December 2014 | Learning & Performance Partners, Inc.

In the past few years, the Philippine government has been promoting the country as a major destination for medical tourism not just in Asia, but in the world. Yet eight years after the launch of the PMTP, has the country actually realized its full potential as a medical tourism hub?

A 2013 discussion paper, entitled “Medical Tourism in the Philippines: Market Profile, Benchmarking Exercise, and SWOT Analysis” by the Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS) says otherwise. The paper, which studied data collated from online research, found that the Philippines lags behind Southeast Asian neighbors Thailand, Singapore, and Malaysia. The data is based on visitor numbers for medical tourism in 2010. This, despite the country offering a similar suite of medical treatments as its ASEAN neighbors and at competitive prices.

The paper cites a number of reasons for this, including some of these woes shared by the greater tourism industry, such as insufficient infrastructure and security issues. However, one concern that the PIDS cites is related to the exodus of trained healthcare workers overseas.

The Global Competition for Talent

Filipinos comprise a sizeable chunk of the world’s healthcare workers. A Philippine Daily Inquirer article published last February 2014 quotes Health Secretary Enrique Ona as saying that around 177,414 Filipino nurses are employed overseas. This outnumbers those working locally by around 4 to 1, or a total of 38,488 nurses.

This statistic is in stark contrast to the number of nursing graduates that the country produces every year. As quoted in a January 2013 article on GMA News Online, Dr. Marilyn Lorenzo of the UP Manila College of Public Health estimates that the country produces 100,000 nursing graduates every year.

So where are all the nurses?

Despite the high number of graduates, only 30.94% of examinees passed the Nurse Licensure Examinations (NLE) last December 2013. This is equivalent to 10,977 out of 35,475 who took the exam.

It is right in the neighborhood of previous years’ results: the December 2011 NLE only had a passing rate of 33.92%, while only 35.25% of examinees passed the December 2010 exam. This reflects how a good chunk of nursing schools are unable to truly prepare their graduates for the rigors of the nursing practice.

Underemployment or Unemployment?

And for those who do pass, local employment prospects are scarce. According to the Private Hospitals Association of the Philippines (PHAPi), the country needs 100 new hospitals—equivalent to 100,000 beds—in the next three years to address the healthcare needs of the Philippine population alone. This brings home the reality that there are not enough facilities to accommodate medical tourists, and that there are also few opportunities for nurses to seek local employment.

The lack of hospital facilities reflects a vicious cycle. With a glut of candidates, local hospitals end up selecting nurses who already have the right skills and work experience. As such, nursing graduates either end up pursuing careers in the BPO sector or are forced to seek work experience in different ways.

An article published by BBC News in 2012 narrates how a nurse ended up working as an unpaid volunteer for years at a local hospital, despite having finished certifications in specialist areas, just to gain work experience.

Challenges in Employee Retention

However, the tight competition for local work opportunities does not automatically mean that hospitals get to keep the best and the brightest of their nursing staff. After gaining enough experience, many decide to move on to overseas jobs due to higher pay, a concern expressed by the PIDS paper.

This fear is echoed by PHAPi President Dr. Rusty Jimenez in a report by the Manila Bulletin. He notes that more experienced healthcare professionals choose to work overseas instead of locally due to pay disparities. This trend is expected to accelerate once the 2015 ASEAN integration relaxes employment restrictions in the region.

And it is a fear with sufficient basis: POEA reports that 16,404 professional nurses left the country as new hires in 2013. This is more than the number of the December 2013 NLE passers.

With more experienced nurses leaving for greener pastures, the country is left without experienced nurses. Not only are these nurses the first choice to provide expert care, they can also serve as mentors for the newer generation.

Accreditation as Top Draw

The inability to retain and train nurses is also a black mark against local hospitals who seek international accreditation. The PIDS paper shows that only three local hospitals have earned the coveted Joint Commission International (JCI) accreditation, which places them on par with major hospitals around the world. For other hospitals who want to earn this accreditation, they must be able to meet several standards that require them to develop and implement processes for staff training and retention.

Another sought-after international accreditation, the Magnet Recognition Program by the American Nurses Credentialing Center, puts an emphasis on professional growth of and support for staff. It is also only awarded to facilities that have low turnover rates.

If existing Philippine healthcare facilities—especially public ones—are unable to train and retain nurses, they will be also unable to gain these accreditations that make them attractive options for medical tourists.

Lack of Marketing

But accreditation alone is not enough to attract medical tourists. The PIDS report also notes that local healthcare facilities are not able to properly market their skilled workforce. This, despite the fact that many of the healthcare institutions overseas that medical tourists patronize most probably employ Filipino nurses who gained experience here.

There is also a lack of marketing the soft skills that Filipino healthcare workers have, such as their touted ability to be caring.

It then creates another dangerous cycle: by not marketing the world-class skills and competency of their current healthcare staff, hospitals will not be able to attract medical tourists. Without medical tourists, hospitals will lose the chance to serve more clients and earn more. By losing the opportunity to earn more, hospitals then lose funds that can be used to train and retain staff, or even to upgrade facilities.

As these challenges show, there is more to developing the Philippine medical tourism industry than just ensuring the right infrastructure in place. Policy makers and private sector partners must also ensure that they also develop the human resources that power this industry. After all, patient care should still be the main focus of the healthcare industry, especially for medical tourists.

