I have an easy account and make a decent living.
Posted By: Bitemett on 2009-08-09
In Reply to: So much anger, why not just move on to another company.. - ohreally
And while you are at it, TT Management,
BITE ME!!! You were fools to file this lawsuit. $294.50 to lose all credibility in the MT World. Sad, truly sad...
And many thought you were one of the good guys.
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You are being hypothetical while we are trying to find a co. where we can make a decent living,,,,nm
:+
Can an MT make a decent living earning 7 cents per line
Just thought I would add my 2 cents worth. It would be great to be paid 10-11-12-13 cents per line (as an employee not IC), but that is not a reality in this job market. Yes, MTs will take jobs that pay 7 cents per line, but that MTSO is not necessarily underpaying or demeaning the MTs that work for them.
Bottom line is that you have to do your homework because, yes, there are people who can make a living on 7 cents a line and will take those jobs. It really depends on your skills and how dedicated you are to making your maximum possible lines per hour. The MTSO that is offering only 7 cents a line but has easy dictators can actually pay you more per check if you type more lines per hour than an MTSO that is offering 10 cents a line but has horrible quality, ESL dictators, nasty QA, etc and you can barely type 100 lines an hour because of it.
MY TIP: When you interview, ask what the approximate minimum and maximum lines per hour that the other MTs that are doing EXACTLY the same accounts that you are going to be doing are achieving per hour/day/pay period. If the recruiter/MTSO will not tell you that information, you probably don’t want to work there anyway so just terminate the interview before wasting any more of your time. The slowest MTs are probably new and the ones achieving 200-250-300 lines per hour have been there a long time and know the account(s) forwards and backwards. If you plan to make that MTSO a long-term employer, you will have a pretty good idea of what you can potentially achieve if you stay there long enough. Don’t let them tell you the “average” of all the MTs that work for the company or what their perfect employee Suzie Q types. We all know every account is different, so Suzie Q who just started last week and is already doing 150 lines per hour may have easier accounts than the one you are going to be working on, so that is not very representative of what your account(s) is really going to be like. Ask specifically about the accounts you will be assigned to and don’t let them distract you. Again, if they don’t want to tell you, terminate the interview.
According to the US Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook, in 2004 !!!, the MEDIAN hourly earnings for a Medical Transcriptionist (probably mostly hospital and office based) in May of 2004, was $13.64 an hour.
Just for reference, it seems like most MTSOs have a 6000 lines per week minimum production standard which is about 150 line per hour (40 hour week) on average for full-time MTs.
· If you are being paid 7 cents per line, you are making a minimum of (150 x 0.07) = $10.50 per hour.
· If you are being paid 8 cents per line, you are making a minimum of (150 x 0.08) = $12.00 per hour.
· If you are being paid 9 cents per line, you are making a minimum of (150 x 0.09) = $13.50 per hour.
· If you are being paid 10 cents per line, you are making a minimum of (150 x 0.10) = $15.00 per hour.
If you are one of the highly trained experienced MT and type 200 lines per hour on average, you are even better off.
· If you are being paid 7 cents per line, you are making a minimum of (200 x 0.07) = $14.00 per hour.
· If you are being paid 8 cents per line, you are making a minimum of (200 x 0.08) = $16.00 per hour.
· If you are being paid 9 cents per line, you are making a minimum of (200 x 0.09) = $18.00 per hour.
· If you are being paid 10 cents per line, you are making a minimum of (200 x 0.10) = $20.00 per hour.
The median hourly earnings in 2004 was $13.64 per hour. That was almost 4 years ago. With a minimal 2% per year cost of living/inflation increase, by 2008 the median hourly earning should be about $14.76 per hour.
2004 --------- $13.64
2005 x 2% = $13.91
2006 x 2% = $14.19
2007 x 2% = $14.47
2008 x 2% = $14.76
So, in my humble opinion, if you are an experienced MT with 5 or more years of experience, when you call that MTSO offering 7 cents per line the accounts you will be assigned to should be easy enough so that you can make an average of 210 lines per hour within a relatively short period of time. If they say their experienced MTs are only doing 175 to 200 lines per hour on average, that MTSO is drastically underpaying their experienced MTs and it is time for you to move on. If they say their MTs are averaging 250 to 300 lines per hour, then that MTSO may be worth looking into further, even if their starting wage is lower than what you originally thought you should be getting paid.
I think if WE ALL start doing this, the MTSOs will start to figure out that we are not going to work for companies that underpay our skills and experience. If enough experienced MTs hang up on these companies, eventually they will figure out that the recruiters/supervisors need to be more honest with us regarding their pay structure and the difficulty of their accounts.
Some food for thought !!
