Medical outsourcing is a business process used by organizations like hospitals, nursing homes, and
healthcare provider
A health care provider is an individual health professional or a health facility organization licensed to provide health care medical diagnosis, diagnosis and therapy, treatment services including medication, surgery and medical devices. Health ca ...
practices to obtain physician, nursing,
healthcare technician A healthcare technician is an allied health professional who provides direct care to patients with or without the supervision of registered nurses. Healthcare technician's primary position is to assist medical staff complete tasks around their assig ...
, or other services in a
managed services
Managed services is the practice of outsourcing the responsibility for maintaining, and anticipating need for, a range of processes and functions, ostensibly for the purpose of improved operations and reduced budgetary expenditures through the r ...
model.
Physicians
Outsourcing of
emergency department
An emergency department (ED), also known as an accident and emergency department (A&E), emergency room (ER), emergency ward (EW) or casualty department, is a medical treatment facility specializing in emergency medicine, the acute care of pati ...
physicians, as well as radiologists and anesthesiologists in operating rooms, grew rapidly in the United States in the 2000s due a combination of several economic forces, and medical staffing companies developed niche expertise in various medical specialties. Since 2008 a number of Swedish hospitals have used
teleradiology
Teleradiology is the transmission of radiological patient images, such as x-rays, CTs, and MRIs, from one location to another for the purposes of sharing studies with other radiologists and physicians. Teleradiology is a growth technology given ...
services to outsource their emergency night-time radiology to Australia where daytime staff cover Swedish nighttime patients.
Physician outsourcing has led to an increase in the number of people who received catastrophically large
medical bills due to the outsourced physicians billing at
out of network rates. A doctor in Tampa Bay claimed in 2015 that an emergency department she was staffing while working for a division of
Envision Healthcare
Envision Healthcare is an American healthcare company and national hospital-based physician group.
History
In December 2016, Envison and AMSURG merged, and shortly thereafter the company's stock replaced Legg Mason in the S&P 500 index.
In 2 ...
had chronically purchased the services of too few doctors, leading to excessive waiting times there.
Nurses
Some organizations have used outsourcing through
nursing agencies or other medical staffing agencies to deal with the
nursing shortage
A nursing shortage occurs when the demand for nursing professionals, such as Registered Nurses (RNs), exceeds the supply locallywithin a health care facilitynationally or globally. It can be measured, for instance, when the nurse-to-patient r ...
and as a way to save money.
Management functions
Some small practices have outsourced business functions to management services organizations.
Hospitals and medical centers also outsource
revenue cycle management functions and real estate management.
Medical tourism
People needing or wanting healthcare sometimes make decisions to seek care in a different jurisdiction; the decision may be based on lack of quality, availability, or legality in the person's home jurisdiction, or it may be a business decision based on the cost of acquiring the care. This form of medical outsourcing on the consumer side is generally called
medical tourism
Medical tourism refers to people traveling abroad to obtain medical treatment. In the past, this usually referred to those who traveled from less-developed countries to major medical centers in highly developed countries for treatment unavailable a ...
.
References
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Health care management