On April 15, 2010, TMI Network, a recruitment company in Hyderabad, received a call from a US staffing agency seeking to hire nurses and paramedics in large numbers. It is still early days, but to T. Sreedhar, Managing Director, TMI Network, the call indicates a dawn of a new opportunity, thanks largely to the recent health care reform bill passed by the US Congress.
On March 23, President Barack Obama signed the 2,400-page piece of legislation into law that brings in sweeping changes in the health care system.
However, Sreedhar could not take the US agency's requirement forward. That's because the requisite talent is virtually non-existent. "This is a highly technical area where nurses need to be trained, have experience in IT use and undergo tests in English and certain technical areas," says Sreedhar.
The TMI MD expects a pick-up in demand for talent from all the health care and insurance business process outsourcing (BPO) firms, which are likely to get more business as the legislation will bring 32 million more Americans under insurance cover.
Though it is premature to estimate the number of jobs likely to be created in India, what is clear is the direction.
"We see a lot of opportunities because of the health care reforms, as there is going to be a greater consumption of health care services overall and that means more work for hospitals and insurance companies," says Ananda Mukerji, MD and CEO, Firstsource Solutions, a leading global provider of BPO services.
Firstsource gets close to 39 per cent of its revenues from health care in the US and this is largely from revenue cycle management, claims processing and patient enrolments. A significant part of its services is connected to the US Medicaid programme (which apparently will now increase).
The US government is expected to spend anything between $15 billion and $20 billion on health care technology services alone. A lot of this business is likely to be awarded to BPO firms and some of that will head either directly or indirectly to India.
The opportunity is long term, says Mukerji. "The move will translate into a big opportunity in 2013-2014," he says. At the moment, he adds, his company (apparently like many others) is busy in dialogue with its clients trying to evaluate the nature of service offering and competencies that would be needed to service demand.
One such area, for instance, could be compliance with the Act, which means hospitals will need to measure the outcomes of what they do and their impact on the patient's health and get paid accordingly. In contrast, today the reimbursements are largely based on what has already been done. This change will mean added business for service providers as hospitals will need to have more outreach programmes for patients, look at after-care and focus on data gathering.
Sreedhar sees another fallout: "To ensure data privacy, we will see more captive units in India, which will, over the next three years or so, build capacities, leverage it, transfer it to third parties and move on."
Reproduced From Business Today. © 2010. LMIL. All rights reserved.
Source:http://in.news.yahoo.com
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