I don't know what the deal is but it's making me crazy sm

My conputer is definitely making me crazy. [2008-12-02]
I have had it for 3 years, and when I asked for a new one, they just had me increase my virtual memory. Didn't help much. It is sorely affecting my production, with all the stuttering and freezing up!!

It is just making less experienced [2008-11-25]
or newbies feel inadequate, as if they will never reach that goal. Shame on MQ for starting this to begin with. They can take the challenge and expectations and shove them, I like my arms and fingers better than that.

Do you mean they may be making those corrections... [2008-11-21]
and teaching ASR the answer, like we were told in the beginning? I don't do that anymore, it takes too much time. Let me know if this is what you mean.

It's called PTO so I am making [2008-11-20]
money.....

40 yrs as MT and now will be making 5.4/line ASR, and 99% of [2008-11-19]
nm

I think if you all were making what she made [2008-11-19]
and still had a cut in pay, you'd still be upset. You live within your means, and when that means is cut, you have to try to adjust and its hard, we don't know each other's personal situations, kids, mortgages/rent, car payments, car repair costs, cost of living in the city/state each other lives in...so please don't tell someone they shouldn't complain when you want to be able to complain. A cut in pay when you're used to living at a certain pay is still a cut. Yes she makes more money than me, but how do I know she doesn't live somewhere where the cost of living is nearly double what I have? Its all relative. I know someone who makes that much, has a husband who works also, but that doesn't mean they can support their 3 kids on both their income when one of their incomes comes in short. Please try to be realistic. I don't make that much money myself, I do 7.5 cpl, and have for the last 10+ years, and was told if I wanted to get a raise I had to just type more. I've been told that for years, and I bought it, thinking it was normal to NOT get a raise in this type of job. It was only here in the last couple of years when I realized its just not like that. I dont think she shouldn't be allowed to complain just like the rest of us. We don't know her situation.

Wow, you are happy making around 9.00 an hour? [2008-11-19]
x

Deal with it all the time... [2008-11-19]
My last landlord was like this... Said to me one day, How is it that you are single and get to be a stay-at-home mom? Are you on welfare? I laughed him out of my livingroom. I have a higher education than he does. He didn't even know what a medical Transcriptionist is. I had to give him tiny words like hey, you know when you go see the doctor? I am the one who types all that stuff he says about you LOL

A lot of people are making what they were [2008-11-19]
when their company was bought by MQ. I am sure they hvae a starting cpl determined per experience.

LOUSY deal don't spend too much time on ASR [2008-11-19]
reports send to QA if you have to.

ya'll might think I'm crazy, but I reapplied and guess what [2008-11-18]
I was told I was not rehireable. I worked for MQ for a couple of years, and always met my 98% accuracy, always qualified for bonus, and even after I quit I received a call three months later asking me to come back. For some reason now I am not hireable. Call me crazy, but I am disappointed. I knew I could always count on my check from MQ. The work was crazy when the pooling thing happened last year, but at least you could count on being paid. Think twice before leaving the Q. It is not always greener on the other side. I accepted a great paying job at 12 cpl working directly for a hospital. I worked and worked, and made great money. Guess what, they are refusing to pay any invoices for the month of October. I'm out $5 thousand for October. I may not have made $5 thousand from MQ, but at least what I made I would have received. Just thought I would share.

it is a done deal [2008-11-17]
This is a group of hospitals that signed a five year agreement with spheris. Talk about an uproar.. With all the discussion about spheris, we are all worried what to do. They are promising us, all our vacation/sick time goes with us, and years served carries over.. but we have heard not to believe a word. So now what to do? Stick it out for the next 8 months and then start looking or bail out now? Any ideas?

crazy dream or nightmare? [2008-11-16]
I am a very vivid dreamer and I also spend most nights typing in my sleep. There must be others who do this? Anyway, I just had to share this dream. I went out to my mailbox and there was a big envelope from MQ. Inside was a very slick, very expensively made booklet about a new change. Seems in order to bring in more revenue for the hospitals, doctors were going to start dictating commercials with each report. There were these long drawn-out instructions on how to do this, we had to go into the ADT screen and hit alt this and ctrl that and go through a zillion steps to being up the correct screen from ADT and of course, since it was part of ADT, we weren't paid for it. In the middle of a report, a doctor would start dictating a commercial for deodorant or some silly thing, but saying it so fast I couldn't understand him. There was a lot of other weird stuff going on in between, but this was the gist of the dream. I woke up not knowing whether to laugh or cry.

