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News Updates - 15 May 2007
California website
outsources reporting - Associated Press
Homework outsourced to India - Fortune/ Guardian
Outsourcing your health -
Forbes magazine
Sometimes sighteeing is a look at your X-ray - New
York Times
California Website
outsources reporting
13 May 2007,
The Associated
Press, By Justin Pritchard
The job posting was a head-scratcher: "We seek a newspaper
journalist based in
India to report on the
city government and political scene of
Pasadena,
California,
USA." A reporter half a
world away covering local street-light contracts and sewer repairs? A
reporter who has never gotten closer to
Pasadena
than the telecast of the Rose Bowl parade? Outsourcing first claimed
manufacturing jobs, then hit services such as technical support, airline
reservations and tax preparation. Now comes the next frontier: local
journalism.
James Macpherson, editor and publisher of the two-year-old
Web site pasadenanow.com, acknowledged it sounds strange to have journalists
in India cover news in this wealthy city just outside
Los Angeles. But he said
it can be done from afar now that weekly Pasadena City Council meetings can
be watched over the Internet. And he said the idea makes business sense
because of India's lower labor costs.
"I think it could be a significant way to increase the
quality of journalism on the local level without the expense that is a major
problem for local publications," said the 51-year-old
Pasadena native. "Whether
you're at a desk in
Pasadena or a desk in Mumbai, you're still just a phone call or
e-mail away from the interview."
"Nobody in their right mind would trust the reporting of
people who not only don't know the institutions but aren't even there to
witness the events and nuances," said Bryce Nelson, a
University of Southern
California journalism professor and Pasadena resident. "This is a truly sad
picture of what American journalism could become."
This is not the first time media jobs have been shipped to
India. The British news agency Reuters runs an operation
in the technology capital of
Bangalore that churns out
Wall Street stories based on news releases.
Macpherson appears to be the first to outsource community
journalism - work that by definition has been done by reporters who walk the
streets they cover. Macphersons said his Web site, which he runs out of his
house, gets about 45,000 unique readers per month but is not yet profitable.
Up until now, his main help has consisted of his wife and an intern.
Macpherson posted the help-wanted ad Monday on the Indian
edition of craigslist.org. Within days, he said, he had hired two Indian
reporters, one a graduate of the journalism school at the
University of California
at Berkeley. He wants them to broaden pasadenanow.com's content from news
releases and event listings to analyses of issues before the council, and
perhaps eventually to investigative reports. Projected annual cost: $20,800
for the pair. Not bad wages for an Indian journalist and cheap by
U.S.
standards, especially if each one produces the expected 15 weekly articles.
Pasadena city spokeswoman
Ann Erdman said coverage from afar shouldn't pose problems if the articles
are well-edited. In any case, she said, "Local government is certainly not
in the practice of dictating to local business who they can hire and where
those employees should live."
Top of the page
Yes, you can outsource
your homework to India
15/ 22 May 2007, Fortune
magazine/ Guardian (UK), By Stephanie Mehta/
Katie Allen
Few large corporations need to be convinced of the benefits
of offshore outsourcing. Many
U.S. companies have fully
embraced the outsourcing of customer call centers, software troubleshooting,
and even medical diagnoses to workers in India and other emerging markets as
a way to cut costs and take care of business when most of America is asleep.
Now, Indian entrepreneur Krishnan Ganesh is out to prove the advantages of
outsourcing to a different and more skeptical audience: American parents and
students.
Ganesh, 45 years old, is founder and chairman of TutorVista,
an online education company that provides struggling students with 'round
the clock tutors - who just happen to be scattered throughout the Indian
subcontinent. For $100 a month, students get unlimited help with various
subjects. The company also provides preparation for major standardized
tests. All the potential pupils need is a computer and Internet connection.
Since its launch 18 months ago, the company has signed up
some 2,200 students worldwide, roughly 2,000 in the
U.S. That's a fraction of
the students served by companies such as Educate Inc, the parent company of
Sylvan Learning Centers, or test prep giant Princeton Review.
And Ganesh himself is quick to point out perhaps the
biggest challenge his company faces in trying to crack the $2.5
billion-a-year private tutoring market in the U.S.: "How do you get a parent
in rural Mississippi to spend $100 a month on tutors from a company in
India, of all places?" Ganesh said in an interview this week during a visit
to the U.S. "Will
they trust us?"
Ganesh already has earned the trust of one key
constituency: the financial world. In January, TutorVista closed on a second
round of financing, attracting close to $11 million from blue-chip venture
funds Lightspeed Venture Partners and Sequoia Capital India.
Investors are no doubt impressed with Ganesh's track
record. He founded his first company, a company that fixed computers and
other technology for Indian corporations, at age 29. He took that company
public in India,
then took over as CEO of a troubled telecom joint venture of outsourcing
giant Wipro and British Telecom. He then founded one of the first call
center outsourcing operations, CustomerAsset, which Indian bank ICICI
acquired, and next helped launch Marketics, a data analytics firm that did
work for large U.S. corporations. WNS Limited acquired the Marketics earlier
this year in a deal valued at $65 million.
