19 Oct 2002

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Staying Alive, Both Sides Now!

~ Subhorup Dasgupta

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Dear Friends,

This is a continuation from Subho's article, published in the last
issue. To read earlier MT India Newsletters, see the archives at:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MTIndia

Enjoy !
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Continued from last issue...

The talk at the cooler (even in winter) very often has to do with
how monstrous the BO is. Popular belief says they are uncaring
and insensitive. They only care for how much they can get done
paying how little and how fast and then, once the CTs are gone
home, they count their dollars. I too would have agreed with this
had I not known business owners as people first. I shall try share
with you in the next couple of minutes how I have learnt to
reconcile my frustrations as a CT with the ways of the BOs.

The first difference that all CTs need to keep in mind is that the
BO is not a CT. Period. He or she does not understand what might
be so exciting about following a patient through a difficult
pregnancy, and then the successful cesarean. He or she does not
know that the dictator is giving in to drug seeking behaviors. He
or she doesn't know that you have been making sense out of the ESL
dictator's fractured vocabulary all these years. He or she doesn't
know what it means to be typing out daily labs on a 12-year-old
girl for weeks on end, and then the death summary. The BO doesn't
know and the BO doesn't care. That is a fact.

Let us look at what the CT doesn't know for a while too, in all
fairness. The CT doesn't know where the money comes from, what
interest is paid on the capital, or how the "lenders" extract their
pound of flesh. The CT doesn't know of the many nice people who
are willing to introduce you to potential clients for a slice of
the pie now and forever, as long as the client is billed. The CT
doesn't know what it means to lose a client who has been with the
service for a length of time, what it translates to in terms of
efficiency of production, in terms of lost income and in terms of
investment required to recover that income. The CT doesn't know
how it feels when your dear friend who came into transcription
following your footsteps and whom you helped out by outsourcing
work to, undercuts you to the very client you outsourced to his
service. The CT doesn't know what it means when your employee goes
and joins your competitor for a thousand bucks more.

There is also the widely held belief that a transcription service
starts making money from the time the client starts paying for the
lines. Let us take a scenario where a BO sets up shop. There is
the cost of the basic infrastructure, the space, the hardware and
the software, the leased lines and the dedicated secure servers.
There is the cost of maintaining it. This done, the BO has to
recruit staff. The choices are between setting up your own
training division or recruiting experienced MTs. All of this has
to be in place before he starts looking for business. To get
business, the BO has to either set up operations in the US to
market the service or he has to settle for middlemen who are a
breed by themselves. The wise BO sets up his own front-end
operation in the US, which again involves space, hardware,
salaries, benefits, taxes. Now business can be looked for.
Getting a client to agree to "try" your service is a long process
and unless you are an established brand, very, very difficult.
Lower prices are not always sufficient motivation for a client to
switch to your service. You have to establish the feasibility of
shipping dictation out and getting it back to the client before he
is convinced. Leads might come from the other coast and clients
have to be serviced on site, leading to travel cost, and other
overheads. Many clients insist on liability insurance, which the
service has to provide. Let us assume our BO is a man with luck
writ large on his forehead and he gets every client he approaches
(the truth is about one in five).

........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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NEWS AND VIEWS :
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1) Max to close IT services business

Stung by the ongoing freeze on IT spending in the US, Max India has
decided to wind up its IT services business which currently employs
60-70 people in India and another 4-5 in the US. The IT services
business is one of the two divisions of Max Ateev, a fully-owned
subsidiary of Max India, the other being knowledge management.

According to Max India chairman Analjit Singh, the ongoing
recession in the US at that time, followed by the events of 9/11,
the warlike situation between India and Pakistan, the travel
advisories issued by countries cautioning their people against
travelling to India and now the threat of a US attack on Iraq, led
to the business never taking off. "We had to take a call on the
business and decided to cut our losses," Singh said.

Max India has four IT initiatives. Apart from the two divisions of
Max Ateev, there is HealthScribe India, a medical transcription
company, and Comsat Max.

http://in.biz.yahoo.com/021008/26/1w5wu.html

2) CMS to Enforce HIPAA TCS Standards

Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) will be responsible
for enforcing the HIPAA transaction and code set standards. The HHS
Office for Civil Rights (OCR) will enforce the HIPAA
privacystandards. CMS and OCR will work together on outreach and
enforcement and on issues that touch on the responsibilities of
both organizations - such as application of security standards or
exception determinations. CMS will create a new office to bring
together its responsibilities under HIPAA, including enforcement.

http://www.hipaadvisory.com/news/2002/1015cms.htm

3) Foreign loans made easy

Taking loans from relatives abroad is proposed to be made easier by
the RBI. Till now, Indian residents had general permission to
borrow up to $250,000 from their close relatives resident outside
India provided the loan was interest-free and was not repayable
before seven years. The seven-year moratorium was obviously a
hurdle in obtaining loans from relatives abroad.

Following representations, RBI has decided to reduce the minimum
period, after which such loans can be repaid, to one year,
according to RBI's spokesperson Ms Killawala. Accordingly,
residents will now be able to borrow up to $250,000 from their
close relatives, as defined in the Companies Act, resident outside
India provided the loan is interest-free and is repayable after one
year, she says. The loan can be taken whether the close relative is
Indian or foreign national provided applicable conditions are met.

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/articleshow?artid=22981
783&sType=1

4) Mini Hi-Tec City a distant dream

The Krishna district administration is drawing up plans to set up a
mini Hi-Tec city in Vijayawada as part of the Vijayawada
Development Plan. The Software Technology Parks of India (STPI) has
already opened an earth station on the Community Polytechnic
College premises adjacent to the National Highway-5 as a prelude to
setting up the mini Hi-Tec City.

Uncertainty, however, looms large over the project as the software
market is in a slump. The STPI earth station too is lacking
adequate customers though it has adequate bandwidth on offer for
the clientele.

Initially, two companies have registered with the STPI for medical
transcription services but stopped their business two months ago
due to the slump in the market. "Some doctors and software
companies have approached us for medical transcription services.
But the projects are yet to kick off," an STPI official said.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/articleshow?artid=237984
57&sType=1

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