Shearwater Health comes to PH

Shearwater Health Executives don a barong to show their love for the Philippines, where 85 to 90 percent of their staff come from. From left, CFO Tom Kendrot; CEO David Bartholomew; SVP Anshum Sinha; chief strategy officer Ted Merhoff

The Philippines’ “surplus” of talented medical practitioners, particularly nurses, has led to the expansion and rebranding of a US-based recruitment firm-cum-clinical process outsourcing (CPO) company, which has helped over 1,000 medical professionals find jobs in the United States in the past 14 years.

Executives of HCCA International and HCCA Health Connections recently revealed the company’s new name: Shearwater Health.

The new brand consolidates the firm’s operations as a nurse recruitment and deployment agency and its all-healthcare business process outsourcing services.

Speaking to reporters, chief financial officer and chief operating officer Tom Kendrot said the name was inspired by the shearwater bird, a migratory seabird known to travel long distances.

“In that aspect, the shearwater bird represents our medical professionals who are now working all over the world. On the other hand, it’s a bird that has around 30 different species, which represents our company’s extensive range of services,” said Kendrot.

He added: “The shearwater bird also has a long lifespan. So we don’t want our clients to look at us as a six- or 12-month engagement. We are here to solve a need for them, and we do that from three to five to 10 years.”

Shearwater Health’s launch was held at their new office, which occupies three floors inside Net Park Building in Bonifacio Global City, Taguig City—around 40 percent larger than their previous workspace in Science Hub in McKinley Hill.

It’s a $4 million to $5 million investment which, said Kendrot, was “money well-spent,” because of their highly talented workforce, 85 to 90 percent of whom come from the Philippines.

“We’re having success because of the quality of nurses we have working for us. We think that the quality of nurses that we have, and our ability to keep nurses and to keep clients satisfied in the United States [is because] we get the better nurses [from the Philippines],” said chief executive officer Dave Bartholomew, who was also at the launch along with senior vice president and country manager for the Philippines Anshum Sinha and chief strategy officer Ted Merhoff.

Kendrot chalks this up to the fact that, aside from taking care of their clients, Shearwater Health also sees to it that their employees are shown a long-term career path.

“We can take a Philippine-licensed nurse who has six months’ bedside experience and show a six-year career path [which leads to his] sitting for the NCLEX (national council licensure examination,” said Kendrot. “Once they pass the NCLEX, we can sponsor their visa so they can work in the US. We can control that and show a career path for our employees, which makes us one of the more attractive companies for nurses.”

Kendrot also described the United States as the “hottest market” for foreign nurses, simply because their universities do not produce enough nursing graduates.

“Right now in the US, they’re predicting a 120,000 shortfall of nurses and clinicians over the next three to four years, so there’s an abundance of job offers in the US for clinicians in the international market,” he said.

Sinha said they have around 100 to 200 nurses “in various stages of being sponsored” by Shearwater to work in the United States. Their BPO, on the other hand, has 1,500 nurses providing to US clients services such as medical coding.

“Even for the medical coding positions, we do hire nurses. Some of our competitors hire other graduates, like engineers, and make them medical coders. We don’t do that. We feel that a nurse is better equipped to handle medical terminology,” Sinha said.

The company, which has another site in Cebu City, is now looking to put up more offices in the Visayas and Mindanao, with the next one most likely opening toward the end of the first quarter or start of the second quarter next year.

“We see nothing but growth here in the Philippines, again because of the quality [of our employees], especially when it comes to their English-speaking and critical thinking skills,” said Bartholomew.