City eyes chat nursing potentials for BPO

A BOOMING industry in the United States' business processing sector is being eyed by local ICT players as a potential industry for Davao City that would benefit local nurses and nursing graduates.

Chat nurses are health desk call centers that provide health-related customer support to big companies who are trying to scale back on employee health costs. Instead of going to the hospitals, these employees would just call chat nurses for general health assessments.

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For instance, an employee suffering intolerable migraine would just place a call to a health desk asking first for advice instead of visiting a hospital.

Lisabel Holganza, president of ICT Davao, an umbrella group of Davao IT players, cited the potential for chat nurses, especially for local-based nurses and nursing graduates.

She said that in Manila, some nurses have been manning health desks in some contact centers there.

However, Holganza said details of this industry are still sketchy as you need to find an applicable business model and the kind of certification needed before they can fully venture into the kind of business.

She said the business is worth exploring because of its huge potential.

Although several companies have been discussing the business, Holganza said there are still things needed to be mapped out.

Holganza also said the medical transcription industry will be benefitting from the new US Healthcare law, will broaden medical insurance coverage to more Americans.

The new law pushed by President Barrack Obama provides healthcare coverage to an additional 32 million Americans or about 95 percent coverage compared to about 83 percent before the law was passed.

With this, the transcription sector realizes the need to go beyond basic data entry to more complex areas of health information management like medical coding and billing and health insurance processing.