Ganesh says his mission is to use local Indian resources to
serve global markets. "The idea that you can create services around the
world with Internet and telecom connections, that you can do virtually any
service, fascinates me," he says. He says he also likes to be a pioneer in
any field he pursues.
TutorVista is indeed plowing fresh territory: While Indian
companies such as Wipro and InfoSys have thrived by selling services to
businesses, no Indian company has built a successful consumer services
company. "They all work behind an American consumer brand," he says of the
Indian outsourcing giants. "There's an opportunity to create a direct
consumer play from
India."
In
India, too, TutorVista is
trying something new: its tutors all work from their own homes, not a
centralized call center. This allows TutorVista to hire experts throughout
India, including retired professors who are using computers for the first
time thanks to their TutorVista employment.
Full time tutors with the company make about Rs 12,000 to
Rs 14,000 a month ($299US - $349US). A typical teacher's salary might run
closer to Rs 9,000 ($224US) a month, Ganesh says. All the company's tutors
go through a training and certification process.
Though Ganesh likes to be first, he is hardly alone. New
Delhi-based Educomp says it is looking to make an acquisition as a way into
the U.S. tutoring market. Sylvan also offers online
tutoring. Whether online tutoring (outsourced or otherwise) really works is
a subject of hot debate in education circles, but Ganesh insists that
TutorVista essentially is democratizing one-to-one education.
Some tutors charge more than $60 an hour, putting them out
of reach for most families. "At $40 to $60 an hour, you're not really
measuring whether a child is learning, you're watching the clock," he says.
TutorVista's all-you-can-eat plan for $100 a month certainly is more
affordable, and more plans for cost-conscious customers are coming: He says
the tutoring company plans to begin offering new pricing plans - including
fees for one-time sessions - sometime this year.
TutorVista broke into the
UK market last year after
enjoying rapid growth in the United States and it is hoping this GCSE and
A-Level season will bring many new British students. Today it will announce
a new partnership with Letts revision guides giving last-minute crammers a
free trial of its online teaching scheme.
Using an interactive whiteboard, text and voice chat, tutors based in India
are available 24 hours a day on TutorVista to give personalised lessons. A
subscription costs £49.99 a month for unlimited sessions, a price the
company says makes it a "non-elitist product". "You pay £35 to £50 an hour
in London
and you have to be available for the tutor," says TutorVista's UK manager
Martin Baker. "The whole idea of the model is that it becomes as natural as
paying your satellite TV subscription." He says it is scale that makes
TutorVista able to undercut British tutors. The Indian company has 500
tutors on its books and is adding 150-200 a month. It has the capacity to
add 500 a month.
TutorVista is certainly aiming high. Within three years it
wants to have more than 10,000 students in the
UK from about 250 now. At
the moment it focuses mainly on science and maths teaching but the next move
is language lessons.
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Outsourcing
your health
29 May 2007,
Forbes
magazine, By Allison Van Dusen
With
more than 45 million U.S.
citizens lacking health insurance and no end in sight to the rise of health
care costs, Americans are increasingly turning to places like MedRetreat to
help them outsource their health care to hospitals in India, Thailand,
Turkey and Singapore. It's estimated that 150,000 foreigners sought
treatment in India alone in 2004, and that number is growing by 15% a year,
according to the international independent consulting firm Oxford Analytica.
While Americans might not associate developing world
hospitals with high-quality care, and there have been horror stories about
botched procedures, patients willing to fly across the globe stand to gain.
On top of thousands in savings, medical tourists' fees may include
assistance from a concierge, lengthy hospital stays, rehabilitation and
sometimes sightseeing tours. High medical staff-to-patient ratios are
common. And doctors, who may provide services not approved by the Food and
Drug Administration, sometimes have U.S.
degrees.
Medical tourism agencies are expecting this year to be big,
as word spreads and the insurance industry warms to the idea of offering
low-cost overseas procedures as options in employers' benefits packages.
"I wouldn't be surprised if 10 years from now, a majority
of large employers' health plans had added non-U.S. hospitals to hospital
networks serving
U.S. enrollees," says Dr. Arnold Milstein, chief physician and national
health care thought leader for Mercer Health & Benefits.
In 2006, PlanetHospital, a Malibu, Calif.-based agency,
worked with 500 patients, 65% of whom were American. This year, founder Rudy
Rupak Acharya expects to serve 5,000. Several insurance companies have
approached him about collaborating, and he's turned to Mercer for financial
advice on servicing a Fortune 500 company.
While in the past couple of years cosmetic procedures not
covered by insurance have dominated the medical tourism market, now
orthopedics, gynecological and heart procedures are all picking up.
