Owing to the debate in the U.S. about impending
healthcare reforms along with a realization that the Medical
Transcription industry did not crumble under the severe
recessionary trend, there are a lot of companies intending
to venture into this area and also take up other activities
in healthcare outsourcing services. As most of the services
are knowledge based, Medical Transcription, Clinical research
etc…there are ample amount of manpower in India who can
gain expertise in short time frame and deliver results as
per international standards. Most of the Medical Transcription
companies are now equally competent when it comes to providing
quality services to hospital, clinics and group physicians.
Cost benefits, qualified personnel have improved the outsourcing
scenario in areas like medical transcription, billing, coding,
and data management.
Opportunity: U.S. Healthcare Policy Changes: The healthcare
expenditure in the United States is expected approximately
USD$2.5 trillion in 2009. President Barack Obama is leading
an restructuring of U.S. healthcare system to provide the
best possible medical care to all its citizens. Hospitals,
health centers in following this mandate will require help
to cope with core responsibilities and cut costs wherever
possible. This would lead to an increased use of third party
providers especially for all non-core functions like Medical
Transcription, billing, coding and data management. The
Indian outsourcing companies are ready to make the most
of this opportunity despite a strong sentiment against outsourcing
gaining momentum in United States. Still the benefits are
difficult to ignore and it will be unrealistic to stop outsourcing
completely.
Medical Transcription had an initial boom and bust period
during 1990s, most of the existing Medical Transcription
companies are now aware of healthcare information security,
quality of content and turn around time and are meeting
the standards of the medical transcription industry efficiently.
Now a lot of competition is expected when new players will
take the plunge. Existing medium sized and large players
(1000 staff and above) who are into medical transcription
have adopted various successful expansion models like home-based
medical transcription, subletting work to small companies
and groups, continuing with in-house medical transcription
training and using online web for training, marketing and
recruitment.
However, Greater The Opportunity, Higher The Risk. Data
security is still a challenge, which the industry has to
meet successfully, though Indian IP laws are better than
any other outsourcing destinations. Most of the Indian companies
have started taking a note of security issues and are incorporating
security related processes and systems at all levels of
the organization. Another issue is trained manpower in medical
transcription industry, which has been a question mark since
the industry started consolidating in early 2000.
Until and unless improvement in education structure is seen,
many states in India will not be able to capitalize on the
medical transcription opportunity as poor level of understanding
English is a deterrent to take up career as a medical transcriptionist.
Also, infrastructure in terms of power and Internet availability
is still an issue. Involvement of Government is essential
and critical as the Medical Transcription Industry strives
to measure up to the standards needed to grow to partnering
overseas companies.
A lot more is to be done, but despite all the challenges,
Medical Transcription industry has shown continuous growth
and will grow steadily and companies will find out new ways
and means of growing and coping with external and internal
challenges.
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