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Serving Over 20,000 US Medical Transcriptionists

I left Focus in January.

Posted By: Moved On on 2007-05-28
In Reply to: Focus - mk

I have mixed feelings about them after looking back. I will say that I was very grateful to them for hiring me fresh out of school and giving me the opportunity to work in this field. As a newbie, it is very hard to find work as an MT.

When I first started with them (for about the 1st 4-6 months) everything was wonderful and I had no complaints at all. After that, however, things started to unravel. My supervisor stopped communicating with those of us on his team, workload plummeted, and everything started going to VR. I was having a very hard time keeping the bills paid because with all the VR, my paychecks were significantly less than they were before. Because it was a new system, the VR hadn't been trained yet, so each report pretty much had to be retyped from the very beginning...for half the pay rate. I have been gone since January, but I still get emails on almost a daily basis telling me there are X number of STAT reports, etc.

Anyhow, I have moved on now and work for a great company. Like I said, I am very appreciative of Focus for giving me the opportunity fresh out of school, but I'm glad I am not with them anymore.

I'm sure there are people who could be with them for a very long time and be perfectly happy. I'm just not one of them.


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For radiology, Keystrokes is the best. I worked at MQ for 8 years and left in January. sm
Wish I had done it two years ago. Lots of work, easy accounts, great team leads! I am making less per report but more each check because of better account with more work available!
This is January. It is always slow in January. Part of MT. sm

This is the normal situation during the holidays and January and then accounts usually pick back up.  It was that way when I worked in a hospital, that way when I had my own accounts and that way now that I work for a service.  It always picks up.


My husband and son are both in construction for the State of Illinois, working in concrete.  We know that they are always laid off for most of the winter, and we plan around it.  It is part of the job, just like it is in transcription.


Next year,  we're going to be smart about it.  We are both slow at this time of year so we are planning a vacation somewhere warm.  We'll spend on vacation what we'll save on our heating bills, not really but will save something, and on gas in our cars. 


In the next few months, these same people will complain that they have too much work and no time to do anything. 


 


MQ until January 1, then no more.
x
Been with them since January and have
not had any problems at all. Staff is super nice and very helpful.  Was taken off of QA after my first three reports.  Vianeta is very user friendly.  Pay is mailed on time.  I have no complaints.  Line count got up to par very quickly.
I have been with KS since January. What would you like to know? nm
I'll help if I can.
Believe that's until January
but am I wrong? Information does seem contradictory, muddy at best.
I have worked for them since January...
there is definitely plenty of work, they are VERY sweet people.  I recommend them! 
I applied with them on January 4th and just got a
account starting next week.  They sent me a bogus looking transcription test with the incorrect words underlined in red (duhh, just do a spell check) and you'll ACE this test.  They also sent about 6 files to transcribe.  I have over 15 years of experience, I no longer test for positions.  I have a packed resume, so I don't feel I should.  I tested for the position I currently have, but I only had to transcribe 2 files, and the test I think a newbie could pass halfway through an MT course.  I aced that test.  I have that job, and it is wonderful with great people that get back to me in like 5 minutes when I have a question or technical issue.  I have decided that with the way my resume looks, I am not testing any longer if I ever need another job, which I highly doubt because the job I have now throws work at me left and right.  I was out of their QA in like 3 days.  They totally respect me and do not use IM at all.  They don't believe in it.  I was not impressed at all with American Transcription.  I thought the e-mail was unprofessional and also a way off base since I had applied so long ago. 
I started MW in January

It shows that they are taking out SS.  At the end of the year am I going to find out they didn't.   If they didn't.  Were is that money going? 


Is that what is going on.  They show that they are taking out and people are finding out that they didn't? 


Got the email January 8th.
nm
January 1st doomsday

In my opinion, from the 2nd conference call MDI has no clue what will happen with our pay and schedules come January 1st.  Seems like they would have asked Trascend about their pay scale, etc. but it appears they have no answers to those questions at this time (or they don't want to tell us).


