Six American firms with combined estimated investments of $100 million are outsourcing their non-voice services to the Philippines and are expected to create 10,000 jobs, Board of Investments managing head Cristino L. Panlilio said.
Panlilio, who has just arrived from an investment mission abroad, refused to identify these firms but said these are new players in the market.
Earlier, the BoI also reported that leading American insurance firm AETNA will tap Filipino nurses without jobs to provide clinical support for its insurance claims and to provide service to home care patients in the US .
Board of Investments executive director Fe Reyes-Agoncillo said there are two components for this niche project.
“There are 30,000 unemployed nurses in the country and some of them have the opportunity to provide clinical support to these American patients,” Agoncillo said.
AETNA has tapped EXL Service, a local firm that directly transacts business with AETNA .
For the first project component, Agoncillo said that 250 nurses are already working to provide assessment on medical claims by patients who are going to undertake treatment of their illnesses.
The potential is to hire a total of 500 Filipino nurses who would undertake the job.
According to Reyes, Filipino nurses’ job here is to evaluate requests for insurance coverage and relay back to the US their assessments. Filipino nurses, however, cannot deny a patient’s requests for insurance coverage.
Should their evaluation say a particular request should be denied because it is not covered, all they have to do is forward it to the US where an American doctor would be the one to convey the denial of such request.
This job was used to be undertaken by nurses and doctors in the US but the American insurance firm has decided to outsource this service to the Philippines Nurses would fit this job because they are at least familiar with the technical terms and ailments.
The other project component also involves the hiring of services of nurses to provide home care patients to American patients.
This team of nurses will take on the services that nurses in the US used to provide to home care patients. Nurses in the US either call or visit home care patients to check on them, if they have already taken their medicines, among others.
In this case, the Filipino nurses in Manila will call the home care patients to check if they have taken their medication and determine if they are well.
This team will start with 250 nurses in the next 12 months and is hoping to ramp up to 1,000 in a couple of years as more business come in.
This is a niche job, a combination of voice and non-voice, Reyes said
