Firms eye India amid nurse shortage

[pinoy_guy]

sharing a year-old article--i hope this will be an eye-opener for the people who think that us hospitals must hire philippine nurses.

firms eye india amid nurse shortage

[color=dimgray]friday, march 2, 2007

maskareen is one of 46 indian nurses working for focus care inc., a three-year-old woburn company betting nurses from india are an answer to an ongoing u.s. nursing shortage.

the privately funded company says it has six hospital clients so far, with 16 nurses placed at youville, its first bay state customer. founders anirudh baheti and suraj bhagchandka say they have 250 more nurses in various stages of certification training in india. by 2009, they want to bring more than 500 nurses from india every year to massachusetts and other states.

mt. auburn hospital in cambridge and north shore medical center in salem have hired nurses from england, ireland, india and the philippines to fill the gap. and private companies such as universal resources in boston have opened for business in the past few years to bring qualified philippine nurses -- as well as cardiology technicians, pharmacists and other health care professionals -- to the region's hospitals.

but bhagchandka said the philippine market is already tapped out. india is increasingly becoming an ideal source, he said, because of its larger population and greater number of nurses. and, he said, india can supply nursing needs in the united states without hurting its own health care system.

hospitals pay focus care, which in turn pays the nurses. the company handles training and certification through interactive video teaching done by united states universities and instructors, and also takes care of work permits and other immigration issues.

this sounds like the same set up of another agency hiring philippine nurses...currently embroiled in legal problems when some of its nurses left and filed multiples suits against the agency in us and philippine courts.

as i had mentioned in my other posts, us hospitals do not have to hire filipino nurses.

there are lots of other nationalities to choose from now.

exporting nurses to the united states is not a "specialty" of the philippines anymore.