Just found this lovely article about India

on the Kansas City Star's website:

Chamber formed to foster U.S.-India business

A group of area professionals and business executives have formed the Indo American Chamber of Commerce — Kansas City to provide a bridge between Indian and U.S. businesses in the region.

The organization was officially launched last weekend, in time for the Feb. 8 visit to Kansas City by Ronen Sen, the Indian ambassador to the U.S. The group also is organizing a conference on “Doing Business With India,” scheduled for April 10 at the Kauffman Center. The Chamber of Commerce of Greater Kansas City also is planning a business mission to India in the fall.

The new group’s founders are Raj Bhatia, chairman and managing director, and Sanjay Kohli, president.

I'm not sure what all this means, but why are we wanting to force more business "friendships" with these people?!!

• Just found this lovely article about India - sm
  • Read Lou Dobb's book - just me
  • why form "friendships" - probably so that the gov... - jt
    • Also, forgot to mention how ironic it is - sm - mj
    • I live approx. 25 min. from a state capital (rather not say), but seems everywhere you go - sm - mj

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Find out how this entrepreneurial mom really feels about running a business from home.

I created an entire business just so I could be a work-at-home mom. But is it a blessing or a curse? It depends on which day you ask me. Let me tell you what I really think.

I hate being a work-at-home mom because:

• No one respects that I'm actually at work. My husband, friends and family still call me throughout the day and expect me to be able to talk on the phone even if it's my precious work time.


• My children are almost more tortured having me work at home because throughout the day, I'm constantly having to tell them, "Not now, honey. I have to work". (If I worked at a "real" office, I'd only have to say good-bye once during the day.)


• When I'm on the phone with an important client, my child almost always comes in whining, pulling on my clothes or knocking over my pencil holder. If my husband or nanny manages to keep them out, I undoubtedly hear them whining or crying and then I'm tortured because I know I could calm them down.


• My office is often a mess and important papers are covered in crayon scratchings because I'll let my children do almost anything in my office just to get another minute on e-mail.


• My e-mails and phone conversations are incredibly brief so I can just get my point across, but now everyone thinks I'm rude and abrupt.


• I wake up to start work at 5:00 a.m. so I can work alone while my family sleeps. And then my 5-year-old decides to wake up early and join me. So I set him up on the computer playing "Dora The Explorer" so I can get some more work done. I try to focus as I type up some e-mails, but I can't really work for two consecutive minutes because he keeps needing my help.


• I've done live radio interviews from my home only to be embarrassingly interrupted by the barking of my dog.


• And at the end of the day, I realize there is no end of the day, because my office never leaves me. Most of us work from the time we wake up until our heads hit the pillow. But who are we kidding? We're even working then!

I love being a work-at-home mom because:

• I get to be with my kids from the time they wake up until they go to sleep at night.


• I didn't miss out on their first steps or their first words.


• I can drop work any time and take my kids to the park without having to ask anyone's permission.


• My kids get to see me work and see that I get joy and stimulation out of being productive. I like to believe I'm a good role model for them.


• My daughter can see that you can have it all: a career, a family and happiness.


• As I write this at 6:00 a.m., I can look over at the video baby monitor and see my sweet baby sleeping happily.


• I get to decide when I go to work, when I eat and when I take a break, and no one's watching a clock but me.


• When I go out for a meeting, I can also squeeze in some personal errands and not have to worry about a boss disapproving of my long lunch.


• I can wear my pajamas all day long and no one ever has to know!


• I no longer have to sit in a car to commute, which automatically gives me an extra two hours per day, which adds up to a whopping extra 21 days in my year!


• My work is my home, and my home is my work, which can be a benefit for the write-off's alone! (Ask your accountant.)

Now, perhaps if you measured my two lists, the hate list might actually be longer. But the perks of working from home are invaluable. At the end of the day, I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world. But boy, it sure would be nice if my friends and family realized that I really am working!

most of these are old but the CBay post is fairly new...even the MTs in India do not seem to be treated fairly...I imagine there is a lot of abuse over there also. 

Too bad we could not unionize them and us together...would that ever be possible you think? 

