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Outsource Healthcare Services to Optimize Your Medical Operations
Hospitals and clinics involve many medical or healthcare processes that go beyond diagnosis and treatment. The administrative side requires several procedures to keep healthcare systems running. These procedures require capital, yet hospitals and clinics of all sizes are facing modest or weak operating margins.
Tina Wheeler, a Deloitte leader for the healthcare sector, suggests that medical organizations consider medical outsourcing or offshoring some healthcare processes to companies out of the country.
Aside from financial challenges, medical organizations are also seeing fewer qualified candidates for healthcare processes. In-house expertise is becoming hard to find. The labor shortage is compounded by new technologies that need to be implemented, which in turn, also require skills and capital.
All these reasons position outsourcing or offshoring as a viable solution to financial and labor problems. Healthcare outsourcing to the Philippines may supply you with cost savings and labor. Needed skills and knowledge may also be met by offshore healthcare workers in the Philippines.
What is Healthcare Business Process Outsourcing?
Healthcare BPO in the Philippines or anywhere else is the employment of third parties to handle non-clinical or non-core medical functions. Healthcare organizations can then focus on core responsibilities such as patient care. The third parties here can be top healthcare BPO companies in the Philippines.
The Philippines has long been a prime location for outsourcing teams or offshore staffing. Healthcare BPO companies in the Philippines cater to numerous healthcare providers. Just last year, Optum, a large US healthcare provider, revealed its plans to invest in medical BPO in the country.
Administrative operations in healthcare organizations can be outsourced or offshored. On rare occasions, outsourced physician services may be employed too.
Commonly outsourced healthcare services include the following:
- Medical billing
- Medical transcription
- Medical coding
- Off-hours phone services
- Medical scribing
- Prior authorization processing
- Recredentialing
- Accounting
- Bookkeeping
Benefits of Offshore Healthcare Jobs in the Philippines
More Focus on Core Services
Because of understaffed medical teams and the overwhelming amount of software and equipment maintenance, core services such as patient care may be given less attention.
However, Doug Brown of Black Book Research raises outsourcing as a potential resource-saver. Hospitals and physician organizations can pour all their efforts and a bulk of their resources into patient-centered processes.
Higher Cost Savings
Labor costs in the Philippines are lower than in countries like the US, UK, or Australia. You can pay a Philippine remote team’s salaries, bonuses, taxes, and other mandatory benefits and still not break the bank.
You also deal with less overhead costs for discovering members and hiring offshore teams. Staff turnovers will not affect your operating costs much as well.
According to Black Book Research, double-digit cost savings are promising due to outsourcing in 2024, with estimates anywhere between 27% and 64%.
Trained Assistance in Medical Services
In-house teams are usually swamped with multi-field processes. One person or a few people cannot possibly do billing, transcription, coding, HR, IT, marketing, legal work, accounting, and more alone.
An offshore team will have the training and the efficiency to perform focused non-core medical services. Clinical process outsourcing companies in the Philippines will also have more experience in performing healthcare tasks.
English-Proficient Workers
One of the biggest draws of Philippine remote workers is their high English proficiency. At the same time, a huge percentage of Filipinos speak English. For these reasons, the Philippines is a common location for medical outsourcing.
Scale Operations with Less Costs and In-House Labor
When times arrive for high healthcare demand, medical organizations may quickly become overwhelmed. Outsourcing takes away the pressure of scaling operations for high demand. In addition, the more outsourced work there is, the higher the cost savings may be.
What Services Do Hospitals Outsource?
Medical Billing
Medical billing was one of the first outsourced healthcare services. It has grown and will continue to grow, according to Global Market Insights, Inc. By 2032, estimates show that medical billing outsourcing companies in the USA alone may become a 41.9-billion-dollar industry.
The tremendous growth of the market just in the US reflects the trend of medical billing outsourcing to save on operating costs. Healthcare organizations struggle with high in-house medical billing.
Offshore medical services may immensely help keep costs down. Small, critical access and community hospitals benefit the most with their limited capital. The benefit is why these smaller healthcare providers make up 71% of outsourcing engagements.
Medical Transcription
Outsourced medical transcription services are a more recent development. Transparency Market Research projects that the medical transcription outsourcing market will reach USD 96.7 billion by 2028.
Medical transcription services are becoming a growing need in healthcare organizations. Telehealth and remote healthcare services are becoming more popular due to the boom of interconnection during the COVID-19 pandemic. These processes require accurate medical transcription. Appointments, diagnoses, and other digital transactions must be transcribed correctly.
By outsourcing medical transcription, healthcare organizations must relinquish control. Decision-making regarding transcription will be handled by the offshore team. This factor makes communication and coordination paramount between the offshore team and the medical organization.
Other Healthcare Processes
Outsourcing medical coding and other healthcare responsibilities may be done successfully too, at lower costs than domestic hiring.
Using an offshore salary calculator, salary costs for a middle-level laboratory technician, a medical advisor, and a medical writer in the US, UK, and Australia compared to the same roles in the Philippines are laid out in the table below.
| Role | US Annual Cost | UK Annual Cost | AU Annual Cost | PH Annual Cost |
| Laboratory Technician | USD 52,000 | USD 49,000 | USD 47,000 | USD 7,000 |
| Medical Advisor | USD 364,605 | USD 78,000 | USD 82,000 | USD 11,000 |
| Medical Writer | USD 80,000 | USD 65,000 | USD 75,000 | USD 9,200 |
Consider Outsourcing Medical Processes to the Philippines
The outsourcing market for medical or healthcare processes is only expected to grow from here. You can take advantage of this trend by offshoring your administrative procedures to the Philippines. You gain cost savings and the required labor and skills for these administrative tasks. Most importantly, you will be able to focus on taking care of your patients in the end.