More information from the US Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook:
Medical transcriptionists had median hourly earnings of $13.64 in May 2004. The middle 50 percent earned between $11.50 and $16.32. The lowest 10 percent earned less than $9.67, and the highest 10 percent earned more than $19.11. Median hourly earnings in the industries employing the largest numbers of medical transcriptionists in May 2004 were:
General medical and surgical hospitals |
$13.83 |
Offices of physicians |
13.40 |
Business support services |
13.40 |
If you want more information, check out the US Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics web page for Medical Transcriptionist.
http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos271.htm
I make that on an easy rad account
NM
Unbelievable! So you have an easy account and make a
decent living, yet you come on this board and trash TT all the time! That really is two-faced. You don't deserve to work for TT! 
Decent living..
In short....the answer about Is it possible to make a decent living with them, without having to work 40 or 50 hours per week?.... NO 
Thanks. Can you make any decent pay with them and are the accounts decent. What is your feeling
that. Thank you.
Great company other than below. Decent pay, easy
platform, they usually don't pester you to work OT if they have it, they pay for downtime, QA very tough, strict schedule, daily QA feedback, monthly QA score.
If you screw up be prepared to be yelled out like a 5-YO. Work your schedule, follow account specifics, produce a quality product and you'll never hear from anyone.
How do they make a living if they don't get paid for their
services. I don't know that they get a percentage of the line rate, doesn't make sense that it would be like that, but I'm sure they get a flat fee. The MT doesn't pay, the company does. I didn't ask them about getting paid because that was none of my business. Maybe they don't get paid unless the MT accepts a position. A lot of companies offer referral bonuses, could be the same thing with TM.
We have to make a freakin' living
..
Terrible....can't make a living on that.
`
and when you can't make a living anymore--sm
due to schloping American jobs to third world countries..it will be too late for ANY solution.
Can you make a living at home?
I have been an on-site MT for 15 years and have clinic-only experience in several specialties. I am considering a change to working from home. I am wondering if it is possible to work from home and still make good money. Do you folks feel that you do just as well as you would working on-site?
Does anyone really make a good living doing VR??? sm
I currently work for one of the larger MT companies that is mostly VR, platform isn't bad, but just not able to get my line count up. I was curious if it just me or if there were MTs out there who were doing good on VR and glad they have made the switch. Thanks. 
Oh, but its OK that the MTs barely make living wages?
Shall we feel sorry for the poor MTSOs now? Please...buying meat past the expiration - most of this winter I had to hit the FOOD BANKS, and while working full time.
Sounds like you can make a good living, just can't
There's quite a difference.
Yes, but can we make a living with 3c/l doing the editing??? That's what I'm afraid of. nm
nm
I guarantee you, you are not the norm. Why lead someone that needs to make a living into a
situation that is getting worse all the time with lost accounts and over hiring and not knowing yet what the pay scale will be.
i am not in this for competition, just to make a living and feed my family you
insensitive b*****
Move on, girl - gotta make a living
.
Looking for more opinions on Voice SYstems in Georgia. Anyone know about ability to make a living
here etc. Have already been told disorganized but would like more info.
You can make a decent salary but
you have to have good platform and not a lot of people training. I did 750 the first hour today, times that by 4 and see what it came up to.
Some make a decent check
so you cannot lump all together.
MTSO gift to their at-home MT's who make their living for them and all the office staffs' livi
Why is it so hard to share their profits with the at-home MT's? ? ? Give me MONEY for Christmas because so much has been taken throughout the year -- I won't it back -- or at least some of it ! I will buy my own gift or pay my light bill or buy my children/grandchildren a gift with it.
In general, the top echelon is getting so greedy at most MTSO's! They would have nothing w/o the MT's constantly tapping those keyboards . . . and I mean it gets more and more difficult for us MT's as with each passing year to make a decent living . . . I dare say a living of any sort. Only those MT's who have husbands to support them are happy with whatever few cents they are offered, because it is only play money for them anyway. Hubby pays all the bills. I guarantee you that if a poll were taken of the Happy MT's with their at-home job, it would either be hubby making living for them OR mommy not having to pay a babysitter to work outside the home. Those in HR/management, with a little research, can easily see how our paychecks are dwindling month by month due to lower wages because ASR/VR is taking away the decent dictators and leaving only the horrible dictators (who take lots of time to transcribe a quality report), lack of cost-of-living raises, rising electricity bills at home that the MT has to pay, high-speed internet/phone bills higher and higher and loaded with taxes, rent/mortages/taxes/insurance continuously rising.
The office staff don't have to think about those at-home costs, as theirs are paid by the MTSO during their working hours/shift, nor do they have to worry about the lack of raises, etc, because in-house employees get raises automatically with tenure or with a 6-month or annual review or at the discretion of management at any time.
Personally, my line count continues to decrease; I don't know what the reason is because in the past many years, I could transcribe 200-400 lines per hour, and I do good to transcribe 100 or 150 an hour with the horrible dictators sifted out by the VR machine Dictaphone ExText.
