More health care companies shipping jobs overseas

[eridani]

http://www.healthcare-now.org/worries-grow-as-healthcare-firms-send-jobs-overseas

After years of shipping data-processing, accounting and other back-office work abroad, some healthcare companies are starting to shift clinical services and decision-making on medical care overseas, primarily to India and the Philippines.

Some of the jobs being sent abroad include so-called pre-service nursing, where nurses at insurance firms, for example, help assess patient needs and determine treatment methods.

Outsourcing such tasks goes beyond earlier steps by healthcare firms to farm out reading of X-rays and other diagnostic tests to health professionals overseas. Those previous efforts were often done out of necessity, to meet overnight demands, for instance.

But the latest outsourcing, which have contributed to the loss of hundreds of domestic health jobs, is done for financial reasons. And the outsourcing of nursing functions, in particular, may be the most novel — and possibly the most risky — of the jobs being shifted.

[cr8tvlde]

1. Holy Moly Frijole ...

Single Payer overseen by the government looks better and better. Soon it will be cheaper just to ship sick folks overseas and be done with it. Come back when you're well...or dead.

[TheMastersNemesis]

2. It Is A Way Of Shifting Responsibility

The reason that privatization and outsourcing is so popular is that corporations can avoid responsibility for bad decisions. LIke BP they can blame the subcontractor or another entity who made the mistake. It is very convenient.

[HiPointDem]

6. +1.

[kctim]

3. Those who make health related equipment

are, or will be, doing the same thing.

[taught_me_patience]

4. Wait until these foreign radiologists start messing up

and the lawsuits fly. Juries will not be very sympathetic to companies outsourcing to India to save a little money at the expense of more mistakes. Penny wise pound foolish.

[eridani]

5. The question is how long it will take n/t

[Zalatix]

7. I've got 2 more words for ya: Identity theft.