hospitals with patients. The private sector has money to run the hospitals,” he said. He also disagreed with CPI MP’s view that the entry of private sector in medical education was eroding its quality.