Healthcare Archives - GUJRAT INDIA

Outsourcing Transcription to Offshore Providers – Key to Reducing Healthcare Costs?

Outsourcing medical transcription work to offshore service providers has proven extremely effective in reducing overall transcription costs of individual health practitioners, clinics and hospitals. Organizations who outsource their work to offshore transcription providers save anywhere from 40 to 70 percent of the cost compared to doing the transcription in-house, or utilizing U.S.-based medical transcriptionists.

The other important advantage is that aside from the cost savings, there is the important aspect of a significant increase in quality of transcribed work because of the multiple editing and quality assurance steps built into the processes of offshore transcription providers, unlike U.S.-based individual transcriptionists which are primarily one-person operations. With outsourced transcription, you have an entire transcription organization servicing your needs: transcriptionists, editors, quality assurance specialists, efficient organizational processes.

The cost savings are possible because of the availability of highly-skilled, low cost medical graduates in prominent outsourcing destinations such as India and the Philippines. Based on a salary survey report for medical transcriptionists conducted by Payscale, the median salary for hospital-based medical transcriptionists is around $31,287 per annum, or approximately $2,600 per month. In contrast, the average salary of a medical transcripionist in the Philippines, based on an online salary survey conducted by Jobstreet, the leading online job portal of the Philippines, is a maximum of $280 per month! This is 89 percent cheaper compared to the salaries of their U.S. counterparts. Even if you factor in the supporting quality check personnel, Philippine-based service providers still offer significant savings compared to U.S.-based transcriptionists. To illustrate:

A Philippine-based transcriptionist earns $280 per month
The support costs (salaries of editors, quality assurance specialists, admin, office costs, utilities) are more or less equivalent to effectively $300 per transcriptionist
Assume that the medical transcription service organization marks up by around 30%, therefore, you add another $174 per transcriptionist per month representing profits of the service organization.
Combine the three items and you get a figure of $754 per transcriptionist per month cost, significantly lower versus U.S.-based costs.
Compare this $754 per transcriptionist per month cost for outsourced transcription with the $2,600 per month salary of U.S.-based medical transcriptionists, and you get savings of $1,846 per transcriptionist per month, or 71 percent in potential savings!

The forecast U.S. medical transcription spending in 2010 is around $16.8 billion. Currently, only 40 percent of U.S. transcription work is outsourced to offshore providers. Outsourcing the remaining 60 percent transcription work to offshore providers represents a significant cost savings opportunity. Outsourcing this remaining 60 percent of the work to offshore providers, therefore, represent possible savings equivalent to $6.2 billion per year ($16.8 billion x balance 60% outsourced x 60% cost saving). Outsourcing transcription work, therefore, is a significant opportunity for reducing U.S. healthcare costs.

Innovative Healthcare Solution in Pakistan

In recent years, there has been considerable progress in the healthcare sector of Pakistan. We cannot say that everything is going exactly as per the plan, but generally the trend is towards the betterment.

Conventionally, healthcare services and Pakistan don’t go arm in arm. Pakistan’s healthcare sector always has lacked gleam and efficiency, partly due to shortage of facilities and partly due to the unprofessional conduct of the people involved in delivering services. If we take a look into the late twentieth century, there were widespread cases of easily curable yet fatal diseases and disorders. Healthcare facilities were not up to date and people mostly use to rely on Tibbs. Local chemists were not working in synchronization with the needs of healthcare sector. Even the government was unable to bring in ample financing into the health sector, which gave a lot of disadvantage to the chance of progress at that time.

Today, Pakistan is the sixth most populous country in the world, with one of the highest population growth rates, which makes effective management of existing healthcare resources an intransigent need for all Pakistanis. Over the past few years there has been considerable progress in the healthcare sector of Pakistan. Not everything is exactly going as per the plans, but in general the trends are leading us to the advancement. Various healthcare establishments (HCEs) in Pakistan are research based, where they the professionals are using high-tech biochemical and biotechnological methods to test the effectiveness of various therapeutic drugs and modes of treatment being integrated in Pakistan. Government has also played a sustaining role in the advancement of healthcare sector. Latest methods of vaccination, surgery, cancer treatments, organ transplant and lab analysis has greatly helped Pakistan in reducing life losses and improving the life expectancy for the general public. All of these developments have certainly supplemented gleam to the healthcare sector in Pakistan.

The twenty-first century has advanced towards automation and digitization. From business to entertainment, everyone prefers digitalization. On these exceptional grounds, global healthcare industry has also switched towards digitalization. Taking a leaf out of the developed sector of the world, a similar approach is being followed in Pakistan as well. A service named “Healthcare Pakistan – One Stop Healthcare Marketplace” has been launched with the purpose to assist people of Pakistan. This Portal aims to bridge the gap between the patients and doctors, hence changing the way patients and doctors used to interact with each another.

The usual way to approach a doctor requires a patient to physically visit different hospitals to check on multiple doctors, calling hospitals and clinics for appointments and asking their relatives or other patients about each doctor to roughly estimate the expertise of each doctor and then to decide as to which doctor would suit him or her. After making a decision, the patient would book an appointment. Once the appointment gets booked, the patient would wait for the day when he is due to meet the doctor. Once the time comes, he visits the hospital and patiently waits for his turn, only to know that the doctor didn’t show up and the appointment is postponed.

