Healthcare BPO firm prefers PHL as site for expansion

HEALTHCARE business process outsourcing (BPO) and nurse recruitment firm Shearwater Health is tagging the Philippines, still, as its preferred site for expansion, citing the hiring of at least 500 more employees in its new facility outside of Metro Manila.

One of the few BPOs in the country purely delivering healthcare processing, Shearwater sees its workforce growing from the current 1,500 -1,800 clinicians employed, to 2,000 by the second quarter of 2017.

Shearwater Health, formerly known as HCCA Health Connections and HCCA International, is composed of two business units: nurse recruitment and clinical-process outsourcing (CPO). Through its nurse-recruitment operations, its legacy business, it has sent over 1,000 Filipino nurses to the US to service American hospitals since 2000.

Anshum Sinha, senior vice president and country manager of Shearwater Health Philippines, said since the beginning of the year, its employment contracts for nurse deployment in the next three to four years has already jumped to 200.

Bulk of the business is taken up by its CPO operations, which is on a steady path of expansion.

“We’re looking to expand to more than 2,000 our nurses, doctors and medical workers who are our employees in the next 12 months. We’re looking to open another facility by the first quarter to the second quarter of next year. That’ll help us increase our employee base,” Sinha said.

“We remain committed to the Philippines as a location. At least from a CPO perpective, right now, we’re not evaluating to supply our CPO business from any other country,” Sinha said.

The company’s client base is composed of group health insurance companies, workers’ compensation and disability providers, and hospital providers. A fourth vertical of pharmaceutical and life sciences will be added soon.

“This is our fifth expansion in the Philippines, and we’re enjoying tremendous growth,” said Ted Meerhoff, chief strategy officer of Shearwater, referring to the company’s new site in Bonifacio Global City’s Net Lima Park building.

Shearwater operates three floors in Net Lima Park and one in Cebu Ayala Business Park. It is slated to open a fifth site by year-end.

Sinha said they are looking at Iloilo, Bacolod, or Davao.

Shearwater Philippines is one of the larger employers of licensed clinicians, whether Philippine- or US-licensed, outside of hospitals.

Source: http://goo.gl/uas6zC