When I worked pathology office in a hospital
Posted By: anon on 2005-11-22
In Reply to: what should I do? $16.50 an hour ... - JoJoMT
My experience was that I worked 3 times as hard for a set wage than I ever did as an MT - and in medical records as MT earned set wage plus incentive.
At pathology lab, we were responsible for getting there first thing in the morning and transcribing all the micro before 10 a.m. so the pathologists could then look at slides and dictate the gross report. Doctors tried to get the gross reports back to us by 1 p.m. -- because they had to be typed by 3 p.m. so the doctors could sign the reports, and get them back to us so we could get them sorted and in the mail before we went home. In addition, we fielded phone calls, took messages for pathologists, searched for and mailed slides when other labs requested them, provided courier coverage to transport slides and things between our lab and hospital lab in the next building, and when we had a spare minute, we entered Pap smear results from precoded sheets used by the technicians reading the Pap smears (like between 10 a.m. and noon, if we had all the micro typed)!!! Every day was hurry up and meet this 2-hour deadline, then hurry to meet the next 2-hour deadline...
I learned a lot of terminology -- but I would have to be very hungry to do it again. It is hard to describe or comprehend a pathology secretary job unless you have actually been there, done that -- you will either love it or hate it... good luck.
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I sure wish I worked in your office!
We hardly ever get an update, we run out of work, we never get answers to our questions, raises are few and far between.... its definitely an office to office, management to management thing! I hope MQ management reads some of these posts and get ideas on how they could make their office better and happier!
The hospital that I worked for would
not accept any applicants with online nursing programs because they did not have the required clinical hours during training.
When I worked in the hospital sm
the only ones who had Oxycontin were mostly cancer and back surgery and cardiac patients. Knee replacement patients got morphine the first 1-2 days and then switched to Vicodin. The majority of patients reduced to Tylenol after they went home. Never heard of OxyContin being used for knee replacements but your husband may have a very low pain threshold, too, or other factors necessitating to the use of OxyContin. I'd look at the whole issue of his pain control a little more closely. Can you discuss it with the doctor?
I once worked at a hospital (sm)
doing radiology where referring physicians could had the option of listening to dictation of their patient's report if it wasn't transcribed and signed quick enough for them. They did this through a supervisor in radiology, and inevitably they would exclaim that they had NO IDEA what the radiologist said, and would wait for the report. We always had to chuckle.
I worked at a hospital that did that. Had to do
with them not wanting people on e bay all day. Since I left that job when they downsized, everywhere else allowed it so I became dependent on the I-net for research. Made my quality better. Regarding production: Yep, it broke it down. Surf too much, wayyy too much. I tried to break the habit but our job is so isolating and numbing, I need to surf to wake myself up. That is no excuse however. I guess I want contact with the outside world. Too bad the hospital can't block the net, but let you have e mail and research sites or at least just block certain sites. I think they can do that. I know it must drive you nuts, because if I had to use books again, well. Forget that option. LOL.
When I worked in a hospital, I had a
doctor actually sit on my desk and dictate while I did a stat for him. The system was working, he just wanted to actually see one of us in action.
I worked for a hospital like this
We went to the supe about it and she told us that if we had time to eyeball the job lister, we must not be doing our work so...she took our job lister away.
When I worked in a hospital, we had
access to all patient records, if for nothing else to help with current dictation.
When I worked in a hospital, there were
times we had no work or was very low on work, therefore our overflow service did not have work to give their people became we kept it inhouse. It is the nature of hte job. However, I do not agree with companies that if you do run out, you are REQUIRED to make it up on weekends or ungodly hours. Sure, it hurts your paycheck with you don't, but 90% of the time it is out of the MTSO's hands, if there is no work, there is no work.
Downtime is a whole different story. If you can not work because of computer/server problems on their end, then you should be compensated.
I worked at one job where the office manager would
go to the gas station on Friday afternoons to buy a case of beer for the employees. It was his version of "corporate culture". As the only female working there, it wasn't a great place to work anyways. The guys told me that the only reason I got hired was because I looked good in a skirt and the office manager was going through a divorce. My resume spoke for itself, but the comments, which got harsher after a few beers, did create a hostile work environment.
