Indian BPOs eyeing US healthcare sector

HT.com ^ | September 17, 2005 | The Press Trust of India

[CarrotAndStick]

Indian business process outsourcing companies involved in healthcare are increasingly eyeing a niche business in the US healthcare sector.

The healthcare sector in the US is undergoing a sea change due to the need for compliance to the Health Insurance Profitability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), which might result in off-shoring a good quantum to other countries like India, according to analysts.

"The verticals such as healthcare administration, medical management and imaging are in high demand in the US and India can make this a niche BPO area," a top functionary of Atlanta-based STI Knowledge told PTI.

As of now outsourcing to Indian companies can offer cost saving to the tune of 20-30 per cent. "For every healthcare dollar spent, 21 cents go to administration. The average margins for publicly traded healthcare firms are under pressure," he adds.

Apart from administration and paper work, imageology also offers business promises to India, say analysts. As per the HIPAA verticals like electronic transactions and electronic claims attachment frameworks are being revamped and offer immense business opportunity to India BPOs.

Apart from administration and paper work, imageology also offers business promises to India, they say.

[kalee]

Am I reading this correctly? They want to outsource the decision making about my medical care to India, for goodness sake, those people can't even help me fix my computer and
now I'm supposed to trust them with my healthcare, I don't think so! My doctor and I will decide, she knows me and I trust her.

[mylife]

"For every healthcare dollar spent, 21 cents go to administration.

Actually Im suprised the amount is that low

[voletti]

"Decision making about medical care" will never go out of the doctor's hands, such as things are.

What can be outsourced are routine admin functions like payroll processing (of hospital staff), Insurance claims processing, taxation law compliance audits etc which frankly don't concern either patients or doctors directly in their interactions.

Honestly, for the $$ Americans spend on healthcare, I doubt they're receiving every penny's worth. US prosperity is based on productivity and squeezing out evermore from every dollar. This could be 1 step in the right direction in making healthcare more affordable to ordinary folk. The 'real' reforms in healthcare of course would be allowing more market forces to play - competition, caps on malpractice suits, pharma patent regime revamping, eliminating supply bottlenecks in the "assembely" of doctors and nurses etc.

[proxy_user]

As I read the article, that want to oursource filling out claim forms to India.

Although in fact Indian doctors can be very good, and charge a fraction of the price of doctors in the US. Some Europeans are travelling there for inexpensive treatment.

[mylife]

No, No... silly customer I am sorry to be denying your benefits.

[ClaireSolt]

on cspan this morning: medical tourism to India. Expensive surgery by American trained surgeons at 15% of our price with a trip to the Taj Mahal thrown in. Also, British blood samples sent to India for analysis and reported by internet.

Actually, I am for putting Indians to work so they have enough money to buy stuff from us.

[Smarti Pants]

Sorry, friend, it's already happening.

Some of the major insurance companies already have the majority of their workers off-shore. We hang up on them if/when we find out they aren't American and keep doing so until we reach someone in the USA.

[Smarti Pants]

It's great to put people to work. The problem with outsourcing our medical information to places outside of the USA is that while I bust my tushie to comply with the laws that will put me in jail if I don't do the right thing, those people can do whatever they want, whenever they want & the worst thing that will happen to them is they mightlose a client.

In India, a transcriptionist wasn't paid for their work by a person who contracted their services, and so the transcriptionist person emailed the doctor & demanded money.

The doctor didn't know this transcriptionist, because she had hired another entity to do the work and had paid them already, but that entity contracted off-shore without the physician's knowledge.

Evenutally, the transcriptionist threatened to print all medical details about all of the patients on the internet unless the doctor paid up.

The doctor paid because those people will not be procecuted thanks to the fact that they are out of the USA.

That being said, do YOU want YOUR medical history spread out all over who-knows where?? Can't do a thing about it.

[StolarStorm]

India has one of the highest tariffs in the world. They don't buy from us, except a few jets and some military equipment. They don't believe in free trade even though they take advantage of us.

[Smarti Pants]

Sorry, that was Pakistani (cousins, maybe) And lest you or anyone else think I'm making it up:

Advance Web Magazine has an article from October 22, 2004:

On Oct. 22, the San Francisco Chronicle released a headline that read, “A Tough Lesson on Medical Privacy: Pakistani Transcriber Threatens UCSF Over Pay Back.”

The article, written by Columnist David Lazarus, covered a Pakistani medical transcriptionist’s threat to post the University of California-San Francisco Medical Center (UCSF) patient medical records online unless she received money supposedly owed to her.

Now, if I did something like that here in the USA, I would be fired and maybe fined or jailed.

They're protected from USA laws because they aren't here in the USA.

Here's the direct link to the actual article from David Lazarus, mentioned in the article from San Francisco Chronicle: SFGate.com

[razoroccam]

One of my pharmaceutical customers just gave me a million dollar conract - so that I can have clinical trial films read in India. It was 25% of the price it would have costed in US.................

[ClaireSolt]

Somehow I suspect that this nexus is going to make us wring the fat and excess out of our economy and, in the end, prices will meet in the middle, somewhere, to the benefit of all.

[ClaireSolt]

That is probably due to the legacy of British colonia;lism and Ghandi's teachings on making their own salt and cloth. It will change.

[1rudeboy]

The doctor paid because those people will not be procecuted thanks to the fact that they are out of the USA.

A lot of doctors think that they are smarter than lawyers. While that may be true, a lawyer would have sued the company he contracted to do the work. No different than if the extortionist was located here in the U.S.

[StolarStorm]

It would be wonderful news if they would change. Until they do though, we should slap equivalent tariffs on their goods and services. As things stand now they must think we are complete suckers.

[ClaireSolt]

Nope. We do not need trade wars. especially when their GDP/capita is $3,000/an and ours is $43,000.