The US has found the solution to its hospital staff shortage: Filipino virtual nurses

In a hospital ICU, the staff remains attentive to the vital signs of all admitted patients, ready to act if necessary, or at least that is what we think it is. In many American hospitals, some of that work is being monitored in real time and thousands of miles away by nurses in the Philippines. Welcome to healthcare outsourcing.

What is happening. They tell it in Rest of World. The United States has a deficit of almost 80,000 nurses and the way they have found to cover that lack is to outsource the service to independent contractors located in the Philippines. From there, thousands of nurses and assistants monitor patients and perform administrative tasks for a fraction of the salary they would earn if they were working in person.

This is how it works. One of these virtual nurses says that he managed to monitor up to ten ICU patients at the same time, but highlights that “We did not make decisions about medical care, we only informed the staff nurses.” The virtual nurses cannot administer medication or perform procedures, but rather they are dedicated to monitoring the patients’ vital signs and notifying them if they notice anything strange or if they have forgotten to give them the medication. They also carry out other more administrative tasks such as giving discharges, filing records or making appointments.

Much cheaper for the hospital. A virtual nurse is much cheaper at the hospital than an in-person one. In the United States, the average hourly wage for a registered nurse is $45, while working remotely from the Philippines is between $5 and $10 per hour. According to the Philippine Health Information Management Association (HIMAPfor its acronym in English) hospitals that outsource this service can save up to 70% in personnel costs.

In addition to saving, a Mount Sinai Hospital study concluded that integrating this remote service benefits staff nurses, who perceived “a reduction in administrative burden, uninterrupted completion of clinical tasks, and the feeling that their overtime hours had been reduced.”

And more profitable for the worker. The other side of the coin is that, in the Philippines, it is more profitable for a worker to be a virtual nurse than in person. They tell the story of Alice, a nurse who earned $100 a month working in a Filipino hospital and, after starting to work for a telehealth company, has quintupled her salary. HIMAP estimates that there are 210,000 Filipinos working full time for the US healthcare sector and the sector already moves $4.5 billion a year.

Nursing shortage. In the US, the problem worsened after the pandemic with exhausted staff who have been leaving the profession. In addition to remote nursing, laws have also been put in place that recognize platforms that offer on-demand nursing services such as Clipboard Health or Nursa.

But the shortage also affects the Philippines, which is one of the countries that has “exported” the most nurses since the 1960s. It is estimated that a quarter of immigrant nurses in the US are Filipinos. This remote format does not force them to emigrate, but it is still a way to divert work and feed domestic shortages.

Why Philippines. From the Philippines they do all kinds of tasks such as control robots remotely either bring LinkedIn to Western managers. That the country has become a powerhouse in the outsourcing of services responds to several factors. The main one is that almost half of the citizens have a very good level of Englishbut it is also because they have a long history in outsourcing customer service for Western companies and there is already an entire industry created around it. And of course the economic issue: these workers are much cheaper than hiring someone in person.

Image | Xataka with Magnific

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