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Serving Over 20,000 US Medical Transcriptionists

Couldn't Amphion be held liable for minimum wage

Posted By: for the unpaid busy work? on 2007-09-18
In Reply to: LOL! Is IS a very strange company run by very strange people. I have had that - Cheesehead

I'm just sayin'


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I believe that would come to a little over minimum wage...
Not good at all!
Minimum wage at best, probably not that!
I would not take any QA/editing position unless it is a set hourly rate. Again, I have said it before, do not sell your fellow QA/editors down the drain like AAMT has sold us. Hourly is the only way!
They have to pay minimum wage s/m
They have to pay for minimum wage if you do not reach that on your line counts.
Minimum Wage

You have hit on a point that the service owners did not plan for.  Pursue this with the DOL office in your state:


USMLSU Initiative
Washington,  DC


ONLINE, REAL-TIME CONFERENCE CALLS/MEETINGS BEING SCHEDULED FOR THE FIRST WEEK OF 2009 !


Respect, reasonable compensation, and humane treatment for all U.S.A. Medical Transcriptionists


VR or not, need to pay MINIMUM WAGE--sm
Not just my 2 cents' worth -- that's the LAW in all 50 US states.  At 3-4 cents a line, this is hardly possible, especially at the start, to make at least a minimum wage that any 16-year-old kid makes delivering groceries.  Add to that all the UNPAID work we are required to do for the privilege of being fleeced by the MTSOs, CCs, researching doctors, endless demographic work having nothing to do with transcription...
Minimum wage

You cannot by law make less than minimum wage.  If you are making less than minimum wage I would tell the company, they have to make up the difference.  If they don't then you should call the labor board.


If you cannot make minimum wage with this, then
get another profession. I make over $20 per hour. You are a poor excuse for a Transcriptionist if not able to do. End of message and end of talking about something apparently not everyone is able to do.
minimum wage is $ 7.--/hour.....nm
nm
California's minimum wage is higher than SM
the federal minimum wage, this may be why.
Heck, NO!! I'd never survive on minimum wage. nm
xxx
So you don't mind working for less than minimum wage?
That's what a good Editor would make because most good editors that have 100% listen I know get between 2000-3000 lines a day. I think not. People like you who take these jobs bring all of us who have worked hard down. If you have only been an MT for 2 years, I would not think you would even qualify to be QA
when minimum wage goes up do IC rates increase also?
x
MT, minimum wage, single moms, etc...sm
Medical transcription requires a great deal of skill and knowledge. It is not a minimum wage job, or should not be a minimum wage position. Years of learning and experience are involved to master this profession. No qualified MT, single mom or otherwise, should be working at minimum wage levels, in turn necessitating the help of assistance programs. This is too skilled a profession, and it is a shame that it is not so slowly sinking to the level of a minimum wage-type job.
Oh nice..getting late..how about MINIMUM WAGE.. LOL

No, soon the government will increase the minimum wage
and MTs will be the working poor. Sad business this is.
Must be paid MINIMUM WAGE for each hour -sm

worked under 40/wk if employee in the U.S., regardless of work type, job description.  In addition, must be PAID FOR ALL WORK PERFORMED - I won't even go there.


Att: Flamers: You can look this up yourself in DOL regulations.


Minimum wage only applies to employees.
nm
No, she said 1000 monthly - not weekly. Less than minimum wage! nm
x
LABOR BOARD / MINIMUM WAGE LAWS

Regardless of all the bull dished out by the MTSO companies, especially as it pertains to VR, i.e., We're cutting your pay 50%, so you'll have to work twice as hard - but you're going to LOVE the platform.  Also get tired of hearing about Learning Curve and wonder if my grocer, landlord & hungry kids understand this learning curve concept. 


However (and the MTSOs can like this or lump it) WE MUST BE PAID FEDERALLY-MANDATED MINIMUM WAGE for workers with employee status - whether straight typing, VR or being required to babysit computer during no/low work.  Of course, it's exploitation to cut wages in half from an already insultingly low rate & most MTs are surely feeling the pinch.  But whether 2, 3, 4 or 10 cpl ... minimum wage must be paid.  (Sorry Suits/MTSOs - the law is there for a reason!)


$1,000 divided by 40 hours is $25.00 an hour. Where do you live that that is minimum wage? nm
:{
Minimum wage laws are for employees only, not independent contractors
Would you pay your plumber or pool cleaner (examples of other IC jobs) more because the minimum wage increased?
There did last year for 600 lpd minimum. I couldn't take it because of
s
Our work is considered piecemeal and not subject to minimum wage laws. Just what I've been told
MT
What are minimum PT hours for Amphion?
.
Does anyone know the minimum lines required part time for Amphion? Thanks. nm
n
ICs are not liable for anything. What the poster above said.
If the doctors sign reports, it is their responsibility. We do not have direct hands-on patient care; therefore, we are not liable. Anyone who wants to make you think you are, you are not. It's an expense you do not need as an IC. If a company wants to hire ICs and they think it is necessary, then the company should carry it, not the IC. If they ask you to carry it, then don't work for them.
taking a low wage does not lower the pay for a field. The fact that they are offering stated wage
means that is the market. You don't see ads for McDonald's for $36/hour and you don't see ads for A.G. Edwards for $20,000/yr. If they didn't think they could fill a job for $14, they wouldn't post it. Notice MT jobs are now posting at 5, 6 and 6.5. So guess what editors are going to make?
Bare minimum? I make over $50,000 a year in 40 hours a week. That is not bare minimum. sm
Bare minimum would be $8 an hour which is $16,640 a year or $10 an hour which is $20,800 a year. I make more than twice that and that is NOT bare minimum.

