Healthcare BPO to bring in $1B in revenues by 2016, says industry group

The country’s healthcare information management outsourcing industry is projecting $1 billion revenues and 100,000 full-time employees by 2016. Myla Reyes, immediate past president of the Healthcare Information Management Outsourcing Association of the Philippines (HIMOAP), said continuous growth could be driven by the country's highly-skilled, English-speaking workforce, excellent telecommunications infrastructure, and reasonable cost of doing business. "Healthcare outsourcing is blazing the trail as one of the fastest-growing sectors of the IT-BPO industry....When the Philippines established itself as a leading destination for outsourcing services, prospects for healthcare information management outsourcing shone brighter," Reyes said at the sidelines of the 3rd Healthcare Information Management Outsourcing Services Congress in Makati on Tuesday. The sector’s full-time workforce has also been growing steadily, from 14,000 in 2010 to 24,700 in 2011 and to an expected 43,000 this year, she said. Reyes added that revenues have also been on the rise, from $102 million in 2010 to $277 million last year. Revenues for 2012 are projected to reach $433 million. Healthcare outsourcing is one of the government's top 10 priority growth sectors, classified under IT-BPO. The Department of Science and Technology is working with HIMOAP to implement programs that will boost the healthcare BPO sector. With global healthcare BPO projected to be a $330-billion industry by 2016, the organization said the conversion from ICD-9 (international classification of diseases) to ICD-10 coding system would be instrumental for the growth of the sector. ICD is a medical coding system followed by most countries for healthcare record-keeping. In 2014, the implementation of ICD-10 in the United States is expected to increase the number of medical codes that need processing. HIMOAP added that US healthcare reforms will also will boost the number of Americans under healthcare policies and create a greater need for a more comprehensive data management. There are already plans to integrate HIM courses in the nursing curricula, the group said. — BM, GMA News