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Medical transcription in Bangalore
One of the most rapidly growing offshore e-activities is medical transcription. Tough US legislation, designed to prevent insurance fraud, requires that accurate records are kept of all doctor-patient interactions. Transcribing doctors’ recorded notes has grown into a major industry, estimated at $6-7 billion per annum.
In the United States, this work, previously done by doctors’ secretaries, has typically been transferred to home-based teleworkers. These people, who would normally be educated only to community college level, are paid a piece-rate for the number of lines typed.
However, the new technologies have made it possible for this work to be shipped abroad where it is done by much more highly qualified staff. Several companies have selected Bangalore, in South India, as their location. Jan Sinclair-Jones quotes the example of a medical transcription centre in Bangalore carrying out work for doctors in the United States. She reports that, in contrast with the US, applicants for such work in India generally arrive with a Masters Degree. Nevertheless:
‘Even though there is a rather paradoxical disparity between the qualifications base of the US and Indian workers there are still huge cost advantages to undertaking this work in India. For graduates in India with, for example, a Master of Arts, there are limited options for employment. An English teacher in Bangalore might earn around Rupees 3000 per month (approx. US $75).’However, in the transcription centre:
‘A good transcriptionist with two years experience earns between Rupees 7,500 and 9,500 per month (US $190-240) whilst some are earning over Rupees 12,000 (US $300) per month. This compares with workers in the US who earn between $1,800 and $2,400 a month. The experienced Indian medical transcriptionist is then about eight times cheaper than a US counterpart.’
She also notes that:
‘medical transcription is precisely the kind of activity used as evidence that the future of work can be electronically relocated to the home. Interestingly, however, when relocated to South Asia, this work is highly centralised and patterns of supervision and control are vastly different to the post-Fordist production units presented by popular images of the skilled knowledge economy.’
Dr Jan Sinclair-Jones is a sociologist at Curtin University of Technology in Perth, Western Australia. This case study is part of a larger study of the relocation of high value-added telemediated work from developed to developing countries which she is carrying out at Curtin University’s South Asia Research Centre. She will be presenting some of the results of her research in India at the Where in the World? Conference.