Because think of the reverse, when you worked in the office...
did you ever see the director of med rec ask doctors to dictate their old stuff, so there would be enough work for MTs? when we were low on work in the hospital,a deficiency list would be sent out, and then boom a bunch of dictation...
hospitals are doing anything and everything they can to cut costs, even as mentioned above, hiring ICs on the side. health care is purely a business now, and I would bet not a day goes by every hospital in America asks the question, how can we cut back on the cost of dictation?
if that were not true, you would not have the HUGE push for the technology and the HUGE push for outsourcing, overseas or not.
think about this, also. we are only working at home for these companies, because hospitals decided it would be cheaper than paying health benefits for full-time MTs, office space, etc etc.
I do not put anything past people who are 100% money-driven these days.
you do make a great point, though, about the billing and DRGs, etc., but I still think they are told to 'cool-it' whenever they can...
I worked in a physician's office as well.
Normally they get paid only a percentage of that. If your mother has insurance she can pretty much disregard that initial bill. The hospital my parents used also chopped off a large amount due to their fixed income. The worst part about this system is that people with no insurance and who do not qualify for the indigent write-off have to cough up the whole thing.
I'm poorer than when I worked an office MT job, but - (s/m)
- I'll probably live longer, too! My blood pressure has dropped 20 points (for real!) since I stopped having to deal with the annoying little "management clique" at my old job. I've also lost 10 pounds, mainly because now I only eat when I'm hungry, (usally while still working, so it's a fast meal), and not because I'm ticked off, or because I want to get away from the office. So I'm definitely eating less. If I need to run a quick errand in the middle of the day, I don't have to drive like a maniac and nearly wreck my car (or anyone else's) worrying about getting back to my desk at a certain time. I just work later at night.
It's not that I agree with what most employers think MT is worth, but I made a conscious choice to get out of the rat-race and the back-stabbing office politics, and live a saner, quieter life. Meanwhile, I'm dealing with the added poverty by clipping more coupons, buying mostly generic products, and recycling aluminum. When I start getting itchy about moving out of my crummy, low-income apartment, I just go online and see what I'd have to pay to move up to a better apartment, and it gives this one a lot more appeal. And it sure beats living in my car. ;p
Generally office notes versus hospital
For my accounts anyway, my multispecialty is office notes, letters, in office procedures and acute care is hospital notes.
I've been in MT for 20 years. Started out in the office at a hospital.
Switched to working for services from home for a while and now I work for the same hospital I started out at, but I work from home now. So I guess you can say I've come full circle and now I'm back where I started. I much prefer being an employee of a hospital versus an IC or employee of an MTSO.
It may be that your user profile in EXText is not set up to allow you to add normals. I've found with services they don't give their MTs a whole lot of freedom with their software. 
How much per minute, I worked for hospital and ...sm
it was 100/minute of dictation... very low in my estimation.
yes, once I actually quit my hospital MT job and worked for
Wal-Mart and actually made the same amout.
When I worked in the hospital, the docs
NEVER had a pen with them, so good gift.
I also once gave out pens at for Halloween at work, and I was very popular!
LOL
I worked on site for a hospital
that had voice recognition in their radiology department (PowerScribe). That was very easy and enjoyable, but I was paid hourly - no idea if it would have been profitable otherwise. They did cut half their staff when they made the switch, so that might give you an idea on pay. You can do about twice as much I guess? Hope it goes well! 
The going rate at the hospital where I worked...
....small city, about 60,000 people, for radiology/diagnostic imaging MTs, the range was roughly $10-$15 per hour. This is in Oklahoma, where the cost of living is VERY low compared to most places.
I worked at a local hospital
It had its good points and bad points. The good being it paid better and had better benefits than most outsourcing companies. We had a 4 tier incentive program. The lowest pay being 0.087 and the highest being 0.10 cpl. You had a choice of working in-house or at home and we were all paid the same either way. Also, if there was little work or no work you had the choice of using PTO or working in medical records at an hourly rate which gave us a little break from MT and a feel for something else.