It's winding down now (2200 hours) here near Bangor, ME, but it was just so beautiful and soft--super fine and it looks like glitter when light hits it from flashlights or porch lights.  It really is quite beautiful out there and not too awfully cold.  No wind to speak of and everything is muffled quiet-like.  Just beautiful and the animals are having an absolute blast playing in it! 

I'm 57, learned on the job 28 years ago.  I can out transcribe people half my age.  I have no arthritis, no carpal tunnel syndrome, no fibromyalgia and only occasionally get a crick in my neck from my job.   My QA score is 100%, has been for years, and I type 90 wpm, transcribe 200 lph at least and that's on an account that is almost all ESL.   I could do this job another 20 or 30 years if I wanted to (barring sickness or accident that could happen at any age).

As far as the AAMT rep saying younger people are not lining up for this job - have they done anything to market MT to younger people?  I'm sure a lot of high school kids or even community college people would be interested in this work if they were educated about it. 

One last thought - the people they are offshoring this work to in India, Pakistan, Trinidad, the Philippines, are not spring chickens!!! 

I for one am sick of AAMT trying to justify their greediness by blaming their victims, the US MTs.

My first thoughts were like you, just another way to cheat us.  But then when I considered the possibility (trying to be kind here) that some companies are not giving us full credit for every character typed (as in perhaps counting 3 Keystrokes as 1 as has been mentioned here before), then even if they didn't pay us for spaces, we might make more in such a situation if they had to pay us for every single black character.  They can't hide that from us!  In other words, they would not be able to manipulate the line counting as much as I think they are doing now.  Now how much they would pay us for every black character might differ from company to company, but I think this might work in our favor overall.  If pay based on production is better for us than an hourly wage, we need to find what works most to our advantage.   And with the difference there is out there now in line counts from one company to another, pay by character might help us. 

And yes, even if it is a template, every character should still count as well as spaces, returns, tabs, demographic insertion, and also for our knowledge which comes into play every single time we keep the dictators from sounding like idiots and/or catching their mistakes.  Let's face it -- we do at least basic editing too, folks.  We are NOT just typists!  We should be reimbursed for our knowledge as well as production.   We're not donating our time to a charity here.  This is a way of making a living.  We should be paid for whatever we do for the company we work for, just like in any other job.  This might be a step in the right direction. 

I am cautiously almost hopeful. 

Read this

New Orleans: A Disaster Waiting to Happen
by George E. Curry
NNPA columnist
Originally posted 9/1/2005

I am angry. I am angry at the mayor of New Orleans. I am angry at the governor of Louisiana. I am angry at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). I am angry at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), now part of the Department of Homeland Security. I am angry at George W. Bush. I am angry because they were warned last November that New Orleans was one of the “Disasters Waiting to Happen” – and did nothing about it. Consequently, hundreds, if not thousands, of people are dead. Needlessly.

In an eerie prediction of what happened as a result of Hurricane Katrina, an article titled, “What if Hurricane Ivan Had Not Missed New Orleans?” was published in the Natural Hazards Observer, a major journal headquartered at the University of Colorado in Boulder. It was written by Shirley Laska of the Center for Hazards Assessment, Response and Technology at the University of New Orleans. In other words, this was an article written by a reputable author in a reputable national publication that should have been read by people involved in disaster relief. If they had taken heed, many of the dead in New Orleans would be alive today.

Under the headline, “What if Ivan Had Hit New Orleans?” the author wrote, “New Orleans was spared this time, but had it not been, Hurricane Ivan would have:

- Pushed a 17-foot storm surge into Lake Pontchartrain;

- Caused the levees between the lake and the city to overtop and fill the city ‘bowl’ with water from lake levee to river levee, in some places as deep as 20 feet;

- Flooded the north shore suburbs as much as seven miles inland; and

- Inundated inhabited areas south of the Mississippi River.

“Up to 80 percent of the structures in these flooded areas would have been severely damaged from wind and water. The potential for such extensive flooding and the resulting damage is the result of a levee system that is unable to keep up with the increasing flood threats from a rapidly eroding coastline and thus unable to protect the ever-subsiding landscape.”

