MT India Newsletter - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MTIndia

02 Oct 2002

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Staying Alive, Both Sides Now!

~ Subhorup Dasgupta

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Dear Friends,

I am publishing a piece which reflects a deep understanding of the
profession & business. This was the runner-up entry to the
professional writing competition @ mtindia.org, 2002.

Enjoy and cherish!
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In 1995, while the Internet was still for the quirky elite and
cellphones were seen only in movies, and as fans mourned Jarry
Garcia's death and Windows 3.1 was upgraded, small groups of people
in cities like Bangalore, Delhi and Kolkata were busily laying down
the foundations of the medical transcription industry in India.
The next few years saw a boom of unimaginable proportions, with
absolutely everybody deciding to jump on to the bandwagon. In the
city where I live, there was an MT company or a training institute
on every proverbial corner. Of course, this did no great good to
the industry, firms shut shop with the same enthusiasm that they
started out with, training institutes made hay while turning out
ill-equipped MTs that nobody wanted, consultants with fancy offices
ran Venezuela and even got beaten up on the streets where they no
longer live, US MTs hired to proofread the Indian transcripts
didn't have too many kind things to say and the BBS's still resound
of that, but it did do one good thing. The novelty and the
challenge of the work and the business attracted some of the finest
minds. These people came to satisfy their curiosity and make some
bucks, but stayed to prove a point.

Of these people there are two broad categories. The first is the
business owner (BO), who came for the profit, struggled to survive,
and having survived, stayed to build on. The second is the
committed transcriptionist (CT), who came to learn and to earn,
struggled to achieve standards of excellence, and pleased with
their journey, stayed to reach greater heights of perfection.

The business owners have their share of frustration and worries, I
am certain no one will rule that out. However, hanging out with
people of the second category, the committed transcriptionist (not
all of them committed to transcription necessarily, some to remand
houses, some to 12 step groups, and some just to giving the world a
hard time) for a few years now, I have come to realize that their
frustrations and understanding it plays a key role in the growth
not only of a service or firm but of the industry as a whole.

One of the nagging problems in the industry is that of attrition.
People quit and most of them join other services. While what
triggers it might be a fatter pay packet, the reason often is
unhappiness with the workplace and the previous business owner. I
am certain people wouldn't quit just for the money if their present
place of work gave them a sense of fulfillment that money could not
offset. I have been fortunate to have worked with a few of the
better businesses in India. I count my employers, past and
present, among my good friends. They are well meaning and sincere
people. But, disclaimer done with, the general perception of these
people is that they vacillate between the extremes of
indecisiveness (to where they look like they don't care) and
aggression (till you start wondering what really turns them on)!!
Rare is the business owner or manager who stalks a consistent
nurturing and caring path. Of course, of course, how true, how
true, I can hear the applause resound, but is the true picture that
simple?

........to be continued.
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Cheers!!! :)

Maj (Dr.) Amit Chatterjee, SM
Strategist/Founder ~ mailto:MTIndia@...
MT India ~ http://mtindia.org

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ADVERTISEMENT
-------------------------------------
1. Wanted experienced Medical Coder
-------------------------------------

Profile - Minimum of 1-1/2 years of hands on experience in clinical
practice coding. Certification would be of advantage. Should be
ready to relocate to California, USA temporarily for further on job
training. Permanent position will be at Bangalore. Will be groomed
to kick start a new Billing & Coding unit for an US based company,
owned by doctors.

Pay package will be one of the best in the Industry.

Apply in confidence within 10 days to:
Maj (Dr.) Amit Chatterjee, SM
amit@...
Subject: Re: Med Coding & Billing
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NEWS AND VIEWS :
-----------------------------

1) FREE MT training for women

Keonics will conduct a one-year free computer training programme on
medical transcription for educated unemployed women. The project is
sponsored by the Department of Women and Child Development, Union
Ministry of Human Resource Development, under the Noran scheme.

The selected candidates will be given a monthly stipend of Rs. 250.
Those interested may obtain applications from the Keonics Training
Centre, 97, First Floor, R.V. Road, Basavanagudi, Bangalore -
560004.

http://in.news.yahoo.com/020929/16/1vslm.html

2) Moving up the value chain - what does it mean?

Just as in IT services, to secure enduring advantage, Indian ITES
players will have to ascend the value chain. This means performing
all or many of the upstream activities. Building a strong
consulting layer that will help perform the upstream activities
along with the operations layers that actually manage the
downstream activities would become indispensable for success. The
performance of upstream activities will help shatter the myth that
ITES is a low margin, low value-adding business.

