A series of seminars organized by the Healthcare Information Management Outsourcing Association of the Philippines (HIMOAP) aims to raise awareness of the HIMS sector in the country, and elevate the capabilities of the country as a major player in international HIMS.
Called ?All About HIMS? the series will bring the country?s top executives in the HIMS sector that will share their experiences and their expectations about the industry, the HIMOAP said.
Among the topics to be discussed are revenue cycle management, medical coding and billing, data privacy, and corresponding laws especially the U.S. Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, which is the basis for the policies of all HIMS providers.
The seminar series will start on October 23 seminar and two more will be held in November and December with options to hold additional similar activities in key metro-cities such as Davao, Cebu, Cagayan de Oro, and Naga.
The HIMOAP said the the seminars will also incorporate lessons from academic and medical sectors whose knowledge will be incorporated into the collective capabilities of stakeholders in the industry.
?This is a continuing program for us at HIMOAP to raise awareness about the industry. Our audience should be composed of Investors, Government/ Local officials, Academes, Medical Practioners and Graduates of allied medical institutions, particularly nurses who may want to expand their skills and to use it in another sector,? according to Cristina Coronel, HIMOAP board director and president of business process firm Pointwest Technologies.
?More importantly, we want to demystify HIMS. We want to change that perception that it?s a boring, purposeless job, and it?s only about medical transcription. In fact, the opposite is true and a lot has changed since that time.?
According to Coronel, far from beyond medical transcription, the local HIMS industry has progressed to become backend support service providers, deploying services such as revenue management, online and remote medical service facilitators, and organizing and building critical databases for digital record-keeping.
The concept of cloud-based services and big data analysis has also caught on with the medical industry, thereby opening new opportunities for service providers to digitize and synchronize medical records and services.
Josefina Lauchangco, president of the HIMOAP said that HIMS continues to grow at a record pace, generating double digits in both manpower and revenues. For this year alone, there are already 66,000 employees working in the HIMS sector and earning $988 million in revenues as of the end of the 2013.
By 2016, it is expected that the domestic industry will to grow to $2.4 billion in revenues and with 120,000 workers.
