If you’ve had some nasty or embarrassing illness in the past 12 months, perhaps an ailment so unusual or damning you’d prefer to hide it from your employer, friends and loved ones, then here’s a shocker: There’s a good chance that a stranger in far off India knows all about it. And the kicker–it was your health-care provider that told him of your secret battle with plantar warts, rampant hirsutism, and pathological addiction to eBay.

Like most other parts of corporate America, the health-care industry is quickly learning that there are enormous savings to be had through offshore outsourcing. At an increasing rate, insurance companies, hospitals, and pharmaceutical manufacturers are farming out to cheap-labor countries everything from claims processing to diagnostics to drug testing. Total spending on offshore outsourcing by the U.S. health-care industry will grow from $321.7 million in 2005 to an expected $575.3 million in 2008, according to IDC.

Along with that work is going gigabytes of private, patient data–information so sensitive that it could be used to deny someone a job or make them ineligible for life insurance. There’s a widely held myth that federal regulations like HIPAA prevent that sort of data from going abroad. That’s not the case. As long as the foreign processing company adheres to U.S. rules concerning privacy and security it’s permitted.

http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2006/07/more_pennypinch.html

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