The bad, if you were at home they would pull you in at any time just because. Also, at home we had a lot of problems with their computer locking up, getting kicked off the VPN, slow moving from one screen to the next etc. The tech support always blamed it on our ISP. Also, they always made sure you never moved up to the next pay tier. Only their favorite ones could do that. They made excuses of why you cannot move up even though the numbers were there. The one they used on me was that I took off a day during the last 6 weeks. They told another girl she walked around in the halls and talked too much to bump to the next level. However, if you did not get your line count they were all over moving you down.
When I worked at home for a hospital
I had all of the benefits, but the hospital I worked at did not go by production. They just basically paid per hour. They did not expect a certain amount of work be done in a certain amount of time. I had access to the software the hospital used. This probably won't help you, but it has only been 2 years since I left the hospital. I make way more with my own accounts. If the benefits you are seeking have to do with retirement, then you may be better off setting up your own retirement account because if you are older, you will need to be vested before you even begin to think about a pension.
When I worked at a local hospital
this happened. I just transcribed it like any other report. I would not even mention it to the family member. When you work for a small local hospital it is bound to happen.
Eons ago when I worked in a hospital,
we had one ESL who nobody could understand. Our supervisor talked to him and he said it was not his problem if we could not understand him. The majority do not care. I currently have 2 female NPs that sound like Mickey Mouse on speed when they start giving lab values. I just blank them and go on, 90% of the time QA can't get them either. Just blank and go on, if they don't care to fill in the blanks it is not a problem to me.
I worked for a hospital that was unionized
I was in a management position, so I was not in the union. I was working on a research study in which the study participants were called in for a day of testing, & if there were no participants that day, no staff was required. Because I was management I got paid either way, but on days when other staff were called & told not to come in, they were not paid for those days. Toward the end of the study there were many days like that, & sometimes these people would have a pay period with no pay at all but would still have to pay union dues, & these were hundreds of dollars a month.
Meanwhile, other people on my staff were unionized full-time hospital employees. One in particular would sneak off & sleep during her shift or find other ways to conveniently disappear when there was work to be done. I caught her doing this many times, & because of the union she could not be fired. At some point I managed to get her transferred off my staff, whereupon she amazingly had a back injury and went on disability. There were plenty of people who could have done a much better job, but because of the union it took me months to get rid of this person.
My huz at the time was also a manager in a different industry. He would come home with stories exactly like this one almost daily; how unions were protecting the slackers & charging their members up the wazoo for some supposed "protection" they were getting. What a crock. Unions are just another power- and money-hungry organization who might have served a purpose at some point in our history, like when infants were working in cotton mills or whatever, but now? They are part of the problem.
I worked by the minute in a hospital sm
for five years. It worked out ok there because there was an even amount of slow dictators versus fast dictators and Iknow how many minutes I can do in an 8 hour period.
Problem is when you aer working on a line count basis only, you really do get ripped off because there are so many fast dictators.
you need to figure out how many dictated minutes of transcription you think you can do in an 8 hour period, if its 100 minutes or 200 minutes or whatever and figure from that. You are most likely going to have more minutes by the 65 cpl than you would by the minute. They may be sending you all fast horrible dictators too.
In a hospital I would do it but not working for a service.
Back in the days when we all worked in an office
we got this new manager who I disliked immediately. She couldn't spell every day words, she had absolutely no background in MT and figured she was doing somebody to get the position. We had been promised an MT as our next manager. She said she could type 85 wpm and she believed she could handle the job - HA. We had an MT come in to interview and test and she had to ask me how to turn on the computer and how to print the report. They company lost the account and it closed down that office and the manager couldn't get another job and had to move back home with mom and dad.
I had a man looking for his wife to be able to do something where they could work and travel and he said his wife had a business degree and he felt she could do the job too. I also had an associate whose husband got fired AGAIN and she called me wanting to know how she could do what I do, like she could start tomorrow.
I've decided I'm going to tell people I'm a medical langauge specialist from now on and when they ask me what that is I'm going to say I'm a translator.
