Medical outsourcing is a business process used by organizations like hospitals, nursing homes, and healthcare provider practices to obtain physician, nursing, healthcare technician, or other services in a managed services model.
Outsourcing of emergency department 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.[1][2] Since 2008 a number of Swedish hospitals have used teleradiology services to outsource their emergency night-time radiology to Australia where daytime staff cover Swedish nighttime patients.[3][4][5]
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.[6][7] A doctor in Tampa Bay claimed in 2015 that an emergency department she was staffing while working for a division of Envision Healthcare had chronically purchased the services of too few doctors, leading to excessive waiting times there.[8]
Nurses
Some organizations have used outsourcing through nursing agencies or other medical staffing agencies to deal with the nursing shortage and as a way to save money.[9][10][11]
Management functions
Some small practices have outsourced business functions to management services organizations.[12][13]
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.[16][17]
References
↑ Boyd, JB; McGrath, MH; Maa, J (January 2011). "Emerging trends in the outsourcing of medical and surgical care". Archives of Surgery. 146 (1): 107–12. doi:10.1001/archsurg.2010.308. PMID21242454.
↑ Aiken, L. H. (1 February 2002). "Hospital staffing, organization, and quality of care: cross-national findings". International Journal for Quality in Health Care. 14 (1): 5–13. doi:10.1093/intqhc/14.1.5. PMID11871630.
↑ Boyd, JB; McGrath, MH; Maa, J (January 2011). "Emerging trends in the outsourcing of medical and surgical care". Archives of Surgery. 146 (1): 107–12. doi:10.1001/archsurg.2010.308. PMID21242454.
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