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17 Jan 2004
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Us & Them

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Dear Friends,

I am publishing excerpts from an article written by an Indian MT,
who prefers to call himself the 'MT Guru!' Enjoy...
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The second, and I feel equally critical, issue to be tackled is
entirely in the hands of the MTs. MTs (including Editors & QAs)
must deliver quality that cannot be challenged. Each MT in the
country must realize that this has become a matter of national
prestige. No doubt, we are one of the best in software, but we
have yet some way to go in establishing our credentials as
unquestionable in the field of medical transcription. The onus of
doing this lies on every MT in India. Maybe that's putting it a
bit too melodramatically, what?! But the fact remains that core
competency is the area transcriptionists must focus upon. If you
are a professional, ask yourself this: Does 'professional' signify
only a means of living or does it also signify a certain expertise
in your chosen field? Are you just 'in the MT profession' or are
you also a professional as in 'a pro'?

For quality to improve on a large scale it is essential that skills
be shared. We need to work as a team instead of individual
components with assorted capabilities. For this to happen, skills
must be shared and propagated. For example, out of every 100
experienced MTs, at least 70 are likely to be dependent on the
mouse for the most elementary of functions, thus cutting down speed
and increasing the turn-round-time as a whole. To put it simply,
if you want to be a 'cat' at MT, you will have to first kill the
'mouse' (pun intended)! There are many more such examples where
your technique in performing basic functions like opening a file or
a program might actually be taking much of your time and thus
distracting you from the actual job. In fact, your limited
awareness of the availability of techniques that could boost your
speed may be the reason for your lack of line count and quality.
(When one hears of the staggering line counts the American MTs
give, one simply feels like finding a quiet corner, lying down, and
passing out forever). Now, everyone cannot be a Speed King when it
comes to pure typing speed. But that does not mean one can't hope
to compete on an equal basis. Remember, speed on the computer
keyboard is not the same as speed on an ordinary typewriter. You
don't have to be a Superman at typing to improve your line count.
After all, it isn't as if the Americans are physiologically more
advanced than the Indians. The difference is just in the way we do
things.
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To read the entire article, go to:
www.mtindia.org/mtguru

Ciao!

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

"Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality!"

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NEWS AND VIEWS :
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1) Transcription industry wants tough law

A newly-formed association of the Transcription industry, the
Coimbatore Transcription Industry Alliance (CTIA), has urged the
Center to bring in tough legislation for handling cyber crime,
better policing and strict legal deterrents.

The main objective of forming CTIA was to provide security and high
standards for the transcription sector, particularly in the medical
field, in the wake of the threat by a Pakistan transcriptionist to
publish Patient Health Information (PHI) on the Internet, CTIA
Vice-President, C P Vasudevan told reporters.

Vasudevan pointed out that it was imperative for India to assure
and prove to the American health care facilities that their
documents were safe here, in compliance with the Health Information
Portability an Accountability Act (HIPAA) norms.

Stating that India had a share of only two per cent of the 20
billion dollar transcription industry in U.S.A, he said CTIA would
form a Federation of Transcription Industry, to promote superior
performance standards and to provide a forum to exchange
information and technology.

It also demanded a regulation or ban on home-based transcription
and facilitate the industry to mature into an organized sector.

http://in.news.yahoo.com/040109/54/2atkd.html

2) The BPO backlash?

The benefits of outsourcing are far too compelling for the West to
cut back on it.

Even as IT-enabled services (ITES) exports registered a sharp
growth in 2003, some incidents raise questions about the long-term
prospects. Some individual states in the US have also passed laws
banning the outsourcing of public services to foreign providers,
under pressure from the business and employee lobbies.

In a way, such protests and actions are a tribute to the success of
Indian ITES. On the other hand, does it portend ill for the
long-term prospects of the industry?

First, with increasing globalisation of manufacturing, far more
blue-collared jobs in the industrial world have gone to countries
like China. However, this did not attract the kind of opposition
that the much smaller transfer of white-collar jobs is attracting.

Second, the irony is that many developing countries, including
India, were opposed to the inclusion of services as part of the
World Trade Organisation (WTO) treaty. The fear was that domestic
companies in industries like banking and insurance would not be
able to compete with their far stronger rivals from industrial
countries.

There is a third angle. The trend is from less sophisticated,
elementary work to increasingly sophisticated business processes -
from code-writing and system maintenance to co-development and
design of products, and to proprietary products; from medical
transcription to reading of X-rays to sophisticated surgery and
hospitalisation services; from call centres to processing of
personal loan applications and insurance claims, to sophisticated
financial analysis; the list is long. Indian hospitalisation and
healthcare services exports alone are expected to amount to $ 5
billion by 2008.

http://in.biz.yahoo.com/040111/26/2auhp.html

3) Chrysalis leads $5.5 million investment in training company

Louisville venture-capital firm Chrysalis Ventures LLC is
participating in a $5.5 million "B" round of funding for a Texas
company that provides technical training related to the information
technology and medical fields.

TechSkills provides its training through 30 learning centers in 17
states. The health-related courses include training for medical
office operations, medical transcription and insurance coding and
billing.

http://www.bizjournals.com/louisville/stories/2004/01/12/story6.htm
l

4) Model Behavior

The magic behind the Model is simple: Send a portion of your legal
work to someone other than attorneys at law firms. In DuPont's
case, lawyers from a temporary agency handled relatively simple
tasks like initial witness interviews, exhibit collection and
document review.

For law firms, there's an obvious downside: They lose billable
hours and training opportunities for young lawyers on
less-complicated legal tasks like document review. And all is not
rosy for in-house counsel. They give up some control over work
assigned to outsourcing agencies, and if an agency is located
overseas, confidentiality, security and cultural issues may arise.

Take, for instance, the case of UCSF Medical Center's recent scare
over patient medical records. A woman in Pakistan hired to
transcribe patient records threatened to reveal patient information
if she was not paid money a sub-contractor owed her.

"This is something that's still very much in its formative stages,"
said Sanjay Prasad, chief patent counsel at Oracle Corp.

Daniel Cooperman, Oracle's general counsel, said he'd like to see
more of the company's legal work -- especially on patents -- done
by lawyers located closer to facilities in places like Bangalore,
India.

For several years, India has been a hot spot for companies looking
to find cheaper labor for tasks from fielding customer service
calls to designing software. So why not take it one step further,
asks Cooperman, and move some basic legal services there, too?
Getting an outsourcing agency to do work in a foreign market is one
of the chief ways the practice saves money, Cooperman said.

"I would rather grow in India," he said.

http://biz.yahoo.com/law/031201/9bf7ac37de6a2a1446904725a642e9fa_1.
html
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Thank you for your interest in MT India!

The MTIndia Team
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