May I ask which office your all worked for. Sounds very familiar.
:
Started in 1979 when I was 18, worked in office at MQ while it was still
.
I worked in house in a doctor's office and it was the same for me...
and I had to answer phones, make copies, et cetera, basically was an MT/secretary...and I hated it...I am making much more money now working at home part-time...
Does your hospital have a Risk Management team or office? Contact them. (nm)
.
I worked part-time in a hospital sm
radiology department for a copule years and they did the floppy disk thing. They were huge compared to now. We didn't have a main frame at that time. Your format stuff was on the "system disk" you put in on the left nad then your disk with your work went into the right hand slot. It was this big huge monster of a "computer" thing.
When I worked for a hospital, 2nd shift was defined as 3p to 11p and SM
3rd shift was 11p to 7a. They also had policy that said if you worked something like 12 noon until 8 p.m. you would get 2nd shift, shift differential pay for all the hours worked after 3 p.m. and if you worked 7p.m. to 7 a.m. you got 2nd shift differential until 11 p.m. and then 3rd shift differential for the rest of your shift.
I wondered if they could have complicated it more?
I worked in a hospital in radiology, and when an opening in MR was available SM
I applied, got the job, and that is how I got my foot in the door.
When I worked in hospital Med Records, we were told
that it is on a "need to know basis." If you do not need to know anything about the patient to perform your job, you should not be looking at the patient information.
I worked for a hospital at home for 4 years. sm
We had to work set hours. My advice is allow youself 1/2 hour for lunch, and at least two 15-minute break periods. Work 2 hours, take a break, work 2 hours, take a lunch break, etc. Otherwise, you may find yourself having back, shoulder and hand problems. Working 9 hours may seem like a drag, but not being able to work at all is even worse. Remember, if you were working on site, you would not only have to work 8-1/2 hours, but would have travel time on top of it. Just my experience.
I worked at home for the local hospital here.
It was fine. They paid hourly and provided equipment. We had plenty of work and had to stick to a set schedule. They do use a service or two for overflow, but it is strictly overflow. The hospital still has employees working at home. They don't ALL outsource. (And ironically, some hospitals are taking back their transcription and hiring in-house and at-home MTs!)
No, I've worked in doctor's business office.
That is what the insurance company allows, not what they dictate. Who is to tell the doctor how long he can sit and talk with his patient. It is up to him. True insurance companies get together to decide what is the appropriate amount for the doctor to "charge" for a service but I've literally seen where the doctor sees the patient all of 2 minutes after patient is worked up by techs, but they still get paid for that visit.
I know a lot of people it helped (I worked in a doctor's office) SM
BUT you have to really want to quit before you start it. It doesn't make you want to quit - it just helps you w/ the depression and the withdrawal symptoms that come along w/ quitting. Good luck.
If you want to work at a local hospital or doctor's office, go to community college. Otherwise
if you want to work from home, for a national company, you need to take the course from either Andrews School or M-TEC. It does you no good to save money by taking the Penn Foster course, because most companies will NOT hire grads from that school, it is a poor course and does NOT prepare you sufficiently for MT work.
I worked for a local hospital that used the same formula for our incentive pay.
x
Years ago, I used to get a $25 gift card from the hospital I worked for.
I haven't gotten so much as a card in recent years.
I'm there with ya! I worked for a hospital that outsourced overflow to a very large, VERY SM
well-known service. The quality of the work was shockingly bad. There's no way to describe it except to say it was painfully obvious that the MTs on our account had no business being MTs. They didn't even have the very basic skills for the job, let alone the medical terminology.
I had the opportunity to read through the contract, and there was a paragraph in the contract that clearly stated that not only did the service promise to adhere to a specific TAT, but also promised high quality, proofread reports. Basically saying that they employed a highly qualified QA staff that insured nearly error free reports. That's the OUT clause as far as I'm concerned. I started a file of every report with errors from the service, every ridiculous error.
