MONTEGO BAY, St James — Sagility, which offers business process management (BPM) services in the field of health, has its sights set on providing sponsorship for its Jamaican employees who wish to be trained in the field of nursing. It is part of the new direction being taken by what was once Hinduja Global Services (HGS) Healthcare. Since undergoing divestment in September, the 21-year-old company has been on a mission to rebrand.

“I can see an opportunity where we can sort of promote nursing education. We will offer discounted tuition fees to our employees to help them master nursing,” Sagility’s Head of Global Delivery for the Americas, Anand Biradar told the Jamaica Observer.

The company views this as part of its wider effort to bring high-value services to Jamaica. It sees itself as an enterprise that offers industry-leading technology and transformation-driven BPM services that enable health-care businesses to deliver efficient and high-quality services to its clients.

“Jamaica can become the nursing support hub for the Caribbean, for South America. Today there is no scale in Jamaica. Not more than 600 nurses come out every year and hospitals are falling short on nurses. Some of them do the [National Council Licensure Examination, Registered Nurses] exam, … become US RNs, [then] emigrate. That’s how it’s been forever,” noted Biradar who is based in Kingston and has responsibility for Sagility’s operations in Jamaica, the United States and Columbia.

The idea, he said, is to provide academic support locally which will see those trained receiving better positions and wages from Sagility, making it more attractive for them to work in Jamaica.

“So basically from a student who’s hungry, who’s willing to grow, and have a career in life, we take them and make their dream come true,” he said.

“They don’t have to migrate. They could… stay here and do the same job and get paid really well, getting paid better than all the nurses who work in a hospital, ultimately,” added Biradar.

He believes providing employees with this level of support will help the company achieve its goal of replicating, in Jamaica, clinical services offered by their branch in the Philippines. It offers virtual medical care, using apps and the latest technology to provide a range of services remotely.

“We have 3,500 employees and I want them to have a sort of career trajectory where they can become nurses for high-value services. We do a lot of education support as a company. Whatever they want to study, we help with their education. I believe that one way to give back to the country is to help educate the workforce — not just get the work done,” explained Biradar who became president of the Global Services Association of Jamaica (GSAJ) in June.

“If we can double down, triple down, quadruple down on the number of nurses in Jamaica, it will solve the career path problem. It will solve the education problem and solve the shortage of nurses in the hospitals. Creating this environment can solve career economic prospects for the people,” added Biradar.

However, Health and Wellness Minister Dr Christopher Tufton has been cautious in welcoming the move.

“The challenge with that is that the existing institutions don’t have enough space for clinical rotation or don’t have the faculty — that is the real issue. The challenge has not been unwillingness to train more but [rather] to train more and meet the standards, you have to have certain things in place,” he told the Observer when asked for a response to Sagility’s plans.

“Advanced nursing training requires faculty, teachers, lecturers; it requires clinical rotations so people can practise around a bit, the practical side — and that’s limited. So if an entity wants to do it and use the facilities that we have, it becomes difficult unless there is a space. Now if there is a space, no problem, because we do need to expand the training,” added Tufton.