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03 May 2003

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Coach v. First Class Service - Part II

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Dear Friends,

We are continuing Julianne Weight's article, on quality v. cost of
service. Julianne Weight has owned and operated AlphaBest, a
consulting and transcription service in Los Angeles, since 1983.
Excerpts:

"John (Jack) Welch, former CEO of General Electric, feels the power
of globalization is intellectual capital, bringing together the
world's greatest talent and ideas. Intellectual capital, not price,
is the power of globalization. Unfortunately, the many years of
aggressive marketing techniques, coupled with selling transcription
services as "cheap," and indeed delivering poor quality, has
resulted in a trust issues and a negative reputation that will be
difficult to overcome. Transcription services of the subcontinent
have a lot of repairing to do before they can successfully
transition to a perception of contributing intellectual capital to
the transcription industry.

If the U.S. client has unrealistic expectations of what is going to
be delivered, who created those expectations? "Faster, cheaper,
better" have been the mantras of marketers for services from the
subcontinent, whether the service was two years in the business
with 100 trained transcriptionists or just starting out with five
transcriptionists straight from a three-month training course.
Although it is the responsibility of any business to test the
claims of a contractor, distance works against accurate assessment.
Bait and switch techniques have been common - throwing all
available resources into the test period to assure best possible
performance, a performance which is not sustainable over a long
period of time after a contract is obtained. When accurate
transcription is not delivered, all time and cost savings fly out
the window with it.

Success strategies for medical transcription from the subcontinent
countries will not be significantly different from those in the
U.S. No start up business is for the faint-hearted or poorly
capitalized. Success will be built over time, slow and steady will
win the race. Performance and productivity will contribute to
profitability. Customer satisfaction will be based on trust. In the
end, what buyers look for is value, stability, consistency,
security and service."

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

Enjoy!

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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ADVERTISEMENT:
+++++++++++++++

We are a very big hospital in Minnesota state. We are looking to
outsource our transcription work. Daily volume is between 3,00,000
to 3,50,000 lines per day. Send your rates and capacity to our
email address.

Susan Johnson
transcription@...
MN, USA

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NEWS AND VIEWS :
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1) MedQuist Reports Financial Results for First Quarter 2003

MedQuist Inc. reported revenue of $124.7 million, operating income
of $17.1 million and net income of $10.5 million or $0.28 per
diluted share for the three months ended March 31, 2003. Operating
income for the three months ended March 31, 2003 included income of
$814 thousand from the sale of a building.

David A. Cohen, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, stated, "The
first quarter of 2003 continued to demonstrate the recurring
revenue and strong cash flow MedQuist has earned from our blue chip
client base. MedQuist continues to be the provider of choice in the
medical transcription market. Management remains committed to
MedQuist's growth prospects and exploring new technologies and
services in order to streamline our healthcare clients' document
management, transcription and health information management
efforts."

http://www.businesswire.com/cgi-bin/cb_headline.cgi?&story_file=bw.
042403/231145232&directory=/google&header_file=header.htm&footer_fi
le=

2) India set for jobs bonanza

The country is set to remain the top choice for outsourcing IT and
back office work, according to Deloitte Research. The report
predicts two million jobs will move offshore from the world's 100
largest financial services companies over the next five years.

It says India could account for up to a million of the new
positions thanks to its dominance in IT and software development.
Deloitte says pressure to cut costs in order to remain competitive
is driving the trend.

India has already dominated the early market for companies choosing
offshore processing - thanks to its large number of graduates with
English-language skills but lower salary expectations.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/2987769.stm

3) Springtime for HIPAA?

Let me go on the record predicting that, two years from now, we'll
be doing business as usual but with little more than lip service to
HIPAA's requirements. My guess is that the Bush administration
will milk HIPAA for a few timely and obligatory sound bites and
then let it die on the vine. All one has to do is examine the
history of HIPAA's creation and weigh the contradictions in today's
news to realize that these rules and regulations may be dead on
arrival. Because Congress initially refused to act on it, HIPAA
went into law by default. HIPAA was also born during the Clinton
era and the Bush administration has worked hard to reverse many of
the former President's policies.

When one looks at how HIPAA impacts the healthcare information
management industry, some of it is just not based in reality.
After the courts ordered Verizon to identify a client who was
downloading music files, do you really think that every home-based
coder and transcriptionist is going to get an ISP to sign a
statement respecting the user's privacy as part of a "business
partner agreement"? Do you really think an industry filled with
home-based health information workers has the clout to take on AT&T
's corporate attorneys?

http://www.wwma.com/kamt/springtime.html

4) IT's Destination Coimbatore

A conservative 3-5% or $4bn of the $80bn gross IT turnover in the
country will come from Coimbatore, says a PricewaterhouseCoopers
(PwC) report. Last year, Coimbatore's gross IT turnover was just
around $30m.

As for now, the city has players in embedded technology, product
line automation, telecom billing, leaders in medical transcription
and a state of art data centre which could come in handy for
disaster recovery. However, there is also some good news. TCS has
acquired a property big enough to house a 100-plus seats in
Coimbatore.

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/html/uncomp/articleshow
?msid=44700517

5) SPI Technologies Inc. acquires Med-Type LLC,

SPI Technologies Inc. and its unit, SPI Healthcare Documentation
LLC, a U.S.-based liability company, agreed to acquire the assets
and existing contracts of Med-Type LLC, a U.S.-based liability
management firm. The assets and contracts are estimated to be worth
$0.475 million. Med-Type is a private medical transcription company
specializing in medical transcription services for hospitals,
clinics and group practices in the U.S.

http://sg.biz.yahoo.com/030327/15/39g79.html

6) Transcriber must make mantra of discretion

Hiring an outside vendor to wash windows, pick up the trash or
manage payroll is a staple of American business - outsourcing. The
practice can save a company money and allow it to better focus on
its core business.

In recent years, technology has allowed companies to outsource work
that traditionally had to be done by staffers sitting in the same
room with one another, such as dictation. But along with the
opportunity has come a challenge: convincing potential outsourcing
clients that their work will be done as well and as confidentially
as it would by someone on staff.

http://www.pressherald.com/business/entrepreneur/030502everyday.sht
ml

7) Forget house calls; now, scripts written via PDA

Jirjis tapped the screen of his iPAQ. ''Our entire medical record
at Vanderbilt is right here,'' he said.

His cell phone acts as a modem to link his hand-held computer to
the Internet. The link between those two devices relies on
Bluetooth wireless technology, which is used by companies such as
IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Nokia and hundreds of others. Products made
by all of those companies use certain radio frequencies to
communicate with one another.

The medical center's record-keeping system was created by Dario
Giuse, associate professor of biomedical informatics, and others in
the university's informatics center.

http://www.tennessean.com/business/archives/03/04/31809353.shtml?El
ement_ID=31809353

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The MTIndia Team
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