As for the tourism side of the business, Marsek says he
downplays it to customers. "We give people information about what to do and tell them
they don't have to book it today," he says. "They should wait and see how
they feel."
It's hard to estimate how many Americans are outsourcing
their health care and what impact it's having on the country's health care
system. National health organizations say hospital administrators are aware
of the trend, but aren't noticing drops in demand for certain procedures.
Pat Schoeni, executive director of the National Coalition on Health Care,
says medical tourism likely appeals to a particular group--those who can
still pay thousands for a procedure but can't afford insurance.
"Are hospitals worried that millions of patients are going
to be going somewhere else? No," says Rick Wade, senior vice president for
communication for the American Hospital Association. "I think it disturbs
them to see that it's come to this in this country."
Milstein predicts off-shore competition for nonurgent
surgeries, such as major joint replacement and heart procedures, is going to
start affecting U.S.
prices. In some places, it's already happening. GlobalChoice Healthcare is
teaming up with Rapid City, South Dakota-based Black Hills
Surgery Center, which plans to offer knee and hip replacements for under
$20,000 each, Erickson says. Elsewhere in the U.S., the operation can cost
more than twice that. "They said, 'We want to compete,' " Erickson says of
the center.
PlanetHospital is looking to work with Global Heart, a new
Austin, Texas-based group that works with domestic and international
hospitals to secure low prices for the uninsured. Dr. Rodney Horton, a
cardiologist, founded Global Heart after listening to patients complain
about not being able to get straight answers from hospitals about
procedures' total costs before going under the knife. Global Heart
prenegotiates fees with hospitals and providers for every service required
and clients pay upfront. Horton estimates saving patients at least 50% on
most procedures.
Acharya hopes teaming up Global Heart will help
PlanetHospital fulfill his mission of not just being a medical tourism
agency, but the "IMG of doctors" around the world, including the U.S.
Of course, medical tourism is a two-way street. Foreigners
have long gone out of their way to come to the U.S. for the best medical
care, and despite an increase in difficulty obtaining visas post Sept. 11,
2001, they continue to do so. For instance, between 2002 and 2005, the
Cleveland Clinic had double-digit growth in the number of foreign patients
it treated.
But
for the uninsured, who often can't afford care here, outsourcing is a
growing option. Just ask Ward Styner. "This reflects the fact that
Americans' health care costs per person are twice what they are in any
country they're competing against," Milstein says. "And there's not a lot of
evidence that they're getting more health care as a result."
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Sometimes, sightseeing is a look at
your X-Rays
20 May 2007, New York Times,
By Joshua Kurlantzick
Now, the United States health
establishment may be coming to the same realization I did. To be sure,
insurers' worries about quality control and liability risk at foreign
hospitals may still keep them from embracing medical tourism. But with
spending on health care in America topping $2 trillion, baby boomers aging
and the pool of uninsured rising above 43 million, insurers, smaller
employers and individual Americans without insurance are looking at overseas
care as an alternative for costly treatments, even for complex procedures
like heart surgery and procedures excluded from coverage in the United
States. Already, more than 150,000 people travel abroad each year for health
care.
According to ''Patients Without Borders: Everybody's Guide
to Affordable, World-Class Medical Tourism,'' a new book by Josef Woodman,
overseas care can trim 60 to 80 percent, or more, off the price of major
surgeries. Its comparison, for example, shows that a heart bypass in India costs
one-thirteenth the price in America,
and many foreign hospitals also offer postoperative care that includes a
high degree of attention from hospital staff members.
Several insurers have proven to be medical tourism
pioneers. United Group Programs, a Florida insurance
company, now offers plans that reimburse types of overseas care, and works
with Apollo, a leading hospital in Chennai, India.
Health Net, another insurer, now offers subscribers in Southern California
some coverage at medical facilities across the border in Mexico.
Entrepreneurs are starting travel companies to bring
Americans to foreign hospitals -- trips that sometimes combine treatment
with a short vacation or recovery period, like an African safari or a
recovery weekend at a Thai beach. Many of these companies now specialize
just in one country or region. IndUSHealth, for example, which is based in North Carolina,
organizes trips to Indian hospitals; PlanetHospital, based in New York,
focuses on trips to Mexico, Central America and Singapore.
Many of these hospitals compete not only on the quality of
care but also on other amenities. The Apollo hospital in Chennai has a gym
and yoga studio, and Singapore
has launched a series of ''medi-spas,'' which mix medical treatments and spa
services like massage or facials. Costa Rica
advertises ''recovery retreats'' that are like ranches created for
recuperating medical tourists.
But just as American travelers begin getting comfortable
with the safety of foreign hospitals, they face a new question. With
developing world hospitals focusing on medical tourists, some may take
doctors away from understaffed public clinics in nations like India and Thailand,
potentially leading to a public backlash against medical visitors. Already,
the press in Thailand and India has warned that medical tourism, which can
be more lucrative for physicians, is sucking doctors away from public
clinics.
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