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22 Mar 2003

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Associations and benchmarks . . .

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Dear Friends,

WORLDTECH was founded in February 1998 with little more than
confidence and optimism. Presently WORLDTECH turns around over
90,000 lines per day. The All India Industrial Exhibition Society
awarded Worldtech with the Best Export Award for 2002-2003.
Excerpts from an interview with Managing Director, Mr. Ramkrishna
Tummala; we have quoted verbatim:

"Nasscom is mainly concentrating on software industry and IT
services. They are not really worried about medical transcription;
somehow everybody lost focus on the medical transcription industry
even though initially there was a lot of hype. Talking about TQM
and Six Sigma will definitely help all the companies, especially
with the new HIPAA regulations, but in this business there are two
levels of quality management, one is the management of the process
and the other is the product. Established quality systems will no
doubt help in the management of the process, but for the product,
the understanding of quality differs from customer to customer, so
customer definition is different from standards. Most of the
times, for the transcript, we at WORLDTECH talk about customer
acceptable quality. There was much talk initially about 98%
accurate transcription, but that number is open to interpretation.
Moreover, there will be clients who will expect 100% accuracy.
Then again, with customers who come to you only for a cost benefit,
he might not mind accepting 95% accuracy also. Again, I feel it
depends on the customer, and at the end of the day, you have to
deliver quality that is acceptable to the customer."

"Initially in the industry there was a lot of difference in pay
packets offered by different companies. Startups offered large
salaries to attract experienced people. But all the people have
realized that that is not sustainable and now we are seeing uniform
salaries in most companies, and this is visible across different
cities too. I can tell you now in our company today, a minimum
salary an MT is getting is about 6,000 rupees, but there are some
MTs getting even 23,000 rupees. 30% of our people are taking home
more than 10,000 rupees. Our salaries are linked totally to the
productivity and we want to see that all our MTs earn about 25,000
rupees in next two to three years, that is what our growth plan for
our MTs is. I still believe for next 10 years there will not be any
threat to Indian MT industry, because of voice recognizing software
or other formatted electronic records. Now I believe that next 10
years this business is going to be there. There may be a growing
merger of technologies to enhance productivity but the need for
core human input in medical transcription is going to be there for
a long time."

To read the complete interview, please go to:
http://www.mtindia.org/article/default.cfm

Cheers!!!

Maj (Dr.) Amit Chatterjee, SM
Strategist / Founder ~ mailto:amit@...
MT India ~ www.MTIndia.org
"The Community of MT Professionals"

"It takes years to become an overnight success! Inch by inch, it's
a cinch."

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NEWS AND VIEWS :
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1) Max HealthScribe tests new waters

Will India's largest and only pure play medical transcription
company, Max HealthScribe, continue to be focussed is the big
question. As the company faces severe growth pressure, chances seem
remote. Registering a growth of around 30 percent for the past
couple of years, the company has engaged in conducting a market
survey by itself to find out other growth opportunities.

To be released in the next five months, the survey aims to assist
the Bangalore-based medical transcription companies in identifying
growth opportunities through acquisition, exploring opportunities
in other transcription work and business process outsourcing work.
This would include extending its services to other verticals too.
"At present we are not looking actively beyond the arrangement of
servicing HealthScribe until the survey is completed. After that we
might look at other countries as well as other verticals and
services," remarked, the company's COO, Suresh Nair.

http://www.ciol.com/content/search/showarticle.asp?arid=43251&way=s
earch

2) 'The MT Business has a Potential of $6-10 billion'

Veer Sagar, an old-timer in the IT industry, today, he manages the
affairs of his own medical transcription company, Selectronics, and
doubles as the CEO of TCG Software Services (India).

"I think that the worst is over and the industry is getting its a
second chance. The quick buck makers have fled the scene and today
we have serious players in the fray. And a majority of them are
doing well.

Given the high profile status accorded to the call center business,
we do find it difficult to find people wanting to join MT. I guess
the perception is that MT is a boring option while working for call
centers is very exciting. I think that once people start seeing the
stability in MT, there will be enough people available."

http://www.dqindia.com/content/search/showarticle.asp?arid=43290&wa
y=search

3) Healthcare BPO is still a grey area

Quality is critical in any service-based industry. Adoption of
world-class quality processes has been a key differentiator for the
Indian IT industry. A cultue of quality calls for financial
investment and long-term commitment from the healthcare community.

In fact the medical transcription Industry in India is a classic
case where large-scale quality deterioration led to the near death
experience faced by the sector. Though analysts talk about billion
dollar markets, whether India Inc has the delivery bandwidth to
address this is to be assessed, given the above mentioned factors.
To me this is a typical "watch this space" scenario right now.

http://www.expresshealthcaremgmt.com/20030131/comment1.shtml

4) To Avoid a Dead End

Softex Group has also successfully brought in the
'earn-while-you-learn' style of campus culture adopted in western
universities, into Kerala. Now the company has 120 students who are
working part-time who earn 80-150 paise for each call center data
they process. "Four years back we tried the same with Medical
Transcription. We had inducted a number of medical students but it
didn't succeed because they were unwilling to learn the finer
details of the job," says Lalaji. But this concept is easier to
adopt in the call center business.

http://www.dqindia.com/content/search/showarticle.asp?arid=40620&wa
y=search

5) The emperor has no clothes!

The world had better take note of India, the drumbeaters sing,
because we are going to be the next IT superpower. Really? Name one
Indian software package that is a global hit? One Indian IT product
that the computer population of the world uses every time a
computer is switched on?

The truth is not so sweet. What is essentially called Indian
software exports is basically body-shopping (sending skilled labour
from India) and back-end applications (now fashionably called BPO,
or business process outsourcing).

A nation which handles the telephone calls of customers from all
over the world, which types medical records of the world's best
hospitals - is that what you would call a superpower? Medical
transcription is skilled typing!!

http://www.rediff.com/money/2002/jun/28mahesh.htm

6) Computer hackers access 7,000 patient files

Are medical files such a compelling read that hackers would want to
target your computers?

That's the question raised by a computer break-in at Indiana
University School of Medicine in Indianapolis.

On Feb. 28, the school announced that hackers had gained
unauthorized access to one computer at the university's Center for
Sleep Disorders that had the names, addresses, Social Security
numbers and dates of birth of about 7,000 patients.

The break-in, and the fact that health information wasn't touched,
raises the question of what computer hackers are really after --
medical records or personal information. Some health care
information security experts believe the latter is more likely,
because those data are more valuable than data in medical records.

While the information in a medical record has little or no value, a
Social Security number and other personal information have "real
value" because they can be used to steal someone's identity, access
bank accounts and get credit cards under that person's name, Walsh
said. Identity theft is a growing problem in the United States,
creating serious financial and nonfinancial hardship for victims.

http://www.ama-assn.org/sci-pubs/amnews/pick_03/bisc0324.htm

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