Offshoring Medical Work Saves Lives
It seems like the outsourcing of medical work to India has been receiving more news coverage. Recently the most eye-catching is the outsourcing of radiology work. The case of Altoona Hospital in Pennsylvania illustrates this best.
In response to a sudden overload of emergency cases, Altoona Hospital decided to outsource some radiology work to India. Round-the-clock radiology services helped them stabilize the load.
Spurred by a shortage of U.S. radiologists and exploding demand for sophisticated scans to diagnose scores of ailments, doctors at Altoona Hospital and dozens of other American hospitals are finding that offshore outsourcing works even in medicine.
Over the past few years, the number of nighttime emergency cases was swamping Altoona's seven radiologists.
"Somebody was waking up to cover all this extra work," said radiologist Richard Wertz. And while that doctor was groggy, "we didn't have the luxury of that guy taking the next day off."
Using radiologists halfway around the world, where it's daytime, "solves that problem," Wertz said.
Daniel Drezner finds a deeper implication in this report: This may mean that there are too few radiologists in America for onshore specialists to fill the demand.
Medical transcription is a hot outsourcing industry. Offshore consultants download audio files of doctors' reports via secure Internet transfer, and proceed to convert the information to text.
But even when the spotlight was on medical transcription, there were concerns regarding the security of transfer of patients' vital medical data, and the quality of service delivered by offshore consultants. The Charlotte Observer article linked above quotes Dr. David Turner, chairman of diagnostic radiology and nuclear medicine at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, in saying that no U.S. hospital would risk hiring untrained, unskilled doctors overseas, considering the concern about medical errors and malpractice lawsuits.
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