Dabur may have taken ayurveda global, corporatising and then coasting on the traditional healthcare system to a potential multi-billion-dollar business, but ayurvedic practitioners in India — and others of their ilk, such as homoeopaths, nurses and physiotherapists — are flocking to healthcare-related business process outsourcing firms, or BPOs, doubling up as specialists in analytics and medical transcription.
Take Bangalore-based ayurvedic doctor Monika Kumar, whose routine today is typical of any BPO employee’s – shift-based work, taking calls, feeding data to computers and so on.
But Kumar is happy. She switched careers ten years ago as BPO work promised a stable salary, growth prospects and opportunities to work on a global platform, something that eluded her when she worked as an ayurvedic doctor for two years after graduating from the Government Ayurvedic College in Madhya Pradesh. Besides, BPO work engaged her in creating electronic health records, a task that allowed her to remain in touch with her expertise.
And this is not a case in isolation. The assistant principal of a science college in Coimbatore along with 17 of her former physiotherapy students recently queued up before a healthcare BPO in Bangalore seeking jobs. Again for similar reasons: limited opportunities in their areas of expertise and growing potential of healthcare outsourcing.
Monthly salaries at medical BPO firms start in the range of Rs8,000-15,000 and can zoom to Rs30,000-40,000 in three years.
Small wonder a number of graduates in life sciences, medicine, zoology, botany, microbiology, nursing, homeopathy and physiotherapy now feel compelled to migrate towards BPOs engaged in analytical and voice-based work, medical transcriptions, electronic health records, medical coding and patient charts.
“Very often, people do not get the right kind of breaks in their respective areas of expertise,” said Sanjay Shanmugaum, vice-president of human resources at M*Modal Global Services, a medical transcriptions firm.
“Jobs in a healthcare BPO are therefore seen as an alternative career,” said Gopi Natarajan, CEO of Bangalore-based Omega Healthcare, a firm providing medical coding and voice-based services to the US healthcare industry, which saves up to 60% on costs by outsourcing such work.
To be sure, most of the BPO clients are from the US.
Industry estimates suggest the US healthcare market will likely outsource BPO-related work to the tune of $14-18 billion in the next few years.
India could potentially garner around $4.5-5 billion of that business, up from the current $400 million, say experts.
The new US healthcare law piloted by President Obama, which is expected to bring 30 million more Americans under medical insurance, is seen adding to the sector’s prospects.
In fact, industry estimates suggest that by 2015-16, about 1 lakh new medical BPO jobs will be created every year, up from the current 18,000.
Experts say more projects related to data conversion, management of electronic health records, claims processing, verifications, so on, will likely be outsourced to Indian BPO firms in the years to come.
The industry has started gearing up in anticipation.
For instance, Omega, which has around 4,000 employees, is looking to add 150-180 a month from now on.
Similarly, M*Modal has around 6,000 employees whose backgrounds are in fields like radiology, medicine, life sciences and pharmacy. According to Shanmugaum, about 100 new staff are added every month.
“The potential is humongous,” said Natarajan of Omega. “The sector is growing at 30-35%.”