Non-core processes provide the `low hanging' fruit to ITES
providers as well as to their clients. But long-term competitive
advantage for both the client and the service provider is dependent
on the extensive participation of the service provider in the
overall business process management initiative of the client, not
merely in the running of non-core processes.

Service providers who intend to participate profitably in the ITES
opportunity would pay heed to the fact that the current generation
ITES such as call centres and medical transcription constitute
downstream services, largely a part of non-core processes, that can
be easily commoditised.

These services are analogous to the downstream IT work of
plain-vanilla coding that first generation IT companies managed in
large volumes. But over time, the market and customers sifted out
the IT players who could add value in upstream work as winners.
Thus the stronger companies are those that transformed to address
upstream work such as consulting and systems integration while
retaining a stronghold over downstream services. The same logic
applies to the ITES industry.

http://in.biz.yahoo.com/020920/17/1vg5u.html

3) An eye for change

IT takes a chameleonic skill to change with the times. And to
change quickly within a matter of three or four years takes a good
feel for where the industry is heading.

Vardhman Jain, Chief Executive Officer of Vision Healthsource,
along with brother Anurag Jain (who built up Brigade Solutions to a
level where VCs were glad to pump in money, before quitting
Brigade), is making changes that he needs to, to survive and thrive
in business process outsourcing in the area of healthcare.

Vision Healthsource started off with its first client coming in in
1998, as a 60-people, medical transcription company and soon
(within six months of commencing operations), hearing the death
knell of the business, switched to claims processing for the
healthcare industry. Today, it has 325 employees and 17 clients.

Vision, meanwhile, based on the current monthly run-rate, has an
annual turnover of $3.6 million and hopes to touch $10 million by
December 2003.

http://in.biz.yahoo.com/021001/17/1vvlh.html

4) On call round the clock

As the heady years of the dotcom boom tapered off over the last two
years, select streams of the IT-enabled industries continued their
steady growth. And today, they are on the upsurge empowering
thousands of IT-enabled careers across the country. The firms
riding this crest of growth include call centres, medical
transcription firms and data harvesting/conversion companies.

Priya John works as a medical transcriptionist and says that she
constantly needs to push herself to achieve the targets and meet
deadlines. Often she misses out holidays and weekends, especially
when the work pressure increases. Night shifts, working weekends
and erratic schedules have become a part and parcel of her life.
Priya sums up the sentiment of many youngsters working in this
industry when she says: "It's a tough job, but it is worth the
money I make."

And, as hard as it is to believe, the dotcom lure lives on, through
these specialisations. This writer knows at least one architect and
dentist who gave up their careers to take up positions in the
IT-enabled industries.

http://in.biz.yahoo.com/020920/17/1vg5x.html

5) Distress Call?

In the arid economic landscape confronting corporates, the
infotech-enabled services (ITES) segment has been a rare, bountiful
oasis. Look through the appointments sections of newspapers and you
find them bursting with advertisements by seemingly insatiable call
centres.

But amidst all this good news, could a blip have appeared on the
radar screen? A British trade union has forced home shopping
company Reality to agree to limit overseas call centre jobs to 600
Indian positions. In the process, 10,000 jobs will stay in the UK.

The unions' anger at jobs being exported to another country is
understandable. But the logic of economics dictates that companies
will gravitate to where the cost advantage is. India offers a huge
pool of intelligent, low-paid English-speaking talent.

So the confrontation with western unions is inevitable. What could
be the potential fallout? Many global giants already have large
in-house call centre operations in this country, or have hired
Indian outfits for the purpose. If anything, they may actually
expand these operations as cost control assumes increasing
importance. Of course, all bets would be off if, say, a massive
movement got underway in the West, with consumers refusing to buy
products of companies that outsource jobs to another country.

That's a highly unlikely scenario. However, Indian ITES
entrepreneurs must shed complacence and actively seek to move up
the value chain, because the low end is never a secure area. If not
politics, then technological change could easily wipe you out.

Medical transcription, remember, used to be a booming business.
Suddenly, with transcription software like Dragon becoming a
reality, it doesn't look so healthy any longer.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/articleshow?artid=225915
96&sType=1

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All original contents of this newsletter is copyright 2002
Mediweb Infotech Pvt. Ltd. All cited articles are copyright of
their authors and/or respective publications. Please feel free to
share this newsletter with your friends or post it on your site
as long as it is left intact with all links unchanged and this
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Thank you for your interest in MT India!

The MTIndia Team
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