It's called policy making [2008-11-13]
An employer cannot discipline employees for a policy breach or for failing to live up to the employment expectations if the employees have not been advised of those expectations, and it is ridiculous to think that they should only remind the slackers of a policy when the policy applies to everyone. And no, the policies are not there because MQ is a big meany; they are there because at the other end of the job is a client (who, by the way, pays you) who expects their work done within TAT. I am unclear on how you can expect management to meet that TAT without knowing when their staff are actually going to work.

I left MQ after 10 years about a year ago...was making 0.0975 cpl [2008-11-09]
nm

making standards [2008-10-28]
This is probably somewhere.....but can you make your own standards, i.e., docs usually physical he always says? and if so where and how?

Again what kind of crazy insane way [2008-10-27]
is that to put all new management in place and then wisk them all away for a week in Atlanta where they can't be reached and we can't get answers to anything even as simple as our PTO requests for time off. Those of us who planned any time off last week or this week are taking it at our own risk because I know I never got any word on whether or not they even know I put in for time, or that I'm taking time off, but I taking it because I have plans and I put in for my time the appropriate way. It's not my fault MQ screwed us again and then immediately sent their management on a week long vacation....

I'm making my line count.....sm [2008-10-24]
and lately I have been getting some of my primary. I have followed what I make when I get at least 5 or more reports from my primary and it is doubled because I know the account. Very rarely do I have to send a report to QA. Why doesn't MQ understand that when we are doing our so called primaries, it is a winning situation for both MT and MQ? I just don't get what they are trying to accomplish here. Oh yeah...one more thing...what is going on with the sound quality lately? When I check Quasar for feedback, the sound quality is so clear. I hope they address this issue soon :(

Driving me crazy [2008-10-22]
CP has portions missing. Of course, the portion needed to complete a report. No explanation found in email. ALL supervisors away. Dictate unable to help. Now what do I do? THIS SUX.

sounds crazy [2008-10-22]
wonder why we just can't send email to whoever it will be doing it now. My last sup was pretty good about etime changes but sending emails around twice for this sounds crazy and not too efficient.

that is crazy [2008-10-22]
If i ever send out an email and it doesn't get changed, i'm approving my time card anyway. Screw that.

QA makes me crazy sometimes!! [2008-10-05]
I just had QA correct something on one of my reports . . . it wasn't even something that was blanked, they just took it upon themsleves to change it. It was a duplex Doppler, and they changed it to Duplex Doppler? Can someone please explain this to me? I count on QA to fill in my blanks so that I won't have to leave it blank next time. But it really steams me when they correctit to something obviously incorrect. Am I not ultimately responsible for the accuracy of that report? This was done by someone who obviously does not know any better. Are theynow outsourcing QA work?

That IMO is crazy. Why not send the job and such to support [2008-10-02]
you can think of. These kind of reports should not be on ASR. I would not type whole reports and get paid ASR rate.

Making lemonade out of lemons - sort of [2008-10-02]
Well, when ASR first started, I did do just that, sent the reports in to everyone I could think of, naively thinking that my input was going to be taken seriously. But I was ignored, so we must muddle on with what we have and make the best of it. Incidentally, all of my ASR is really bad. I don't get any good ones, and it sounds like some people posting here have accounts that actually work okay on ASR. Mine doesn't.

I'm not crazy [2008-09-17]
Thank goodness someone has a problem. I have complained several times, and my PS tells me there is no problem. It seems like no one from MQ is interested in the sound quality. We are supposed to be accurate when the sound is terrible. I invite any MQ honcho to my house to listen to the sound, although I doubt I will get any takers.

