US Healthcare Reform Brings Jobs to India

Last month, the US Congress passed health care reform legislations and the President signed it. While it doesn’t appear it will make much of a difference to US citizens living overseas, Global Post reports that outsourcing of jobs to India will increase because of it.

The headline on the April 17 article read:

“For India, US health care a sea of opportunity

Outsourcing firms in India brace themselves for onslaught of work following US health care reform.”

According to the article, India’s huge outsourcing industry will get a 7-year boost.

[ad#Google Adsense Double]

“India’s outsourcers — the call centers, the medical record transcribers, the software developers — are quietly gearing up for the increase in administrative work and technology development the health care legislation promises.”

Call centers, telecommunications, banking and finance comprise the bulk of the work that US companies presently sent to India. Healthcare currently makes up only about 5% of the total, but is expected to grow swiftly.

Last year’s stimulus bill included an initiative to get everyone’s personal medical records digitized, and much of this is expected to go to India. New health insurance enrollments and routine maintenance of records by the insurance companies may also be outsourced to India.

Currently there are no state or federal regulations which prohibit personal medical data from being sent overseas, although some insurers don’t allow it for their policy holders.

In an interesting twist, three of India’s biggest outsource firms are setting up operations in the US in order to take on that business.

You can read the entire article here.

A quick Google search turns up several Indian sites that offer outsourcing solutions specifically for healthcare, including Outsource2India and Genpact.

[ad#MEDEX2]

Get regular updates from Future Expats Forum in your email or favorite RSS reader. Just click here.