Outsourcing Realities

I’ve decided to keep an ‘outsourcing scorecard’ just to keep track of what direction the jobs are moving in the new world economy. I started about three weeks ago and so far the tally is 2-1 in favor of ‘offshore.’

The real surprise, I guess, is that there is any movement at all back to the United States.

I have several different jobs so I come in contact with outsourcing in several areas. I am a coach who does a fair amount of job counseling, plus I do business consulting for small firms, and I also work in health care dealing with insurers and doctors in the California Workers Compensation system.

The first score on my outsourcing scorecard, came two weeks ago when I got a call from a nurse case manager who was overseeing the care of a patient in the Bay Area. (Overseeing is the insurance company translation for making sure they are not spending too much of the insurer’s money)

That aside, she asked about the patient’s status but when the phone line kept breaking up, I finally asked where she was calling from. She said, rather matter-of-factly, The Philippines. I have no problem with the Philippines, or their residents, but the thought of a nurse checking on a patient’s condition and trying to assess care from 7,764 miles away, bothered me, so I told her to have someone in the United States call, I would be happy to discuss the case.

Last week, I called United Airlines at about 11:00 p.m. to check on a reservation I had made for my 91-year-old dad. I went through the normal phone tree and finally reached an operator and got the answer to my question. I was about to hang up when I realized that for the first time in over 25 years of dealing with United, I was not talking to someone in India.

I asked the agent and I could  almost hear the smile in her voice as she pointed out, “Well, United and Continental are now merged and the new CEO is from Continental, and he does not believe in outsourcing.”

I have been complaining about the call center in India for, well, forever, and I told her I was delighted to be speaking to someone in Chicago. Go Cubbies.

Score one for U.S.A.

Finally, this week, I was called from a local doctor’s office in the Bay Area about a patient they were referring to my wife, who is a psychologist specializing in pain management. They wanted to know if we had all the pages they faxed. I had to check so I got her call-back number which ended in a 5-digit extension, which I thought was a bit odd for a relatively small practice.

You guessed it, when I called back I was talking some an ’employee’ in the Phillipines working for a company that provides back-office services to doctors.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Everyone is trying to cut expenses in the medical field, but I can’t help but wonder, how long it will be until a medical office is just one doctor and one receptionist and everone else is thousands of miles away.

Of course, the next step is that everyone is thousands of miles away and the doctor is an avatar in front of a computer.

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