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They had an ad back in mid January, so maybe that is why it is so slow now

Posted By: KokoPoo on 2007-02-08
In Reply to: Hiring? - Lee

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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. 


 


When I was hired back in January they sm
offered $500.00 bonus. After the 3 months they automatically put in paycheck.
An ad here back in January said they paid on a
s
I am slow this week too...I am sure it will pick back up...
nm
Depends on the account. Work on VR lately has been slow. Just like all companies, we have slow times

Honestly though, I have only had 2-3 times in the past 2 years where it was like the other day...no work... It did pick up later but I just think it's important not to make someone think we're overloaded with work all the time. That would not be fair to them if they end up with high expectations.


No - it is not always slow! Depends on the company and hospital. I have never been slow this time
Slow time is usually in September when everyone is back to work/school from the summer months.

Been doing this 24 years and never slow this time of year. Actually, I am drowning in work - can't keep up.
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).


 


I posted this on January 12, no answer
Somebody answer, even if you have to make up sumpin.
I left Focus in January.
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.
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!


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?
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!
I worked in QA for Transcending back in 2000-2001. They were paying hourly back then. SM

The accounts weren't too horribly bad.  The reason I ended up leaving was because slowly but surely they began to inch closer and closer to paying QA by production.  When I first started, the quota was something like 30 reports a day.   We simply had to make sure that we QA'd all reports that were close to being out of TAT first and then do the rest.  Then, my supervisor left and they hired a new one who immediately called a big teleconference meeting and said we had to up production to 60 reports a day.  Then, they started counting lines.  Which was fine because they were still paying hourly.


Next, there was an MT who used VR software because she was blind - yes blind.  Again, when I first started, I was told we had to edit her entire reports because she used the VR software and we had to make sure that everything was correct and made sense.  Then, we are told only check the blanks.  I wasn't comfortable with that and I continued to completely proof every word.  Then I was called on the carpet not because I wasn't meeting the production quota, but because I was ONLY meeting the production quota.  I told them I was proofing all of the MT's work that used VR, I was told that no one ever told me to proof every word of the VR reports and that I needed to fill in blanks and move on.  When I voiced my concerns, I was told that was my job, to fill in blanks and I should move on and strive to product above the standards.  Next thing you know, rumors abounded about changing the QA staff to being paid on production.  So I left. 


There just seemed to me to be too little concern for quality and more emphasis on quantity and I just didn't want to be part of company who would take money out of my pocket just to line their own and that's what they were doing by putting QA on production.  I also am not comfortable with the job of QA being thought of as a blank filler.  There is much more to the QA profession than just simply filling in blanks. 


I don't know if Transcend ever did start paying QA by production, but I could see that the idea was being floated there.  Maybe there was a enough protest that they didn't change from hourly. 


Good luck to you!


Phoenix Medcom- Another apply a few months back, ask to take a test and never heard back??
I applied a month or two ago, received an email from someone asking if I would take a test and said she was getting ready to go on vacation for a week, so I hurried and immediately and told her I'd love to take the test. I never heard back. I waiting thinking she went on vacation and would contact me when she got back to do the test but nothing...very strange..Just wondered if this happened to anyone else.
Has everyone heard back from Keystrokes yet regarding the email we received a while back?
Just wandering why I haven't heard any response yet.
I sent them an email back in August and never heard back sm
Is this company on Long Island? I checked out their website and even tried calling once. Were you successful in contacting them? All i know is that the company is owned by some doctors.

Hopefully, you will hear back. Unfortunately, I immediately heard back from MD-IT
but somehow with over 16 years of experience, I blew the test.  I was soooo disappoionted and yet pretty stunned.  I am by no means perfect but I haven't flunked a test in years.  I expected it in my early years but not this far down the road. I was so confident and they will not tell you which part you did not pass and why so it really just blew my mind.  I must have been in shock for like two hours after I got the email. Oh well, someone will want me....hopefully.  I was thinking about OSi but I don't think I could take another rejection if I never heard back. 
I had the same thing happen, went back to MQ, went back to KS and could not be sm

happier.  I am on a different account then the first time and it is as if it is a different company.  I have a great lead who leaves us alone most of the time but is there when I need her.  It showed me that you can have a different experience within the same company.