I totally agree [2008-12-01]
I mentioned before that this company knows exactly what it is doing, and even though we may think that changes suddenly happen, that is far from the truth. They implement things knowing full well what they do. The bottom line is money, always has been with MQ and always will be. They don't really care if you stay or not, and what you say here has no bearing whatsoever on how they feel. I am sure they don't lose any sleep over any of what is said. We do come here to help one another out and to cope with what is going on, and some of us stay for the benefits because when you get older they are harder to get, but after seeing what is posted here, I feel so very sorry for those that are truly struggling. Please don't stay here if you are not making any money and can't even afford to keep your electric on or buy food! MQ is not going to come along and suddenly take pity on you and pay your bills. I finally went with another company, who by the way actually has a couple of accounts from MQ now,and they are NOT ASR. I guess that says something. Eventually they will lose other accounts, but will replace them too. It is good to speak up for yourselves, but a very small percentage of MTs do that with MQ, and I am sure they know all about the negative comments. My Dad told me when I first went to work don't think you can't be replaced at any job, because you can. Do the best job you know how, keep up with what is happening in your field, and utilize your skills, but also know when it is time to move on while you still can. I have always remembered him telling me that,and he was right. I wish everyone well here, and absolutely despise what is happening, and all the grief this is causing. Think Twice was right MQ is 100% in charge and control, and they can and will do exactly as they please.

my letter to mr 644 [2008-12-01]
Dear Mr. 644 You really need to know what Medquists decisions are doing to your Medical Transcriptionists. I have never seen morale so low. We are depressed, barely functioning, and hate our jobs. And Medquist just keeps adding insult to injury. We were already making anywhere from $200 to $400 less a month since the start of medical editing. Whoever had the brilliant idea that ASR would be more productive has obviously never done this work for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. You can sit there for an hour and type your brains out and maybe have a really high score, but it doesn't work over the long term. My production has donenothing but go down since beginning editing. And my self esteem has plummeted to depths I never thought possible. Which in turn hurts quality and productivity. But Medquist has made it clear that quality is not their concern, just quantity. Unfortunately, we MTs were trained to produce a quality product and it is hard for us to turn our backs on that just to increase our line counts so we can pay our bills. Which I haven't been able to do in a year. And then to lower the rates you pay for this already abysmal project of yours, well, talk about a slap in the face. and THEN to heap onto that insult by saying we should be able to edit over 600 lines an hour!!?? omg. unbelievable. it would belaughable if we weren't already crying. Its just too disturbing. I finally ended up going part-time because I simply could not cope. I used to love being a Medical Transcriptionist. Have done this work for over 25 years. Worked at a hospital where I was respected and valued as an employee and had nothing by superior yearly evaluations. Ever since I started working for Medquist 2 years ago, I have done everything possible to look for another job. But jobs being what they are these days, its been difficult. So I've finally had to go part-time for Medquist just to keep from total despair. And I took a different full-time MT job, whereI am once againvalued and respected. Things that I had almost given up hope believing stillexisted since working here. Its just really sad. You have all these great employees, and they really try hard, WE really try hard, to do a good job. And what are our rewards? Work that makes it nearly impossible to hit our minimum line count. And decreased pay rates. Would you work for a company that did these things to you? You might for a while, because you are loyal. That is why we stay. Because we keep hoping for the best, even though time and time again the opposite is what we get. Your MTs are really really frustrated and this company really needs to do something before it not only loses its quality transcriptionists, but what will follow is all your clients leaving because of the poor quality product that makes its way back to them. We don't get paid enough to care anymore. For some reason we still do. Thank you for listening.

definitely [2008-12-01]
Definitely call the facility and ask for who is in charge of medical transcription. They will definitely let you know the service they are working for, and in my case, I have always gotten a raise as they want someone familar to help get the account rolling. The facility I typed with changed services three times and I followed them every single time, making more money per line at each service. Go for it! The facility is no longer with MQ, so you are breaking any rules.

I end up slumped down in my chair, with my [2008-12-01]
breaking point a million times a shift, with my whole body nearly sliding out and under my desk!!! It drives me crazy!! I wonder why I ache so bad after 8 hours! Isn't it sort of funny?? I have fixed it in the past, and just keep forgetting to do something about it!! I know friends who have actually put a few nails in the floor, with the head sticking up at various heights per personal preference, so that the footpedal just hits that area and can't slide away. I also know once I glued a strip of Velcro to my footpedal and my floor, which was linoleum at the time. Hope somebody has some better tips for us!!