 


Focus, focus, focus on your work. It's amazing what you can do! nm
x
When I was hired back in January they sm
offered $500.00 bonus. After the 3 months they automatically put in paycheck.
I posted this on January 12, no answer
Somebody answer, even if you have to make up sumpin.
They had an ad back in mid January, so maybe that is why it is so slow now
nm
This happened to me in January of this year... SM

You have every right to feel paranoid and betrayed.  That is exactly how I felt.  My employer, knew well in advance that they were going to outsource the entire department and yet our supervisor told us in a meeting that they were looking at outside services for overflow work only and that we should not be worried, our jobs were safe.


I was worried and said as much to the other MTs at the Christmas party.  Some agreed with me, but others said there was no way this hospital would even consider outsourcing transcription.  The doctors would hate it and complain. 


Next thing you know, we get an email saying in lieu of our quarterly department meeting, we were going to be scheduled for one on one meetings with the boss.  The first person went in and came back home, emailed us and said guess what, we're fired.  It was horrible, horrible, horrible!  I know that management knew months before that this was in the works.  They knew at our last meeting when they looked us in the eyes and told us not to worry. 


They acted like we should be grateful that the service that had decided to go with was offering us all jobs.  We went from hourly with incentive and excellent benefits to per line, crappy benefits, and facing the possibility of working on other accounts because ours kept running out which meant low production which meant a pay cut.


I refused to go with the service.  Maybe I'm too prideful or too bitter, but I couldn't do it, especially since the service they went with offshores.  So I channeled my bitterness into making it known to the community that their beloved community hospital was now offshoring medical info to India.  I wrote letters to all the local papers, had an interview with a local reporter, and put the hospital administrator on the hot seat for a while because he kept having to talk to the papers telling them he requested his hospital's work not be offshored.


They will not soon forget me and that helped me get over it.  Now, I'm working as an Editor and love it.  I've moved on, but as you can see, I still have bad memories. 


You have every right to feel the way you do and you should be very cautious whatever you decide.  I will never be lured into a false sense of security ever again.  I have come to realize there is no job security in transcription anymore. 


Hope everything works out for you!


An ad here back in January said they paid on a
s
In January, their software was SoftMed & you still
s
Medware is just starting to in January. nm
x
Signed mine in January
so, how convenient is that?
do you realize you are posting to posts from January of

I was told last January all team leads would be

in the U.S. by summer along with the QA team.  Come May, I was canned along with a bunch of other QA and management people.  Strange dontcha think?  Now they are singing the same tune to a different audience.  See ya at the unemployment office...


Do the MQ firm scheduled start immediately or in January? nm
nm
I last used it the second week of January. Maybe your company's version was better than the compa
?
They have a history of pay problems. In January, the owner told us sm
all that she could not pay us and that it would happen again in July. I have had 8 bounced checks, dozens of late checks and a few no check situations in the past 2 years. Not sure why I stayed but I am much happier now that I moved on.
If it's the one in the Carolinas, they offer 7.5 cpl and use MPWord, or did in January. Nice
s
fixed by January, I was told. I love my boss. Maybe you sm
were not a great employee! Ever thought of that?
Well, forget about LPH average. All that is gonna change in January. sm
no more bonus money BASED on LPH but total lines. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. I hope Non-National has already left Webmedx. She doesn't deserve to work here.
They said they have very few IC positions, and this would be discussed in January with Human Resourc
thus they are going to try to get you to go full-time employee and get benefits and take a lower pay. Did you not notice how she was trying to play up the you will get benes now BS?
Has anyone ever left Keystrokes and gone back? I left a few months ago and realize that I made a

nm


It is as simple as filling out a form. I did it when I left an MTSO and when I left sm
a non-MT position at a company years ago.

