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Any solutions that help lower administrative costs thereby freeing clinician time to concentrate on front-line patient care resonates well with healthcare industry professionals. With this in mind, offshore locations are becoming a compelling case in the overall mix of the healthcare sectors' provision of patient care.

Many traditional offshore locations such as India and the Philippines have developed successful back-office services for the healthcare field. By implementing a successful customer-facing end, offshore providers have the possibility of adding such value-added services to their healthcare repertoire in the future, thus potentially becoming a one-stop shop for investors in this field. Some key back-office functions in healthcare include:

• Physician transcription services;
• Claims transcription services;
• Medical coding;
• Billing services.

The Brief outlines the key issues surrounding contact center outsourcing in healthcare from the perspective of offshore service providers. Due in part to the fact it is and will remain the world's largest national healthcare market, as well as due to its commercial nature, the Brief is focused on the US healthcare system.

Datamonitor estimates that 6,000 healthcare contact center agent positions* (APs) in the US are outsourced domestically. This accounts for nearly 8% of call center agent positions dedicated to healthcare contact center services.

The most dominant sub-vertical investing in contact center outsourcing in the US is expected to be healthcare providers, accounting for nearly 45% of spend through 2008, followed by the health insurance sector with 38%, with Pharmaceuticals accounting for the balance of outsourced contact center investment.

According to Datamonitor, offshore providers have an excellent opportunity to promote high-quality contact center services to investors at reduced prices, so as to allow healthcare firms to concentrate resources on patient care.

Understandably, healthcare is a sensitive market in any country, and is therefore more regulated than other industries. If offshore providers wish to make a move into value-added services, they will need not only qualified medical professionals such as nurses and pharmacists, but also ones that are certified in the jurisdictions where they are servicing patients.

There is also the issue of legal compliance. Offshore companies need to provide western clients with guarantees related to data protection provisions, privacy compliance and security regulations. Failure to include such standards in contracts will nearly certainly result in failure to win business.

"Potential healthcare investors may not feel as much pressure to keep services domestic, or 'in-house' as in the recent past", says Ryan. "Since the 2004 US presidential election, the attitudes of the general public and the media toward offshoring services has gradually improved. Together with this, given the breadth of other sensitive industries (such as financial services) that have successfully used offshoring as a means of reducing costs, coupled with the large back-office presence for medical services in locations such as India, this concern will likely diminish over the long term."