Just another excuse to not pay MTs [2008-11-30]
Great idea. Also, I am so tired of being penalized for what is the doctor's fault speaking so he/she cannot be understood, either sloppy English, or foreign doctor. Sometimes the foreign ones are doing their best, not a problem, but we should not be PENALIZED because it is difficult to understand and it should not be counted against us. I believe this is just another excuse to underpay us. The people making these rules never penalize themselves for anything, just us, way for them to take more from us for themselves.

I am just not sure how productive your [2008-11-30]
line of thinking is, and I don't follow it, frankly. You wish and hope for what goes around to come around. I guess that means you wish ill fortune for the suits. Well, to wish them bad karma is basically doing yourselves in as well. If they go down, so will the company. There is also this incredible persisting naivety amongst MQ MTs that somehow management has no clue of how their policy changes or pay scales or whatever negatively impacts the MTs. The MQ MTs just keep persisting with this line of thought, thus thinking that somehow they just have to communicate the negative impact with management, via this forum or email or MT questions, and mgmt will see the error of their ways and fix things. This is just such a waste of what little time anyone has - management does everything for a reason and after much deliberation and an opinion vote. They are doing these things on purpose to all MQ MTs and, yes, they do have their plans. To think that they are just blindly making these decisions, as they have for years now, is just beyond denial at this point. As for how I have no idea what individuals reasons are for staying, or their situations, well, my posts are to the legion MQ MTs on this forum who are claiming absolute disaster at this point = no work, minimum wage, losing bennies, etc. How much longer are those in these dire straits going to hang on here? If their financial lives are in jeopardy, then they have no time. That is what I wish to stress. MQ management knows full well what they are doing - their plans might be counter to your wishes, but they know and are 100% in charge and control. Please don't fool yourselves into thinking they just need to hear your plights. They know your plights and created them and will continue to do so.

Me too [2008-11-29]
I got a report yesterday, evidently from the same facility. I wondered the same thing......what is the deal with the word shaved? I don't think I got one report from my primary, let alone from my entire district.

I went back through my old emails [2008-11-29]
and the one I was thinking of was from my old supervisor, stating we cannot be clocked off and logged into DQS, but when I re-read it, it was in regards to working on DQS and not being logged into e-time where it looks like you are making more lines per hour than you truly are, did not find one stating anything about no work availability. BUT, but my old sup also mentioned in that email that it is best to just clock out of DQS and clock back on every so often to re-check instead of staying on, so it seems was her suggestion that I was remembering. :)

minimum wage on paycheck [2008-11-29]
I noticed that on my last paycheck I had 34 something hours paid at $7.95 which is min. wage for my state and also on the 10/10 paycheck the same thing. Is this because of the low ASR productivity and not making minimum wage with the hours I am doing. Does anyone know about this? I asked payroll. I hope it is not some mistake they are going to deduct from my paycheck.

