May 23, 2011 -- Some of the 270,000 idle nursing graduates may take a crack at business process outsourcing (BPO) jobs that harness the skills set and training they worked so hard to gain at considerable expense.

Fe Agoncillo-Reyes, assistant secretary of the Department of Trade and Industry, said a niche BPO service that combines both voice and non-voice offerings has emerged in the Philippines.

Reyes said EXL Service Philippines, a unit of Aetna Insurance with headquarters in New York, plans to hire as many as 1,000 nurses for its operations providing clinical support out of Manila.

Reyes said EXL Service has opened an office at the SM Mall of Asia, initially with 250 nurses.

The nurses help EXL Service in assessing and approving insurance claims.

They also assist EXL Service in making regular calls to home-care patients to check on their conditions and their medications.

These services, which used to be provided by US nurses and doctors, cater to US-based patients.

Reyes said this new service would open job opportunities for nurses beyond medical transcription.

The health-care BPO sector, as reported by the Healthcare Information Management Outsourcing Association of the Philippines (formerly Medical Transcription Industry Association of the Philippines Inc.), employed 14,000 health-care professionals by end-2010 and earned $102 million, up 11 percent from 2009.

The sector is evolving to prepare for a significant increase in demand for services from the United States as a result of reforms in US health-care regulations.

The Business Processing Association of the Philippines (BPAP) reported that the Philippine information technology and business process outsourcing (IT-BPO) industry grew 26 percent in 2010 to $8.9 billion.

The industry employed 525,000 skilled workers and professionals by the end of 2010, recording 24 percent employment growth from end-2009. BPAP’s Philippine IT-BPO Road Map 2011–2016 projects a 15 percent baseline growth for the industry in the next five years. This would translate to 900,000 total direct jobs, 1.7 million indirect jobs, and $20 billion in revenues.

BPAP said the industry has the potential to grow 25 percent a year. This would create 1.3 million direct jobs, 3.2 million indirect jobs, and $25 billion in export revenues.

Posted by Veronica Silva Cusi, news correspondent
Source: http://www.malaya.com.ph