I have to say that in the few weeks since they have the new office, it is much more organized probably because there are a lot of people there all the time.  I had the pleasure of speaking to the new HR manager who was HR at a hospital, got my questions answered about insurance as I am going to full time and had a live voice pick up the phone.


Not all change is bad.  This is one company that has changed for the better. 


I was reading about the back up help. I would like also to have some back up work.
I am not getting anywhere near 12,000 lines this go around.  My goal is 12,000 lines each pay period.
Back away from the hoops!! Back away!
I worked for them about 6 months - same mess to get hired - FBI check is right! It was unreal. I was so excited, though - they promised me the moon, and I really thought I had found my new home after centuries with that other company who shall not be named.  What a disappointment, to say the least. All around horrible experience, and I would NEVER recommend them. Certainly they were not worth the hoops at all. Total waste of effort.
What I do when its slow

I do exactly what the email they sent out to us says.  If there isnt any work during my shift, I leave and take the kids somewhere, clean or do laundry, make dinner early or whatever.  Then when work comes in, I work.  If work is there during my shift but there isnt a lot, I take what I can and then go do my thing and come back later.   When work is slow, I do work longer  hours trying to get work in.  I get a good line count in too.  I am not in this career for others.  I am in it to feed my family.  I am in it for a paycheck.  If work is slow, I will take what I can get when I can get it.  I type fast and am productive and I will not go without. 


The email they sent out said to t ype during early morning hours or at night when the work is in there.  So that is what everyone has to do.  First come, first serve.  We all have the same chance of getting on there and getting the work.  The early bird gets the worm, ya know.  This MT that has 20,000 lines per pay.  I think that is great.  I try to get that also.  There is nothing wrong with that or unbelievable about that.  It all boils down to how bad you want it.


slow
 outdated platform, new QA guidelines for the birds.  I'm trying to find something else now.
You can slow it down (sm)
In your transnet player box, there's a box that says more or something like that. I'm not logged in right now and can't remember.  But, it's at the bottom right of the transnet player box.  Click that, and you can adjust the volume, speed, etc.
The 4th was slow for many
nm
Very slow to pay!
nm
slow down

Please tell me how.  When I do it it does not give me that option.  Help!!


Slow for me, too.
There just is not the level of work available that I would expect, sometimes nothing at all, this is on the same account you asked about, looks like the monitor took that part out. Went from a hundred report backup to a job trickling in here and there, started to dry up around Christmas but seems to me it never recovered. That's not a seasonal slump, the work may be going elsewhere.
DQM slow?

my first job is taking FOREVER to come up...anybody else?


Still slow
I guess it is feast or famine depending on account because they are still just trickling through. 
It's slow for me, too.
nm
It's Slow Everywhere
Yeah, it's just that time of the year when people have better things to do than go to the hospital I guess. In my 18 years experience in medical transcription there are always these slow times occasionally. It will pick up. I'm not worried. I socked back some when it was busy and I was getting those great bonuses TT gives us. People have been on here slamming TT saying everything from there being too many transcriptionists on accounts and even accusing them of outsourcing. That is one thing they do not do and I really feel that my statement is accurate. You can tell by the job numbers that work has been slow. I was transcribing a report a couple of weeks ago and there was a female yelling out to a doctor that was walking away and she said, Hey, get back to that office and bring us in some patients...we're hurting here. Confirmation to me. I love Transtech and plan on hanging in there with them until the cows come home. Good luck and don't worry...it's gonna pick up soon.
I do not think it is slow everywhere!
But, that being said, I honestly wonder why people feel the need to say this sort of thing out here? It makes more sense to be in touch with your company and get it straightened out than be in this state of upset when a phone call or an email might give you a direct answer.