Until I read this article, I had said one of the positive things that I hoped would come out of this disaster is that relief experts would realize that they need to make special provisions for the poor, elderly and homeless. In essence, I gave them the benefit of the doubt. Now, however, I realize that there is no benefit in doubt.

The warning was there in black and white:

“For those without means, the medically challenged, residents without personal transportation, and the homeless, evacuation requires significant assistance.”

Laska spelled it out in even more detail.

During Hurricane Ivan in 2004, she continues, ‘Residents who did not have personal transportation were unable to evacuate even if they wanted to.
Approximately 120,000 residents (51,000 housing units x 2.4 persons/unit) do not have cars.

“A proposal made after the evacuation from Hurricane Georges to use public transit buses to assist in their evacuation out of the city was not implemented for Ivan. If Ivan had struck New Orleans directly it is estimated that 40-60,000 residents of the area would have perished.”

The additional problem of people having the means to leave, but refusing to do so was addressed in the article.

“Researchers have estimated that prior to a ‘big one,’ approximately 700,000 residents of the greater New Orleans area (out of 1.2 million) would evacuate,” Laska wrote. “In the case of Hurricane Ivan, officials estimate that up to 600,000 evacuated from metropolitan New Orleans between daybreak on Monday, September 13 and noon on Wednesday, September 13, when the storm turned and major roads started to clear…

“The fact that 600,000 residents evacuated means an equal number did not. Recent evacuation surveys show that two thirds of nonevacuees with the means to evacuate chose not to leave because they felt safe in their homes. Other nonevacuees with means relied on a cultural tradition of not leaving or were discouraged by negative experiences with past evacuations.”

Those that dismiss environmentalists as kooks, should pay special attention to the observations about marshes.

“Loss of the coastal marshes that dampened earlier storm surges puts the city at increasing risk to hurricanes,” the article noted. “Eighty years of substantial river leveeing has prevented spring flood deposition of new layers of sediment into the marshes, and a similarly lengthy period of marsh excavation activities related to oil and gas exploration and transportation canals for the petrochemical industry have threatened marsh integrity.”

Using the Hurricane Ivan model to predict what would happen if a major hurricane struck New Orleans, Laska wrote: “Should this disaster become a reality, it would undoubtedly be one of the greatest disasters, if not the greatest, to hit the United States, with estimated costs exceeding 100 billion dollars. According to the Red Cross, such an event could be even more devastating than a major earthquake in California. Survivors would have to endure conditions never before experienced in a North American disaster.”

It ended, “The hurricane scenario for New Orleans that these conveying risks portend is almost unimaginable. Hurricane Ivan had the potential to make the unthinkable a reality. Next time New Orleans may not be so fortunate.”


George E. Curry is editor-in-chief of the NNPA News Service and BlackPressUSA.com. He appears on National Public Radio (NPR) three times a week as part of “News and Notes with Ed Gordon.” In addition, his radio commentary is syndicated each week by Capitol Radio News Service (301/588-1993). To contact Curry or to book him for a speaking engagement, go to his Web site, www.georgecurry.com.

Please see article below that was published in 2003. Does anybody know if the law it mentions was ever passed in California?

Following news that a Pakistani medical transcriber threatened to post UCSF Medical Center patient records online unless she received more money,

a state senator said she will introduce legislation barring all California hospitals from allowing medical data to leave the country.

Sen. Liz Figueroa, D-Fremont, said she will introduce the bill in January when the state Senate returns for its next regular session. (A special session on financial matters is likely before then.)

"California already has the strongest medical-privacy laws in the nation, " Figueroa told me. "But not strong enough. There's always something you didn't anticipate."

What she and other framers of the state's medical-privacy laws, which prohibit the sharing of medical information unless for clear medical purposes, didn't see coming is the explosive growth of the $20 billion medical- transcription industry.

U.S. hospitals have such a huge need for help transcribing doctors' dictated notes into written form that the work is routinely farmed out to private transcribers throughout the country. Those transcribers, in turn, frequently subcontract with other transcribers.

