It was vey informative.

• Healthcare - Today's Oprah - fastingers
  • It was vey informative. - winnie
    • Fouled that one up!! - winnie

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All you MTs who are wondering why it's so hard to get work and decent pay check out these websites:   Spheris India Pvt Ltd  and Indiadaily.com

Spheris says it doesn't outsource to India but guess where a lot of the old accounts have disappeared to.  When they say there is no work, they mean for USA MTs.

It seems that now getting your own accounts is the only way to go (at least for the time being until the pervasive mood of the industry corrupts even in that area).  My curiosity though lies in how those who are claiming that they work for services are able to do this. 

Also, congratulations to you for your success in getting your own accounts, and thank you for sharing your insight in a manner that doesn't imply that you're trying to belittle those who don't have their own accounts like I've seen others do on this board.

P.S.  On the matter of panhandlers, in the area of the country where I live an investigative reporter did a feature on just this subject a couple of years ago.  Believe it or not, it was estimated that panhandlers in this area average approximately $120K per year.  I tell you, I'm in the wrong profession ...

Here is an important post from 2005.  It is lengthy and I have edited it to make it more concise…

Posted By: n on January 05, 2005 at 21:35:45:

In Reply to: offshore posted by beth on January 05, 2005 at 19:58:08:

Offshore medical transcription is a large enterprise financed with capital. The Soros money is in the Spheris deals. Look for more and more to go overseas.

From GeBBS Health Care Solutions http://www.gebbs.com/pressrelease062004.htm  : In a world of steadily rising medical costs, Nitin Thakor thinks he has a cure. It works like this: A doctor treats a patient and sends the medical record to Thakor's company, GeBBS HealthCare Solutions of Englewood Cliffs. The company ships the records electronically to India, where employees - earning about one-tenth of what they would get in the United States - process a bill for the patient's treatment, create a claim, and send it electronically to the insurance company. The process costs the doctor about half what he would pay in the United States, Thakor says. "It's faster. The quality is better," he says, brimming with confidence. "It makes perfect sense." It's also part of a growing trend in the health-care administration industry: sending work to low-wage countries - mainly India - in the same way that offshore outsourcing has sent U.S.-based IT, call center, and other jobs around the world.

The health-care work ranges from simple tasks - such as transcribing notes dictated by the doctor - to more complex processes, such as assigning a treatment code and filling in forms that doctors submit to insurance companies for reimbursement. In North Jersey, GeBBS, Allserve Systems of New Brunswick, and ClaimPower Inc. of Fair Lawn do work in India. Marlton-based Medquist, one of the largest transcription company's in the United States, also sends work offshore. Other players across the country include Perot Systems Corp. in Texas, HealthScribe Inc. of Virginia, and Alpha Thought of Chicago. "There is not a lot of offshoring yet," said Barbara J. Cobuzzi, president of Cash Flow Solutions Inc. of Brick, which does billing, coding, and collection. "But they [offshore companies] are going after it. ... They are approaching companies like mine and saying, 'Get rid of your staff and use us.

Cobuzzi said she spoke from experience: In October, she terminated a contract with a Florida-based company with offices in Chennai, India, to put patient demographic information into a computer. She said the work contained too many errors. "I'm sure the doctors would rather use someone who is not offshoring," Cobuzzi said. "But the doctors have this huge pressure to get their costs down." So, too, do their contractors, said Marilyn Grebin, president and CEO of Silent Type in Fort Lee, which transcribes doctors' notes. Though offshoring has not yet had a big effect on Silent Type's bottom line, the company has lost work, Grebin said. For instance, last week, she said, she lost a $50,000 contract with the John T. Mather Hospital on Long Island. Grebin said the hospital, which had been her company's client for five years, hired a company that will do the job in India. "I went to the client and said, 'What can I possibly do to help you, she said. "And they said, 'No, you can't possibly charge what we are getting - half the price.

On Long Island, hospital vice-president Kevin Murray said the non-profit community facility moved the work offshore in a pilot program - a small part of the facility's $500,000 annual spending on transcription services - to see what the quality of the work is like. "The hospital lost a significant amount of money last month," said Murray, putting the loss at $1 million and noting that many hospitals in New York face similar budgetary problems. "Every month is a struggle. ... This was one of our cost-saving ideas." Thakor knows the scenario well.  With about 85 employees in the United States, GeBBS provides health-care administration services and also develops software for the same field. The company's two centers in Mumbai, India, employ about 180 people, of whom 100 process health claims. Last year, the company had revenue of $12 million, and it expects to make $16 million this year, Thakor said. He reaps the benefit of Indian workers - all of whom have degrees - who earn about $2,800 to $3,300 a year, compared with the $35,000 to $45,000 that U.S.-based employees would make for the same job, he said. "We're making a 45 to 50 percent gross margin," Thakor said of his own company. "A client is seeing a 45 to 50 percent cut on their cost structure. So we're happy. They're happy."

Concerns about patient confidentiality in the offshoring era were heightened last October when a woman in Karachi, Pakistan, threatened to post patient medical records from a San Francisco hospital on the Internet unless she was paid the money owed her for transcribing notes dictated by doctors.

The woman dropped the threat after she was paid. But the incident helped bring the issue to the attention of lawmakers.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., and Rep. Edward J. Markey, D-Mass., have introduced bills that would require companies to notify customers before they send confidential information overseas, giving the customer the right to refuse. Still, industry insiders are concerned. Cobuzzi and others said the main problem is that anyone who violates U.S. patient confidentiality laws abroad would be beyond the reach of U.S. prosecutors. But offshore companies say there is no danger of leaks. Thakor said GeBBS' facilities in India have guards and an electronic security system, along with a full-time privacy officer to ensure the company complies with U.S. confidentiality laws. In addition, the computer system that health-care administration employees work on is sealed, he said: The terminals have no hard drive and no connections to the Internet, floppy disk, or CD writers, or even a printer. They can only open files on the server, change the contents, and close them, he said. "So there is no way - unless you can memorize all the information - that you can take it with you," he said.