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Nurses can now serve foreign patients via the Internet
By Ma. Elisa P. Osorio (The Philippine Star) Updated September 10, 2009 12:00 AM

MANILA, Philippines - Nurses who cannot be employed overseas due to lack of working visas can now serve foreign patients through the world’s first borderless healthcare knowledge process outsourcing (kpo) here in the country.

During yesterday’s press conference at Ascott Makati, Dr. Wei Siang Yu founder of the FlyFreeForHealth announced that he will be investing $2 to $4 million here for two kpo centers.

Data showed that there are 20,000 new nurses yearly and as of 2008, the number of unemployed nurses has already reached 400,000.

The two centers which will open simultaneously will be located in Pasay and Davao. “The Philippines will be a major center for us,” Wei said.

The Davao facility will employ 100 nurses while the Pasay center will have 50 nurses in the next six months.

Wei said that they are closely coordinating with the five major hospitals in the country including The Asian Hospital and St. Lukes.

Wei explained that the nurses will act as medical butlers who can attend to the needs of patients worldwide through the Internet. He explained that the country will be the hub for its medical services as 50 percent of the work will be done in the Philippines.

The Life-Stage Communication (LSC) will provide design, implementation and management of solutions for the everyday challenges faced by medical institutions and service providers.

“These initiative will kick-start the transformation process for the current system of exporting healthcare human resource,” Wei said.

“Filipino health professionals are well positioned to discover and tap into new opportunities like Medical Concierge Management, Borderless Multi-Disciplinary Management and Borderless Collaborative Care in the healthcare industry today,” Wei added.

The convergence of technology, global value chain management as well as the development of new hybrid vocations like the medical butler in medical tourism has made the evolution of healthcare business process outsourcing.

LSC’s lifestage-complaint health solutions and patient’s communications will allow hospitals to move away from the earlier models of healthcare business process outsourcing like medical transcription and payment processing.

Source: http://www.philstar.com