Medical transcription and recession - some facts and findings

According to NASSCOM, medical transcription is projected as India's fourth largest foreign exchange earner by 2010. According to a recent article in the timesascent online, “The current employment in the India-based medical transcription vendors is approximately 18,000 and we expect this to grow to 52,000 by 2010,” notes Nishikant Kadam, vice president, HR, CBay Systems. “This reiterates immense potential that the global medical transcription industry has to offer to the Indian workforce,” Kadam asserts. With all these assertions there remains a question that in the hindsight with the entire business sector globally in the gloom of recession, what kind of impact it would have on the medical transcription industry as a whole, and if any should it sustain and still capable of maintaining a steady growth. It is a very important question to dwell upon in the realm of the thousands of working professionls involved.

The medical transcription industry during the 1995-97 period grabbed a lot of attention even before the call centers became a household name and a reality among the English speaking undergraduates, graduates and preuniversity workforce in this country. People were extremely exicited about the opportunites India had hit upon and overnight several small entrepreneurs had the hit the deck and started to offer services in medical transcription, although this honeymoon period was rather short and they came to know that it is a rather difficult proposition to sustain in an industry and the type of work that needed some exceptional qualitative workforce and dicipline that they fell short to provide with the limited entrepreneual abilities that they had or projected would require. Many companies closed down and the training centers vanished leaving an uncanny lull in the industry circles. However, we all know how it had hit back with a boom and sustained all those unfortunate incidents in the past and evolved into a very strong and profitable industry and most importantly given a sigh of relief to the thousands involved with this industry in India.

Now to dwell on the question posed earlier about "recession" and its effects on the MT industry there is a difference altogether involving the circumstances and effects that is has both in the US and in India considering the new laws that the Obama administation have legislated that tax holidays will be called back for the companies who outsource work outside the US. Even considering this that according to me the MT industry is in a much safer position and there is no present threat to its existence or growth with the single point factor being the cost of services that the US companies pay to procure services by employing Indian MT services.

Take the example of Cbay Systems. Currently, CBay Systems employs over 5,500 people and are looking to increase the headcount to 10,000 people in the next two years. It has three major centers in Mumbai, Bangalore and Hyderabad and more than 48 franchisees all over India in all the major cities especially in the southern and western part of the country, although its representation in the eastern part of the country is rather dismal. Cbay systems being the biggest MT company in the world after its acquisition of MedQuist have taken all into consideration - the new US laws, global recession and have taken the final decision to increase its presence in India manifold, these absolutely indicate that medical transcription in India is here to stay for a long long time and with due respect presenting innumerable opportunities to the ones who are already involved and the ones who plan to be part of this industry in the future.

The Indian medical transcription industry seems to be growing steadily beyond doubt. There has been a systematic ramp-up and a steady flow of business from the US and despite the global economic gloom and recession the size of the US medical transcription industry is estimated to be in the range of $12 billion which is expected to reach $16.8 billion by 2010 and as healthcare is skeptic about recession, there can only be a spurt in the market potential.

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