To counter such situations and to improve the healthcare experience in general, “Healthcare Pakistan” is a modern healthcare marketplace that addresses this problem in a very unique way. It maintains a database of verified doctors, which is available for all patients. A patient can scroll through the platform to see doctors near him. He can see the profile of each doctor to see his certifications, experience level and other patients’ reviews on that doctor’s profile. After making a decision, he can book an appointment with the press of a button. The doctor also gets an automated notification that an appointment has been booked. If the doctor fails to make it to the hospital or he plans to take a day off in future, he can cancel all the appointments on a particular day with the touch of a button. In this way, both time and energy are saved.

Moreover, “Healthcare Pakistan” platform also enables patients to post their documents and diagnostic reports ahead of their appointment with the consultant. On the other hand, the consultants can use Healthcare Pakistan as a means of marketing themselves by maintaining their profiles, which will naturally gain more patients. Health blogs and videos will also be are published by doctors for enthusiastic readers so that they can learn about the most trending medical stories on the internet. “Healthcare Pakistan” portal is powered by a comprehensive healthcare information management system (HIMS) named as “ClinicConnect”. ClinicConnect is developed by Softech Systems Private Limited which is a leading eHealth and Fintech solutions development company in Pakistan.

ClinicConnect

ClinicConnect is a modern practice management solution built for both healthcare professionals and patients. Built by a group of seasoned healthcare professionals and IT experts, ClinicConnect brings strength to meet requirement of any size of clinic and yet not compromising on the quality of care and administration.

ClinicConnect offers modern workflows of a clinic including multiple consultants, online and walk-in appointment scheduling, consultant schedule, consultant queue, billing, electronic medical records, telemedicine, voice notes, Email / SMS reminders and much more. ClinicConnect is hardware friendly and is accessible anywhere, anytime and on any device of your choice.

“Healthcare Pakistan” comes in a package along with ClinicConnect which is basically a freemium service for patients, however, a Monthly subscription fee is charged from healthcare consultants.

· Consultant Portal: ClinicConnect offers a complete package of features that are essential for running any size of clinic. These features include patient registration, appointments management, patient EMR and billing services etc. Quickly record symptoms, make assessments, and write prescriptions. Easily keep any size of patient data without maintaining IT infrastructure.

· Patient EMR: ClinicConnect offers a very comprehensive Electronic Medical Record management. ICD10, CPT and customized diagnostics, comprehensive drug and medicine dictionary, audio notes, patient vitals, assessments and high quality video call are part of patient EMR module.

· Patient Portal: Patient portal of ClinicConnect enables patients to get instant appointments in few clicks from their favourite doctors without visiting or calling them. View your upcoming appointments, recent appointments, current medications and diagnostics using ClinicConnect. Upload lab test results, assessments and other documents for doctor’s review.

· Mobile Apps: ClinicConnect offers feature-rich mobile apps for consultants and patients. Mobile apps are available for Android phones and iPhones. Stay updated with your care provider and patients through ClinicConnect mobile apps.

In short, one can see many things in Pakistan’s healthcare sector shaping up for the betterment of this nation. Most of the things are still in the development stage, but we can clearly see the difference that has emerged over the last few years and it can be safely said that the very best of Pakistan’s healthcare industry is about to come.

No More Manual Processes in Healthcare! Web Applications Serving Flawlessly

In the age of mobile and web networking when most businesses and services sectors are going digital, healthcare sector is left no more. They are deploying web portals, mobile applications or software systems to cut down manual processes and streamline day-to-day operations. Expert developers with forte in PHP and other web frameworks are creating complex online applications to computerize major processes and create an effective database. Such apps act as online portals, through which healthcare organisations, doctors, staff can manage patients data, set up data standards and channel information from department to department.

Read below the following points to know how desktop applications build with customisation help healthcare sector to develop an information infrastructure.

#1 One-stop point to store all patient information

For healthcare institutes, keeping up-to-date patient information is very essential. Hence, it should be made easily accessible anytime. The clinical web applications are specifically made to help institutions store securely, access data and handle the vital records of the patients. Everything, from diagnostic reports to medication and treatment details, all get saved safely.

#2 Online appointments

Big health centres and clinics can take appointments easily online through their website portal. Hence, there’s no need for manually taking calls and keeping separate appointment register. Clinic managers can simply book the appointments, schedule them on different time slots and even get paid advanced online.

#3 Efficient Reporting

With powerful data analysis system over online, medical institutions can now have efficient reporting systems. With all real-time data of patients available at one place, they can easily generate reports to study the trends like increase in patients visits, most diagnosed diseases, medicines most demanded and prepare progress charts of patients.

#4 Easy dispensing of diagnostics reports

Web applications even enable the clinics’ managers to dispense diagnostics reports to patients online, and allow them to download and print them. This actually turned useful because it’s seen in many cases, the patients’ family didn’t have enough time to visit the centre to collect the reports

#5 Offline capability

Web application portals are customised in a way to offer offline facilities to the healthcare. They are specifically made with minimal offline capability, so that staff and physicians could access clinical records safely, view docs of different departments, and know about any recent claims.

Hospitals and healthcare management have always been labour-intensive and complex. Apart from handling wide-ranging departments, what bothered the hospital management is keeping a vast amount of patients record safely and securely at one point so they can be easily retrieved when needed by either party.

A complete clinical desktop application, tailored to healthcare services takes care of all that! It is cutting back the time taken in manual systems i.e. recoding patients data, dispensing reports, prescriptions, Besides, it is also helping patients to avail some prior services online, which saves a lot of their time.