In the case of UCSF Medical Center, three separate subcontractors were involved in handling the facility's records. The last link in the chain was a woman in Karachi, Pakistan, who sent an e-mail to UCSF earlier this month demanding help in resolving a financial dispute with the Texas man who'd hired her.

The Pakistani transcriber said she'd post UCSF's files on the Internet unless the medical center assisted her. She backed up her threat by attaching actual UCSF patient records to her message.

This was the first time an overseas transcriber had used confidential records to threaten a U.S. medical institution. The transcriber withdrew her threat only after receiving hundreds of dollars from another subcontractor in the case.

Figueroa said her bill would prohibit anyone possessing information involving California patients from sending that information abroad.

State hospitals would likely be barred from outsourcing transcription work unless they could guarantee that all related files remain within the country -- a move that would make hospitals accountable for any subcontracting that ensues.

"We're not banning the practice of overseas workers doing transcription," Figueroa said. "But we can regulate the practice of medicine within California. "

The law, at least on the health care front, may be on her side.

In most instances, federal law would trump state law, and the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 outlines rules for safeguarding medical data. Anyone doing transcription work for a U.S. hospital would be required to uphold HIPAA standards, although the law is virtually unenforceable overseas.

A unique aspect of HIPAA, though, is a provision that if a state adopts more stringent restrictions, state law will prevail.

"If there were a statute that no health care information in California could be disclosed outside the country, HIPAA wouldn't have a problem with that," said Paul Smith, a San Francisco attorney specializing in health care issues.

"The state has a clear interest in protecting health information," he added. "This would seem a legitimate exercise of state regulatory authority."

At the same time, though, Matthew Nakachi, a San Francisco lawyer who specializes in trade issues, said it's unclear how the proposed legislation would square with federal laws related to commerce. A hospital might argue, for example, that it has a right to do business with whomever it pleases.

"If California decides to do this," Nakachi said, "it would probably go into the courts and take years to fall out."

For her part, Figueroa expects the health care industry to fight the legislation, just as the banking industry opposed state restrictions on the use of customers' information. But she thinks that in light of the public's increased sensitivity toward privacy matters, her bill would eventually pass.

"The interesting thing will be to see where our new governor stands on privacy issues," Figueroa said. "At this point, we don't know."

Mystery woman: The Pakistani transcriber at the center of the case involving UCSF is still something of a mystery.

In her e-mail to UC officials, she identified herself as Lubna Baloch, "a medical doctor by profession." Beyond that, little is known of her.

In May, however, an interesting little exchange occurred on MT Stars, an online network for medical transcribers. Baloch, using the same e-mail address she used in her threatening message to UCSF, posted her resume at the site in hopes of attracting work as a subcontractor.

Sheri Steadman, who runs MT Stars, of Phoenix, said she's against U.S. transcription work going abroad and routinely deletes postings from overseas transcribers. In Baloch's case, she said she was concerned by the vagueness of Baloch's resume, especially as to her whereabouts.

Steadman wrote to Baloch to say that MT Stars is only for U.S. job seekers.

"I am US based," Baloch replied.

"Not enough info," Steadman responded. "Where?"

"Santa Monica, LA," Baloch wrote back.

For Steadman, this wasn't a very good answer.

"Santa Monica isn't in Los Angeles and it's not in Louisiana," she told me. "It was pretty clear that Baloch wasn't in the country."

Steadman confronted Baloch with her suspicion. Baloch never wrote back.

"She was trying to gain work in any way, shape or form," Steadman said. "She was trying to sucker U.S. medical-transcription services into sending her business."

It didn't work that time. A few months later, though, probably using a different online service, Baloch was more successful in her efforts.

That would turn out to be a very dark day for UCSF.

David Lazarus' column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. He also can be seen regularly on KTVU's "Mornings on 2." Send tips or feedback to dlazarus@sfchronicle.com.

EMR might not soon replace us after all....

http://health-information.advanceweb.com/common/Editorial/Editorial.aspx?CC=66392&CP=1

I am a volunteer at our local humane society and am active with several vets locally.  What this article suggests is absolutely ridiculous.