A new supervisor for our department was hired and her first order of business was to cut the flab out of department. She told us that the service doing our overflow was being paid something like $60,000 a MONTH! The hospital was paying the service 45 cpl. Now do the math! The service gets 45 cpl and pays you and me 7 to 8 cpl to transcribe for them or even worse pays 2 cpl for an India-based MT and 3 cpl for an American QA person to edit and correct it, so that's only 5 cpl they end up paying. That's quite a profit. I vowed the day I found all this out to NEVER work for a national service again and especially not THAT service.
The new supervisor was against outsourcing which was good news. She set out to renegotiate the contract or drop the service all together. I threatened her with breach of contract and that's where my little file came in handy. Needless to say, the service backed off and we not outsource overflow to a service local to our area and a much more reasonable rate.
My advice to you is start your file and keep track of everything. Tell your boss to reread the contract, especially those paragraphs that speak to what the service promises to provide for the inflated line rate!
Good Luck!
I surely lost out on that, worked from home for a hospital
for 2+ years and required to come in house for meetings and never, never paid for my gas nor my time down and just asked to make it up. After that we got outsourced to a company and guess what again? Meetings at their place and again no pay!! I bet others who see this probably have had the same thing happen to them. Your place exceptional.
Same thing happened at the hospital I worked onsite with, yet
the boss definitely knew this was going on because at least on the software we had and yours probably too, the boss can run all kinds of reports, such as what time the jobs came in, in what order, what time they were transcribed, who transcribed etc. You can cross-reference these too and see that a certain person is going way out of order and doing their own thing. The boss most certainly knows this is going on and in my opinion, (having been management myself), was probably fishing to see how much you knew... when she asked or toyed with the issue in your conversation. In my case, the boss knew the person was taking all the ops normals, it was even brought out at a meeting by another gutsy MT but guess who got the brunt of it? The people who were upset by it, and of course the person who spoke up. I am not saying you shouldn't be upset, and I am not saying you aren't right. I am just saying to bide your time and see what happens. Karma will indeed come into play most definitely. And if the boss is sheltering a cheater, well most likely at the right time the cheater and the boss will get it. In our case, I don't know if the person ever got caught because she outlived most of us, LOL, she and the boss were best of friends. But I do believe Karma is still in play even when we aren't there to see it...just hang in there, do what you believe is right and you will be A-OK. Life is too short to worry about anything but the good which will come your way. Good luck!
I worked in a teaching/major trauma hospital
when I was doing radiology and we had scads of standards.
I worked at a naval hospital outpatient clinic--sm
as a salaried employee $28. In 2002 had the opportunity to work at home as an IC for .12/line. In 2003 I was told had to become an employee and dropped to .11/line as the company woudl have to pay taxes/benefits. In 2004 had a raise to .1133. In 2005 that company merged with another and was dropped to .10/line and have had no raise since then. Am at top of pay level in both line rate and salary rate.
Just told the company is buying a new platform that could possibly doudle our production and in turn may affect our line rates even more by raising the daily line requirement. Will have to wait and see about that.
I started in the file room of the urology office I worked. And I was not
going to be a file clerk for the rest of my life. I only had 2 semesters of terminology, no other professional schooling. They had a fresh from a Mayo Fellowship peds urologist coming in and needed somebody to help with the typing. First it was half file-room and half transcription. Finally he was so busy, I became full time. I was there from 1990 until 2003. I then left to free-lance and start my own business. He has since moved to Arizona and I still type for him after all these years.
Before I started my own business, worked in a hospital in-house with taxes taken out & then went hom
was getting with shift differential 23.80 when I left. Your pay seems extremely low, you could make more as an IC seriously.
well i worked for a "teaching" hospital before and it was not A LOT of hard dictators, in fact
ESLs are everywhere and she already stated she has lots of ESLs where she is at anyway. that isn't her concern.
I was merely suggesting the OP (not you) might could work her 2 days off there to get a feel for the work load, ethics, and environment as well as some office chit chat to get a feel for the place. of course, we all know what you start with isn't necessarily what you end with and that is a given.
Hospital where I worked cut raises from 12% possibility to 6% with excellent review. Which means
dd
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