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21 Jun 2003
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Tackling the offshore outsourcing backlash

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Dear Friends,

Developed economies over the last century had shifted from being
primarily engaged in agriculture to manufacturing, but today they
are pure service economies.

Majority of workers in the USA are now in the service sector,
ranging from low-value services like cab drivers to high-end ones
like doctors. And in a wealthy society, services are expensive.

You pay a US nurse $25 per hour because you don't have access to
the Indian nurse who can render the same service for $ 2. But
excluding such services where you need a personal interface with
the provider of the service, the digital-telecom revolution makes
it possible to get all manner of other services from offshore, like
medical transcription.

Service economies of the West are now under serious competition.
The price wars that companies face makes them lobby hard for a free
market. But when jobs are under threat - politicians will listen to
voters. In New Jersey the state has thought it made sense to spend
millions of dollars to stop offshore outsourcing, and if the bill
is enacted, will save exactly 12 jobs!

Today, for every dollar that India spends on imports from the US,
India earns three dollars through exports to the US. The way ahead
for India would be to concede ground in trade negotiations in order
to keep service markets open. Remember the winning perspective?

Cheers!

Maj (Dr.) Amit Chatterjee, SM
Strategist / Founder ~ mailto:amit@...
MT India ~ www.mtindia.org
"The Community of MT Professionals"
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NEWS AND VIEWS :
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1) JCAHO & NCQA offers HIPAA certification for business associates

The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations
(JCAHO) and the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA)
today announced that their new Privacy Certification Program for
Business Associates (PCBA) will officially launch this month.

The new program is designed to assess whether organizations
referred to as business associates under the federal Health
Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996 are
meeting essential requirements for safeguarding
personally-identifiable health information.

http://www.jcaho.org/news+room/latest+news+release/bap_6_16.htm

2) Acusis Selects Siemens to Evaluate Current HIPAA Compliance
Efforts

Acusis, announced that it has selected Siemens Medical Solutions to
evaluate its Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act
(HIPAA) privacy and security efforts and provide an independent
assessment of its HIPAA compliance initiative. Additionally, Acusis
announced that every one of its more than 500 global staff members
has completed and passed a HIPAA awareness, privacy, and security
training course.

"Requiring that each one of our staff members complete and pass a
HIPAA training course and our relationship with Siemens reinforces
our commitment to provide world-class service, quality, and
accurate transcription reports that meet or exceed HIPAA
regulations," David Iwinski, Jr., Acusis President and CEO, said.

http://www.businesswire.com/cgi-bin/cb_headline.cgi?&story_file=bw.
061603/231670035&directory=/google&header_file=header.htm&footer_fi
le=

3) Infotech: The Indian take-off

Few other countries illustrate the vast potential and also the
domestic challenges of unleashing and harnessing information and
communication technology (ICT) as vividly as the billion-strong
subcontinent of India. As a content-rich country with a free press
climate, an affluent tech-savvy diaspora population spread across
the world from Silicon Valley to Sydney to Singapore and London,
and with a huge pool of cutting-edge infotech and design skills,
India has a lot to offer to the domestic and global Internet
market.

Today, close to 300 Indian software companies have a US presence.
At one end of the spectrum, the Net opens up a huge market in
teleservices transcription, translation, data entry, project
design, accounting, network management, web services, remote
education, and help desks. Some critics view these companies as
low-tech sweatshops for multinationals, but they provide much
better salary levels as compared to local jobs while also exposing
employees to global standards of professionalism and new emerging
ideas for potential startups.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/EF18Df01.html

4) MGMA asks HHS to drop HIPAA rules on consent, business
associates

The business associates provision requires covered entities to
ensure their business associates are in compliance with the privacy
rule. MGMA asked that, if HHS does not eliminate the provision, it
amend the rule to state that a covered entity is never considered a
business associate and to allow covered entities to rely on
"self-certification" of compliance by business associates. MGMA
also asked that a covered entity be required to take "corrective
action" against a business associate only if the HCO's privacy
officer is told that the business associate is violating the rule.

The letter asks HHS to change the data security rule to protect
medical practices from liability for security and privacy breaches
by business associates; to eliminate the requirement that practices
must track access and disclosure of paper-based health records; and
to clarify practices' responsibility for ensuring physical security
of medical records. MGMA represents 19,000 managers at 10,200
physician practices nationwide

http://ihealthbeat.org/members/basecontent.asp?oldcoll=546&contenti
d=22663&collectionid=100&program=1

5) Chennai ITeS BPO forum launched

Nasscom has launched the Chennai ITeS BPO forum. The forum will
take up issues relating to IT, telecom, education and training
sectors. It will also help in building the `Indian IT brand'. The
reason for setting up a forum in Chennai, according to Kiran
Karnik, President, Nasscom, was that Chennai had been undersold in
the IT market, though there had been enough potential. He said
Chennai had lots of untold success stories. So to position the
city, Nasscom had created the forum to market the city and the
State. Chennai will be a mirror of the national forum and it will
help in linking the national agent.

http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/stories/2003062003901600.htm

6) Total eMed completes EDiX purchase

Franklin-based Total eMed has completed its $64 million purchase of
EDiX Corp., a medical transcription outsourcing subsidiary of IDX
Systems Corp.

The purchase, originally announced in April, makes Total eMed the
second largest transcription company in the country with a
projected $150 million in revenue this year.

http://nashville.bizjournals.com/nashville/stories/2003/06/16/daily
26.html
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Thank you for your interest in MT India!

The MTIndia Team
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