US-BASED Shearwater Health is offering job opportunities to nurses and clinicians as it expands its clinical process outsourcing (CPO) operations in Cebu.
With the current employee count of 567 in Cebu, Anshum Sinha, Shearwater Health’s chief operating officer announced yesterday that they will be expanding their workforce to at least 1,200 workers by the end of 2019, following their transfer to a bigger facility in the Cebu IT Park.
Shearwater Health is occupying five floors of the Mabuhay Tower in Cebu IT Park.
The company used to hold operations in the Cebu Business Park in 2Quad Building. It began operations in 2014.
The migration will be completed by Sept. 27.
“As we move to a bigger location, we will definitely offer more job opportunities for highly motivated, career-driven and hardworking nurses and clinicians. We are offering jobs for about 500 USRN (US Registered Nurse), PHRN (Philippine Registered Nurse) and medical coders,” said Sinha.
According to Sinha, they had been evaluating other potential cities like Iloilo City for their planned expansion, but they opted to stay in Cebu because of the province’s healthy talent pool and its proximity to other nearby islands like Bohol and Dumaguete, whose universities are also producing high-quality nursing graduates.
“With high-quality healthcare professionals, the Philippines is a conducive environment for our company to thrive. We don’t have problems delivering the needs of our clients,” said Tom Kendrot, Shearwater Health president and chief financial officer.
He noted that there is a significant nurse shortage in the United States with over 100,000 openings for clinical experience in its healthcare industry, a gap that his firm seeks to fill.
This shortage is expected to reach 200,000 by 2020.
Shearwater, according to Kendrot, provides employment opportunities for Filipino registered nurses who don’t want to work in hospitals and other healthcare facilities but are still eager to apply what they know in another related industry.
“Working in this industry provides a whole new career growth for them,” he said.
According to Sinha, a bedside nurse in the Philippines earns an average salary of $400 to $500 a month, but if the nurse opts to join the outsourcing industry like them, they may earn at least $800 a month.
Shearwater Health uses clinically certified staff from all over the world to meet the needs of healthcare companies in the US. It boasts of over 2,000 clinicians in HITRUST-certified and URAC-accredited facilities in the Philippines.
By outsourcing clinical and administrative needs to them, various clients can can free up their current clinical staff to perform other high priority and complex tasks.