Omega to add 1,000 people by January on growing business due to Obama Act

The transition to the ICD-10 coding system among US hospitals is the reason

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Omega Healthcare, a healthcare focused back office provider plans to hire over 1,000 engineers in the next three months as it sees more business due to transition to the ICD-10 coding system among US hospitals.

US began transitioning to the ICD-10, the new coding system as part of the International Classification of Diseases and Related Health problems, under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. This development has led to an exponential growth for the healthcare BPOs both in the US and India, it said in a statement.

Omega, based in Bengaluru, currently employs 9,000 people across three cities, including Trichy and Chennai.

Popularly called as ObamaCare, the Act, which became a Law five years ago, provided access to insurance protection to a significantly higher number of US citizens. The law, now, has made it mandatory to adopt ICD-10, from October this year. ICD-10 will effectively address the limitations of ICD-9, the older coding system. The latter, which is 30 years old, has outdated terms, besides being inconsistent with the current medical practice in the US. ICD-10 will have more than 120,000 available codes, with flexibility to add new ones in comparison to the older system that had only 16,000 codes with limited space for any addition, the statement said.

Gopi Natarajan, co-founder and CEO, Omega Healthcare, remarked, "It is predicted that the adoption of this new coding standard will reduce a coder's workload by half, but the coders will need to be well-trained before being deployed on the assignment. This has led to increase in demand coupled with tremendous growth opportunities for skilled and certified coders."