A HEALTH care outsourcing firm has chosen Bacolod City as the site for support operation to its headquarters based in Chicago City, Illinois.
The Grab Support Inc., with Assure Home Healthcare Inc. as its supporting company in the US, entered on Tuesday an agreement with the Bacolod-Negros Occidental Federation for Information and Communications Technology (BNEFIT) for a two-year renewable lease contract at the Negros First Cyber Centre (NFCC).
Brandon Mahinay, president and chief executive officer of Assure Home Healthcare Inc., told Sun.Star Bacolod they are initially investing about P10 million in operating a 52-square meter space at the NFCC, employing some 15 individuals, mostly nurses, from the city.
These nurses will be employed for the support operation that the company has in Chicago, Mahinay said, adding that they target to start recruiting in December, and the actual support operation will begin by January next year.
"We are looking for graduates from reputable medical schools with good communication skills and with knowledge about the US health industry," he added.
The nature of their jobs is basically high-level knowledge process, including auditing of the actual visits that nurses in Chicago are doing, charting, documentation, quality assurance, and checking to ensure consistency of medical procedures, Mahinay said.
Aside from the strong support of BNEFIT, the firm officials also expressed high regard to the talent pool of the city, which has schools capable of providing good products in terms of skills that knowledge process outsourcing requires.
Bacolod, chosen by the healthcare outsourcing firm over other key-cities such as Cebu and Manila, is its first support operation in the country.
"If this endeavor will really work out, we can really expand this to the entire hospital and home health industry in US, not only Chicago," Mahinay said.
Jocelle Batapa-Sigue, executive director of BNEFIT, said Assure Home Healthcare is the first health IT locator to penetrate Bacolod.
Batapa-Sigue added that the city has enough pool of talents with good medical, communication, and computer skills.
"We have been ready for the last 10 years because we have a lot of nurses, and BNEFIT has been pitching for the last three years for big IT health companies to come to city thus, we are very happy to finally have them now," she added.