It's not just manufacturing jobs being shipped overseas. I'm a medical transcriptionist, and in the last 10-15 years, pay for medical transcriptionists has totally and completely TANKED because many, many American hospitals are now outsourcing to transcription companies, which in and of itself is a good thing (I work for one of those companies); but the thing is, about half of the American transcription companies outsource the work to medical transcriptionists in India who can get the work done (albeit much poorer in quality) for less than half of what it costs to have it done in the United States. People's medical records (possibly YOURS!) are being outsourced to other countries, where they have no HIPAA requirements, no patient confidentiality laws or rules (they generally abide by them as a courtesy, but they don't have to), no legal repercussions of any kind.
There was a case a few years ago wherein a transcriptionist in India did not get paid for work she had done for an American company. After several attempts to get paid, the transcriptionist threatened to publish patient records on the internet. After waiting a number of weeks for a response and a paycheck that never came, SEVERAL people's confidential hospital reports were published on the internet. There were no repercussions against the transcriptionist because transcriptionists in other countries are not held to American confidentiality laws.
In addition to outsourcing these jobs to overseas transcriptionists, we now have this wonderful "electronic medical record" in this country where insurance companies and medical facilities are trying to save money by having the doctors type their own records into templates built into an EMR program. If more people knew what doctors are putting into their electronic medical records and how grossly incomplete and inaccurate it is, I think people would fight to have it changed back to having them dictate the records and having trained AMERICAN transcriptionists WHOSE PRIMARY LANGUAGE IS ACTUALLY ENGLISH complete the reports.
Having these non-English speaking transcriptionists in India and other countries (oh yes, some of your records are also being transcribed in Pakistan), as well as doctors who are not typists/transcriptionists and just want to focus on caring for their patients and don't have time to type their own records has significantly... and I do mean significantly... downgraded the quality of medical documentation for pretty much all patients in this country. When my job at Kaiser was lost due to the electronic medical record and doctors typing in their own reports in a template, I had to take more than $9 an hour cut in pay when I found another job (doing the same thing). Then THAT job was replaced with voice recognition (which doesn't work), and then you add that to the fact that transcriptionists in India have driven down American wages for the same job so that we can remain competitive, I've gone from making a healthy $60,000 a year to about $22,000 a year in under 3 years. And I cannot get enough work to keep me busy 40 hours. In fact, I have 2 jobs and get about 25-30 hours a week between the 2 jobs (and even that's kinda a stretch... it's usually closer to 20 hours).
Let's bring not only our manufacturing jobs back to this country, but let's bring our medical records back, as well!
There was a case a few years ago wherein a transcriptionist in India did not get paid for work she had done for an American company. After several attempts to get paid, the transcriptionist threatened to publish patient records on the internet. After waiting a number of weeks for a response and a paycheck that never came, SEVERAL people's confidential hospital reports were published on the internet. There were no repercussions against the transcriptionist because transcriptionists in other countries are not held to American confidentiality laws.
In addition to outsourcing these jobs to overseas transcriptionists, we now have this wonderful "electronic medical record" in this country where insurance companies and medical facilities are trying to save money by having the doctors type their own records into templates built into an EMR program. If more people knew what doctors are putting into their electronic medical records and how grossly incomplete and inaccurate it is, I think people would fight to have it changed back to having them dictate the records and having trained AMERICAN transcriptionists WHOSE PRIMARY LANGUAGE IS ACTUALLY ENGLISH complete the reports.
Having these non-English speaking transcriptionists in India and other countries (oh yes, some of your records are also being transcribed in Pakistan), as well as doctors who are not typists/transcriptionists and just want to focus on caring for their patients and don't have time to type their own records has significantly... and I do mean significantly... downgraded the quality of medical documentation for pretty much all patients in this country. When my job at Kaiser was lost due to the electronic medical record and doctors typing in their own reports in a template, I had to take more than $9 an hour cut in pay when I found another job (doing the same thing). Then THAT job was replaced with voice recognition (which doesn't work), and then you add that to the fact that transcriptionists in India have driven down American wages for the same job so that we can remain competitive, I've gone from making a healthy $60,000 a year to about $22,000 a year in under 3 years. And I cannot get enough work to keep me busy 40 hours. In fact, I have 2 jobs and get about 25-30 hours a week between the 2 jobs (and even that's kinda a stretch... it's usually closer to 20 hours).
Let's bring not only our manufacturing jobs back to this country, but let's bring our medical records back, as well!
