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April 13, 2007 19:01 IST
Some of the hospitals in the UK plan to outsource medical secretarial work to India, a media report said on Friday.
Among them is Southport and Ormskirk Hospital, which is battling to reduce 15 million pounds deficit and is considering outsourcing its doctors' digital dictations to India, according to Champion, a tabloid published from Newport.
It said the state-aided National Health Service is looking at a range of options, including outsourcing doctors' digital dictations, a move stiffly opposed by the local MP and the union representing medical secretaries.
"It sounds like this idea came from the deranged brains of management consultants," Southport MP John Pugh said.
"I sincerely hope that they retain the service locally because there will be all sorts of communication problems both for clinicians and patients. The only merit is cost-saving which is probably not going to be associated with increased efficiency. It sounds like false economy and bad for staff morale," he added.
Kathy Perkins, chairman, British Society of Medical Secretaries warned that moving medical secretaries' services abroad could lead to patient deaths.
"Inevitably, there will in due course, be the death of a patient directly attributable to the wrongful interpretation of crucial word or drug dosage by an outsourced worker unfamiliar with the language or terminology," she claimed.
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