pay cuts, quality, etc. [2008-11-28]
Hi everyone, new here & not sure if replying where I intend, but here goes. My head is spinning from all the Medquist changes, too. I loved this company so much for so long, but there is a limit to what anyone can take. Still, I'll keep at it as long as I can. Seems a sign of the times that the best company to work for has become this volatile. I think the fact that MQ is officially recommending we speed all dictators up to chipmunk mode says it all. They, and apparently clients, are willing to sacrifice at least some degree of quality for cost. I just upgraded ultra-slow dialup for ultra-fast broadband and to my stunned amazement it has made very little difference in my bottom line(??). Even though I no longer wait five or more minutes for each job to load. And now another pay cut. And I don't know what planet 600+ an hour MTs are on. So...I am absolutely ensuring that critical information is accurate, but as far as narration...as long as it gets the point across, I'm Not Touching It. If an ESL says This was patient him present to emergency rooms, that is what they will get. And to be fair, if a clearly intelligible doc dictates a full-page run-on sentence, they will get that, too. I am not nitpicking ANYTHING that does not affect the bottom-line message. I used to punctuate, edit grammar and organize for ease of reading, etc. and took GREAT pride in doing so. It didn't subtract from my bottom line that much. Now the seconds add up fast and take money from my child's mouth. You get what you pay for. As for outsourcing, I don't blame those poor folks who have been making pennies all their lives, it's not their fault. I actually welcome some hardship if it truly benefits people who haven't had a tenth of what we do here all their lives. People in India call centers have been publicly expressing tremendous sympathy for the Americans they talk to, and saying it's really opened their eyes about money, and saving, and spending. I think it would be quite something for us to communicate with MTs from other countries. I do think global employment markets, transcription in particular, will eventually strike a balance between cost and quality. If the MT profession survives long enough. Americans in American markets obviously have an advantage in terms of experience, native language, etc. But it's a competition, and we have to be BETTER. ASR is far scarier to me than outsourcing or belt-tightening. Before I became an MT, I was a highly-skilled,well-paid typesetter. When PCs became available, honchos in the industry insisted nothing would EVER replace us. I told my employer I didn't believe it. He didn't believe me. His long-established family business closed about a month later. That profession is long dead. My own PCP's office uses a template program to plug in pertinent changes for all their transcription. I receive copies of my homeschooled daughter's notes yearly to submit to the district. They include PARAGRAPHS of things that never happened. Nobody cares. (All personal information, interestingly enough. Never medical. Hmm.) I have also been told by a knowledgeable MT exec from another company that the US is uniquely dependent on transcription in the world health care market, owing to our emphasis on insurance documentation. That could change overnight. It could also explain why so many skilled foreigners are available to do our work. Oh, and by the way, I also see an advantage in settlement of the class-action suit. 1.5 mil wouldn't make a dent in paying back what we lost over the past however many years, and demanding more, well, it would have to come from somewhere. Guess whose pockets, ultimately. Rob yourself to pay yourself. The important thing is someone stuck their necks out to fix the problem and, hopefully, it's fixed. Unless I'm missing something. We are all involved in a very complex situation that is bigger than how one company is treating us. I don't think it would be a bad idea for us to find supplemental incomes that may become full-time someday, or to pursue education that may pay off down the road. But for now, I think we need to use our heads, work as smart as we can, and stand up for ourselves intelligently, or we could help hasten the end of a profession that means more to most of us than just money. As important as money is. I hope to hear others' further comments about all this.

Word expanders screwed up again [2008-11-28]
I'd estimate I have between 600-1,000 WE's. In my haste, I guess I hita wrong key and now I have to go thru each and every one of them and fix them. I know i'm not the only one this has happened to (verified by tech support). Does anyone know of a way to correct them other than gpomg thru each one? I am so furious I could scream. There ought to be a safeguard against this. I never have a problem making my lines. I will this week, as I am constantly having to go into the WE dictionary to correct things. Let them write me up. I am ticked. Tammy

wow [2008-11-26]
Advantage, you really need a life.......there are more things in life than sitting here razing people because of their opinion. MQ is not the best place in the world to work, but if you would care to look around you, the economy is not doing very well and I would just be thankful to have a paycheck if my life was as obviously miserable as yours..........Yes, I am happy working and making enough money to feed my kids. Have a good day!

The nerve! [2008-11-26]
First of all, your CCM CANNOT tell you that you HAVE to make up the work on Saturday....So much for following protocol! You report the no work situation and get a ticket number, then you have the choice of a) checking back to see if there is work or making up the time, b) taking PTO, or c)no pay. They CANNOT make you make up the time nor can they tell you when to do it!You ought to send her an email with the above info!! What a Turkey!!!! Enjoy your time off and don't give it another thought!

work pool teams [2008-11-26]
Does anyone know how many folks are on each work teams now? I have a primary account of four hospitals and no work. But, if a hospital sends 50 jobs and there are 50 people on the work team, then it would make sense there is no work. I thought the talking heads said the making smaller teams would be better for the MT. It has only gotten worse for me since that last change.

