“Patients don’t go to their doctors thinking their records are going to end up in India”
Cost-cutting puts lives in danger
COST-CUTTING doctors are breaching privacy laws and could be endangering patients' lives by sending medical files overseas to be typed up cheaply. An investigation by The Sunday Telegraph has revealed a growing number of Australian hospitals and medical practices are outsourcing secretarial work o companies in India, Pakistan and the Philippines. At least four big Sydney hospitals and hundreds of doctors are among those using cheap labour to transcribe digitally recorded verbal notes online. Prices can be half as much as the Australian rate, or less. But rivals claim foreign workers, most of whom do not have English as their first language, are more prone to making dangerous mistakes and may be unable to keep patients' private details secure. One expert warned that getting key medical terms wrong in patients' records could prove lethal. "If you mix them up, you're dead meat," she said.
Some overseas companies have recorded potentially fatal errors in transcripts, such as confusing "hypo", which means too low, with "hyper", which means too high. This could lead to a patient being given the wrong treatment, making their condition worse or even life threatening rather than correcting it. State and Commonwealth laws ban the sending of medical information overseas unless privacy protection is of the same standard as in Australia.
Carolyn Adams, senior legal officer at the Australian Law Reform Commission, told The Sunday Telelgraph the commission was concerned about the international flow of personal medical data. A crackdown is anticipated after changes to national privacy laws, which are being reviewed. "If you're going to send information overseas, you have to make sure that country has the same privacy laws," Ms Adams said. Among possible solutions were making it mandatory for transcription companies to declare if they were sending medical files overseas or prosecuting those who sent, information to places with inadequate protection, she said. I'm sure some doctors don't know whether it's going overseas or not, because there's no obligation for these companies to tell them," Ms Adams said.
Lyndie Arkell, chief executive of the wholly Australian transcription service OzeScribe, described the quality of overseas transcriptions as "absolutely terrible".
"There is a large industry sending work to India because there are doctors who want cheaper transcriptions," she said.
"But they are violating privacy laws and disrespecting their patients' privacy. I don't think patients go to their doctors thinking their records are going to end up in India."
Mistakes and mix-ups in medical terminology are common among overseas transcribers who cannot understand Australian accents, she warned.
Examples included confusion between "hypo" and "hyper" and "perineum" and "peritoneum".
She told how overseas transcription companies had left leaflets at hospitals offering to do work for 8c a line, compared with an aver
age Australian rate of 27c.
Raji Swaminathan runs Sydney-based Professional Transcription Solutions, which has 50 staff at a centre in Chennai, India. and has four big Sydney hospitals and more than 150 doctors signed up to her service.
Ms Swarninathan insists her staff work for an Australian company and are properly trained to understand Australian accents.
"All staff sign confidentiality agreements for me," she said.
Denis O'Brien, of Minter Ellison Lawyers, warned firms breaching privacy laws could be prosecuted by the Privacy Commissioner.