What company? I did not know that any of them offer 401K anymore.
may I ask why you left? nm
,,
I would keep looking. I left after a
month because of the very low and convoluted pay scale, as well as the fact that I was never kept on an account long enough to build up any speed. Unless things have changed, you'll waste a lot of time looking up information that other services provide. They're nice people and they paid on time, but I didn't see enough earning potential so I moved on. BTW, I had 15 years of experience at that time and 99+% QA scores.
When I left
I was told by my PS that if I went with another company, MQ would one day buy it and then fire any MQ working there who had left MQ for that company. At the time it seemed like an empty threat, but who knows?
I did too, but left them behind and
if you want to email me I will tell you about my experience. I do not like the idea of posting negative things on this board, as everyone finds a company to be different for them. If interested, I will be glad to share.
I tell you why I left

Did you notice on Spantel the time difference?  You could be working in the evening yet the system would show it was the next day?  I was told about that when I was hired, yet I was constantly hearing from my manager about not having enough lines and there they were, credited for the next day.  They lost paperwork constantly as well and I had to work an entire month before getting paid because somebody lost the paperwork I filled out. 


I'd check my lines and see a list of jobs that showed 0 lines...yet go back in later and some would be there.  It was very very inconsistent.


 


LOL - that's why I left!!

That is why I left
nn
will anybody be left?
OMG, I know how you feel. My position was also outsourced after 20 years. I currently work for a national; but I feel there is no job security. So, I plan to go back to school and get out of transcription. This is not a profession that I would advise anybody to get into.
I left because sm

My lead just WOULD NOT leave me alone. I don't mind working 40 hours a week or even a few more, but when I have a day off, I want it to be a day off. She was constantly emailing and saying Critical Status on _____ Account and she would call me on my days off and ask me to work. Now, I know some people welcome the extra work, but I am very fortunate to be in the position where I have a husband who makes a good salary and yes, I need a full-time job but I do not need overtime and I do not want to work seven days a week.


If the pay had been better, I would have just learned to be thick-skinned and ignore her when she kept bugging me, but the pay wasn't that great and I got an offer from some local doctors to do their overflow work and then found a second part-time job with a local MTSO and said bye-bye Keystrokes. Now I have weekends off and can basically set my own hours. Just call me Happy Camper.


I left OSi and went to SPi
I left OSi because my account coordinator changed about 3 times within a month then found the same thing happening at SPi. Now the word is out that another OSi account manager or maybe even 2 are leaving. This just gets old. I am very happily employed at Keystrokes now.
Thank you all. I like to see how much I have left to do. (nm)

actually not as many as you think have left
You're just speculating though!

I left also
more than once.  Their new policy states that cannot be rehired for a year.  If leave more than once may be 2 yrs before rehired.  I know, they won't rehire me either.  I gave them a little less than 2 wks. Luck of the draw I guess. Grass is not always greener on other side of track.  Hang in there.  There is still work out there, may not be with them, but you will not starve.  I don't think you will anyway.  :)
That is exactly why I have left the
MT world because it seems MOST of companies do not care about the MT, just themselves. I know it takes money to run a business, but why cheat on the MT's livelihood??? Anyway, I just got sick of the crap, and I found it to be totally
Unacceptable. That is my cents per line worth.
I left
because the line counting method jips you IMO.  If you are not on Extext you may be fine.  Wonderful people but I could not make my line count goals with them...
Been there- left
I agree about the statement that there are a few good team management players, but the one that did QA for me was horrible. Would send e-mails in CAPS. I felt that to be very unprofessional on her part. Filling in demographics was the pits. Not a money maker for me either. I left after the CAPPED e-mail. I would stay away from this company. Sound quality was bad as well. Posting my personal opinion.
I left the Q in Dec

and am now a HAPPY Keystroker!!  Good luck, what account do you have??


Left QT
Fortunately I left QT when If first heard the rumors, several months before they closed, LAJ was nice enough to allow me to continue to work part time so the transition was not too bad, except it was a big drop from gross back to characters. I too left and went to WMX but only stayed about a month and then moved on, have been at the current company 6 months and a lot like QT, one account pretty much, very basic account instructions, 12 hour window, I still miss QT but am happy now with benefits.
Has anyone left MQ and still
Getting their E-mail??
Had it and left - sm
I went with my cable company...no cap. Unlimited really means unlimited. For me, cable was cheaper, faster and much more reliable.