Yes, I do. I found out last week that [2008-11-26]
She was told she was to have 20-30 MT's to make it a small group for her. What has been added for her now is she has to deal with the hospitals directly that is on her BOB list. The company keeps adding new MT's to her group and she is now up to 80. She used to have 110 when she was a PS and never had to deal with the hospitals, but now she has to deal with hospital staff which has even added more stress and work for her than it was when she had 110 MT's. Stupid MQ does not know what the heck they are doing (MY OPINION).

Well, [2008-11-26]
I haven't worked on MQs. The last one scared me enough to not want to try MQ if I can stay away from it. The main problem was the hand cramping and boredom. Not to mention the errors drove me mad! BUT, I also firmly believe that the speech program I worked on was not maintained well. We were told to notify the supervisor of corrections so she could make modifications to the program to enhance it but she never got around to making them. Also, the hospital had a high concentration of ESLs which even the most sophisticated speech program cannot master in my opinion. My main concern is carpal tunnel and the hand cramps. Regardless of the pay, I can't have my hands go down. So I guess maybe I'll just stick with regular transcription for now unless they offer a trial period of ASR where I'm not committed forever.

Do you usually average 230 lph on [2008-11-25]
ASR? You did a great job doing 2000 lines in 4 hours. If you keep that up, your kids won't be fighting because they will be too busy playing with their expensive toys you can buy them with all the money you will be making. You have truly inspired me to go for the Gold! Congratulations!

I'M RICH!!!! [2008-11-25]
i made $8.00 an hour this pay period. and that was at thestillohso very high ASR rate of .054 cpl. and to think just slightly over 2 years ago i was making $16.85/hour when i worked for a decent hospital. i think i'm going to go kill myself now.

Christmas 2006 I asked for off [2008-11-25]
NOPE. DENIED. Wedding was 3 days before Christmas out of state and he said NO. Asked plenty days (months) in time. He was a new PS. Not only that, he was suicidal. He called me all the time how he wanted to kill his wife (he said he was kidding) andcried once on the phone with me and thought about killing himself. I ended up counseling him for crying out loud. I also just moved out of state 2 months before all this CRAP and was too tired to deal with this, my boss being suicidal. He also would chew me out for being 1 minute later and such ridiculous stuff. If I was not too tired, I would have cried like a baby on the phone conversations we had. I tried calling regional manager and leaving emails about all of this and that I wanted this to be discussed over the phone, but as usual, no answers. About 8 months later, he was fired. Sooooo, you are fortunate you get people to listen to you. My last resort was to quit on the spot.

How many times I have said this company could save a lot of [2008-11-25]
money by doing away with these people who are making the decisions that directly impact our incomes and lives. All these people making the most important rules and decisions, and I dare say I am correct that not one was ever a transcriptionist. Walk a mile in my shoes, why don't cha MQ.

I can type sm [2008-11-25]
20,000 a minute, did not you read that yesterday. This is a bunch of bull and making other normal people feel inadequate and I wish it would stop. I had a great dictator 3 times with standards that I blow in about 40 lines in on last week and was tickled pink and still only made about 300 an hour. I go for accuracy and will not sacrafice as MY name is on the bottom line. I concur with you!!!!! Especially 600 lines. This was not ASR either, but best I can do.

Exquisite ASR - not. [2008-11-24]
ASR - muddy deal vomitus dictated - bilious vomitus

Exquisite ASR - not. [2008-11-24]
ASR - muddy deal vomitus dictated - bilious vomitus The dictating doctor was speaking very clearly.

Corrupt skip and redundant markers [2008-11-24]
You probably already know this but just in case, you always have to have text behind the markers or all else they corrupt and the skip and redund markers will be sent back to the client in body of report. Put cursor in middle of skip/redun marker and use Ctrl Shift N to normalize or bring back text -if text is behind it then just reinsert the skip/redundant marker after making sure text is behind it. Also if you backspace the text before or after the marker and the textis too close the marker will become corrupt. If you acidently delete the skip/redund marker you cannot reinsert it as thiswill corrupt it just delete the marker if you cannot normalize the text. From ASR refresher course.

All of you doing 'the challenge' [2008-11-24]
The main thing we have over Indians is our quality. If everyone is starts doing 'the challenge', flying through, missing things, not making corrections, then we no longer have the quality advantage over the Indians. Food for thought.