Please don't yell at me -- because I am thankful for a paycheck -- but why is the burden put on my fingers to WORK HARDER AND HARDER to earn that paycheck. Don't say try ASR/VR because it will double your income, because I have tried that and know better and have proven that theory to be wrong -- at least on Dictatphone ExSpeech you can't !
The other thief of a good line count/wage for the U.S. MT's is the majority of our work going offshore because it can get done CHEAPER ! Who is all that extra money saved by offshoring our work going to ?? Not the at-home MT. That is exactly why I request MONEY for my Christmas gift from my employer, rather than some promo gift that is handed out to any and everyone.
MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL US MT's in the good 'ole USA ! ! !
maybe you'll get on a decent platform/account
nm
I might add that I make a decent hourly rate doing
QA, but I really earned excellent money doing MT. I cannot complain about my hourly QA rate at all. I earn more than many I know working hourly.
Believe me, one can make decent money at TransTech.
There is plenty of work and I don't think the incentive plan is low at all. A good MLS should have no problem hitting the first tier and the QA incentive should be automatic. The starting line rate is also one of the best I had run across. I'm not trying to convince anyone to come to TT, its not a good fit for everyone, just wanted to share my experience. If one is getting a negative vibe about a company, I don't blame them for not wanting to give them a try.
How can anybody make a decent line count there
I couldn't
if your platform is decent at OSI and you make line count....
nm
Are you able to make decent money? I don't mind editing either...
.
can you make decent money straight typing for .08 cpl?
with Expanders for low ESL docs?
Any of the former or current employees, can you make decent money there?
Thanks
You obviously are on an easy account sm
Not everyone is quite that lucky. Some really have to struggle to make their lines due to tough dictators and voice quality issues.
An easy account; I see, you don't
have to put any effort or pride into your work. Typical of those who bite the hand that feeds them. B**ch and complain, moan and groan, oh poor me, I'm taken advantage of, boo hoo. You have to come here and be anonymous to do your complaining. You have probably never had the guts to talk to your account manager or lead about your concerns with the company. Go back to the easy as pie work and stay stagnant, like a moldy pond.
I was down about the account last week but now love it. It was easy to get used to. The first sm
day was really rough, the second was a just as bad but 2 weeks into it and I really like it. My counts are good too, averaging right around 1400 lines a day, which is good for these old fingers. Docuscribe is great, but I have worked on it before for the big Q.
Agree about Oncology, not easy account . sm
to learn, especially the medications, about half of which are experimental and not on the FDA-approved marked yet - thus, limited lookup and references on them. I did Oncology FT for 3.5 years at the Q for MD Anderson and was quite a challenging account/specialty that had to be slowly learned.
I make that much $ too but i work very hard. Its possible, not easy.
x
Make it easy on yourself and move to TransTech
:0
EASY to make line count!
My experience was the opposite. I routinely did 1600-2000 lines a day, WAY over minimum of about 1200 lines a day. I can't make that now in my current job, but at Spheris it was easy. It does depend on the accounts you're assigned, though, so I don't doubt that it COULD be hard to make line count at Spheris. Just depends.
Can you say where you work where it's so easy to make your lines? All I come across is crap out
s
Not so easy when you make top pay and work days and hours of
xx
Not easy to make 1000 - lots of ESLs or time
spent looking up addresses, etc. They kept you on because they can't find anyone to put up with the low and steady income.
been with spheris 4.5 years, easy platform, good clinic account
nm
how horrible but Acusis/DRC outsources to India, just what Spheris will do with that easy account. n
,
depends; can make more $ on easy platform/7 than hard platofrm/8-9 cents
nm
When I find decent people who know the value of decent wages, I will!
tyvm
Well I make about 60,000 on one account.. sm
BUT... that is having my own account. The norm is working for another company at a low line rate and you would have to work really hard to make that! :) So I understand what your saying. It is a ploy to get people in the door that think they can work at home and do next to nothing for 40,000 a year, and unfortunatley some people fall for it. I cannot tell you how many people have asked me about my work and wanted to do it because they thought there was no work or effort involved in the training etc. Very frustrating!!
I would rather work on 1 account and make more money, than 5 different ones! No thanks. sm
I think their new program absolutely sucks and there are a heck of a lot of people who say the sound quality is horrendous. I wasn't sticking around to find out. I made my decision as soon as I saw what it was about and knew it would slow me way down. Hey, to each their own. If you like it, fine. I am happy about my decision and glad I did it.
I am on a new account, doing work types I cant make money on. nm
xxx
with KS make sure you know the platform/account/equipment/ESLs;
nm
And you just started on DQS brand new account and make 260 lph. You are extremely amazing but to be
honest I dont believe you.
The account that I am on is FIFE, but it is a total outsource. Might make a difference. nm
nm
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