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This article is part of a series by Learning & Performance Partners, Inc. Here, we aim to examine how today’s talent economies impact everyone, from individual employers to entire industries. As such, we offer workshops to train and certify senior HR practitioners as Talent Economists. With this knowledge and certification, HR practitioners will be fully equipped to help their companies attract, train, and retain top professionals in today’s war for talent.

The dynamics of today’s workplace is ever-changing. In the Philippines, this is due in large part to the boom of the business process outsourcing (BPO) industry in recent years—with its unconventional work hours and office locations, as well as its massive manpower requirements that has led to stiff competition, not just among hiring companies but among prospective employees as well.

Globally, digital technology and connectivity on the Internet has also changed the way people work. Universities and academic institutions have branched out widely into many types of specialized disciplines and skills. Thus, companies have also been scrambling to adapt to new methods to go after these talent.

Valuable commodity

The corporate world is no longer what it used to be, according to learning and development expert Armi Treñas. In her line of work in instructional design—a discipline that seeks to enhance training and learning programs—she invariably works closely with human resource managers in various corporations and firms. Thus, she is also aware of other issues that plague them, which is the hiring and retention of talent.

Progressive HR practitioners are now introducing what seems to be a radical thought, but is actually a simple but effective solution on how to tackle today’s talent management issues.

“If you think about it, the term ‘talent management’ is really just that,” poses Treñas. “Being a manager means handling resources in an effective and efficient manner. The challenge is managing talent in the truest sense of the word—and this means viewing it as a valuable commodity or a limited resource.”

Think like an economist

This is the idea behind the concept of “talent economics,” described in the seminal publication of the same title by Singapore-based human resource expert Gyan Nagpal. Having worked in HR departments of multinational organizations throughout his corporate career, Nagpal gained valuable insight into what truly drives the workforce in the 21st century.

According to him, a different look at talent management these days is that through the eyes of a business owner—talent treated as a scarce resource that is valuated, negotiated, traded and acquired. In other words, the realm of talent management has taken on the dynamics of a lucrative economy, in which companies need to be able to survive using the right strategies and tools.

Renowned global advisory Deloitte puts it succinctly in its “Human Capital Trends 2013: Leading Indicators” report: “Increasingly, many HR leaders have to answer questions that have an economic issue at their core—the allocation of a scarce resource called talent.”

This is where one of the most important ideas of talent economics comes in, and that is finding the right value that attracts the different breed of employees today. Gone are the days when one found a job and stuck to it until retirement. Jobseekers cannot be blamed as well due to the uncertain atmosphere of retrenchments, corporate mergers and acquisitions, as well as the unstable economies of even the biggest countries in the world.

Thus, HR managers are faced with tough issues that require more strategic approaches.

“They are no longer simply dealing with personnel issues,” affirms Treñas. “They should now be involved, for instance, in building a brand that will resonate with the talents they are trying to attract.”

And this involves the buy-in of the top bosses in the organization as well, in order to drive the appropriate business strategy.

Creating an environment that cultivates and retains talent is essential. Sometimes, companies get the right person but end up losing them to competition, or they hire the wrong person hoping that training can fix the problem.

Treñas knows this herself, being an instructional design expert who draws up and implements training programs.

“Learning and development is only part of the picture,” she says. “Training is not effective if the problem lies, for instance, in company systems and procedures. It is all about developing people, not just for present requirements, but with an eye toward future needs of the organization.”

Talent strategy

Treñas believes that talent economics is a valuable complement to the learning and development programs that she offers her clients. Quite fortunately, she had personally met Nagpal in the course of her regional consultancies under her firm, Learning and Performance Partners Inc. (LPPI).

She learned more about Nagpal and his pioneering theory on talent management. He has come up with a solid Certified Talent Economist (CTE) program that he is bringing to Singapore, Malaysia, India, South Africa and the United Kingdom. By next year, it is also slated to be offered in the United States and the Middle East.

It was natural that the two partnered to bring the pioneering program to HR practitioners in Manila through LPPI. Treñas says the program is recommended for CEOs and senior HR leaders—those who drive the business agenda, and those who craft and implement talent strategy to support this. Other HR and strategy consultants, as well as policymakers in government agencies, may also benefit greatly from the program.

The CTE program will tackle four key topics—business and talent strategy, diagnosing talent needs, investing in talent, and leadership engagement. All these will be implemented in learning, practice or application, and review or sharing phases.

“This design significantly increases the quality of learning and application, as compared to a traditional workshop,” explains Treñas.

Participants who complete the course will also receive perpetual and license-free use of all the tools and frameworks included in Nagpal’s Talent Economics book, as well as access to other resources such as a database of talent diagnosis questions and articles on global talent economics.

Indeed, talent economics provides exciting new hope to frustrated HR practitioners and professionals all over the world.

“Human resources professionals need to be equipped with the latest knowledge and skills on how to best select, make use of, and retain talent,” says Treñas.

The Certified Talent Economist program will be held in Manila from March 4 to 6, 2015. For more information, call (+632) 224-2020, e-mail info@learnperformance.com, or visit www.learnperformance.com.

Originally posted on: http://business.inquirer.net/182798/learning-applying-the-economics-of-talent

Where Are the Nurses? The Impact of Nurse Migration on Medical Tourism in the Philippines

Learning, applying the economics of talent

Archive for month: December, 2014