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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated
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To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (14851)11/2/2003 12:45:52 PM
From: LindyBill   of 793790
 
Hey, Lizzie! Here's an outsourcing argument you haven't heard of! MedPundit
___________________________________________

Hazards of Outsourcing: You may not realize this, but a heck of a lot of medical transcription is outsourced to the Third World these days, usually to Pakistan and India. That raises concerns about the confidentiaility of records:

A woman in Pakistan doing cut-rate clerical work for UCSF Medical Center threatened to post patients' confidential files on the Internet unless she was paid more money.To show she was serious, the woman sent UCSF an e-mail earlier this month with actual patients' records attached.

....She wrote: "Your patient records are out in the open to be exposed, so you better track that person and make him pay my dues or otherwise I will expose all the voice files and patient records of UCSF Parnassus and Mt. Zion campuses on the Internet."

Actual files containing dictation from UCSF doctors were attached to the e- mail. The files reportedly involved two patients.

A doctor in my city runs a side business in international dictation. Rumor has it that his workers are his Indian relatives. A lot of my colleagues switched to his company a few years ago to save money. They were ecstatic with the turn-around time. Since the transcribers were half a world away, the transcriptions came back the next morning. The privacy aspect was always worrisome, though. Having patient records zipping around the Internet just didn't seem right. It's one reason my office didn't hop on the band wagon. Glad we didn't.

UPDATE: A reader emails to say that one California legislator is proposing a law that will forbid any California medical records from leaving the country, and wonders how this will affect people who move overseas to work.
medpundit.blogspot.com
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