MANILA – Filipino nurses who are looking for opportunities to gainfully practice their profession should consider applying for well-paying clinical service and medical coding jobs in the business process outsourcing or BPO sector, Pasig City Rep. Roman Romulo said.
“We have a growing number of BPO companies here, particularly those servicing the US healthcare industry, that are recruiting nurses for local employment. We are hopeful that these job openings will somewhat help ease joblessness among nurses,” said Romulo, chairman of the House committee on higher and technical education.
He said unemployment remains high among nurses, mainly because the country continues to produce a large surplus of them. This year alone, the Professional Regulatory Commission issued licenses to 22,222 new registered nurses.
“These outsourcing jobs for nurses require strong communication as well as analytical skills, and the readiness to work in shifts,” Romulo said.
He said Teaneck, New Jersey-based Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp., is signing up “nursing associates” to build up its global clinical services. It has five offices in the cities of Pasig, Taguig, Makati and Cebu.
Makati-based VMCO Corp., a subsidiary of Visaya Knowledge Process Outsourcing Corp., is also enlisting nursing graduates as well as registered nurses for medical coding jobs, according to Romulo.
He said medical coders review and analyze in detail the medical records of hospitals, physicians and diagnostic centers, and list out all findings and treatments, including procedures performed.
They then convert the records into international medical codes, making it easier for healthcare providers in America to electronically manage and access their data, he said.
Romulo said Ireland-based Accenture plc is also drafting Filipino nurses for local employment as clinical support analysts. Accenture favors the hiring of local nurses who have passed the US State Boards of Nursing Inc.’s National Council Licensure Examination, or NCLEX, and US-registered Filipino nurses with active or inactive US licenses.
Accenture already has more than 35,000 Filipino employees in 16 offices in Metro Manila and Cebu.
Romulo authored the Data Privacy Act of 2012, which has helped to attract global corporations to either establish new in-house outsourcing units here in Manila, or to relegate their non-core, business support activities to highly specialized independent BPO firms operating here.
The law mandates all entities, including BPO firms, to protect the confidentiality of personal information collected from clients and stored in information-technology (IT) systems, in accordance with rigorous international privacy standards.
The Philippines’ highly labor-intensive, BPO and IT-enabled services industry includes contact center services; back offices; medical, legal and other data transcription and coding; animation; software development; engineering design; and digital content.
The IT and Business Processing Association of the Philippines sees the industry yielding up to $27 billion in annual revenues and directly employing some 1.3 million Filipinos by 2016.
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