I worked to get my typing speed to 80 wpm. I worked to get my Expanders user-friendly and plentiful. I am not the fastest because I look up what I do not know, but I am lucky to have a very good memory so if I type it a few times, I do not have to look it up. I keep notes when I run across something I do not know. I am interested in my profession and read the magazines for our profession and network with other transcriptionists during my free time, devoting a minimum of 2 hours per week to networking and learning new things.

I am not the fastest MT, but I am accurate and boiled it down to simple math. I need to transcribe 250 lines per hour for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. At 10cpl, that is 2000 lines a day x 5 days per week x 50 weeks per year. I take 2 weeks off per year during July to visit my grandchildren (unpaid), 1 week a year to vacation with my husband (paid) and 1 week a year to spring clean (paid). I have worked for the same company for 4 years and 8 years for the one before this.

I treat my work hours as work hours and take 1/2 hour for lunch which I do not include in my 8 hours. I pretend that I am working outside the home and do not answer the door, get the mail, do laundry, etc. If I have a good day and go over the 2000, I bank it in my mind for days that are not as good and make sure that I get 10,000 lines each week.

My W2 each year is consistently $50,000. A few years it was higher, but I worked a few weekends, which I no longer do.

It IS possible.
I used to have a QA guy that couldn't transcribe, couldn't fill in a blank,

but was anal retentive when it came to punctuation.  You would have a report with 10 blanks in it because of poor sound quality, and he wouldn't fill in one blank, but he had put commas all throughout your report, or taken apostrophes out, etc. and he wasn't correct in his punctuation a lot of the time.   Several of the MTs complained about him and asked to not have him do their QA, so he was demoted from QA to an MT.  Well, as I said earlier, he couldn't fill in a blank.  I saw a couple of his reports and there was blank after blank in reports that I had no trouble with at all.  He also didn't proof his reports because he would have inapproriate/incorrect expansions in them.  Not sure if he left on his own, or didn't really have a choice.  Anyway, talk to your supervisor.  Maybe this person is just on a power trip, knows you are new and wants to train you to do it her way, even if your way isn't incorrect.  I think punctuation is a valid issue, but if it doesn't change the integrity of the report and there are no other errors it shouldn't be flagged by QA.    You could also take into account her corrections and maybe try to use a few more commas, etc. and that might help.  


Oh, I couldn't understand them. I didn't try them all, but the first couple, I couldn't und
nm
Never. They do not and have never held a check. nm
nm
Nobody held your hands to the keyboard
  Go away!!
My line count is being held

Can anyone else relate to having their line count held until your supervisor feels you have helped out enough.  I always meet my line count and track my line count daily.  My line count is always significantly lower than my supervisors count every pay.  Everyday I go all out and really hustle to meet my line count. I type 10 minute reports and only get credit for about 50 lines. So, I hustle and hustle to make my count.  I am almost 1000 lines behind my supervisors count and I am tired.  I simply want to meet my line count and stop working, but I cannot get an accurate count until I have help the team produce more and more lines.  I am fed up. HELP!!! 


I'm not the one needing my hand held, now am I?
NM
I've never had my check held..
I realize there are some companies that have this practice, which is basically getting you in their pay period schedule, but I have never had this happen. I discuss this up front and all my checks have been mailed or DD within 2-3 days of end of pay period. You need to look at your contract.....it should be spelled out.
Dont know about the system you use but we all are held to a
98% or above accuracy, so I don’t think it is about whether you care about accuracy or not, I want my work to be as good as humanly possible. The particular hospital I do have done now for over 15 years, some doctors are quite familiar and then again yesterday was a nightmare with all the ESL physicians I had to put up with. I NEVER ever retype a complete sentence. Our formatting has been off lately as far as numbers, 4, 4, 4 and then a 2, 3 and so forth and yes it takes time for me to correct each and every one. Some people never like VR. When outsourced we had some to try and then gave up but I personally like it because it changes mistakes now that I do not have in my autocorrect, just seems to know. The #1 thing I think I like the most is I never thought it would be able to pick up on ESLs and thank goodness, it does them about as good if not better than our English doctors. With all the ESLs all around us now, I am thankful I do not have to hunt and look for every little word they say I cannot understand.
I've held my tongue about OSI and offshoring
I interviewed with OSi more than 2 years ago. One of my standard questions in an interview is whether or not the company offshores. The recruiter told me up front that the company did offshore on certain accounts that demanded it be done to save money. I accepted that and didn't have a problem with it. That was not the deal breaker for me (I got a better deal from another company on the same day).

I had just left working as the MT coordinator at a small MTSO. While working in-house, I had opportunity to work alongside the marketer. There were several times when he would return from a potential client's office with the news that he could only get the account if he offshored it by client demand. If he took that account by offshoring it, he could get a bigger account associated with it that did not want the offshoring component or rate. From a business prospective, he gave up something small to get something bigger. The offshore component of the business amounted to less than 10% of the client base.

The OSI recruiter was open and honest with me. In my mind, that holds more weight than a recruiter that lies through the teeth just to get you through the door and you end up leaving because they can't deliver on the promises.

Climbing off my soap box now.
Spheris is a privately held company, there are no shareholders
I suspect this report is bogus.

Their latest press release says they are planning on increasing their domestic work force at the same time as their overseas one, to match their aggressive pursuit of new accounts. (Personally I think they ought to concentrate on servicing the ones they have.)
You want them to be held accountable for the fact they didn't hire you (sm)?
If I could guess maybe they didn't like your attitude, maybe they realized from talking to you that you were just the kind of employee they did not want to be accountable for (and from your snotty remarks on here, I bet they sure feel justified now that they passed on you)JMHO.

You say it is suspicious, why? What is suspicious about a company not hiring you? They do have that right don't they or do you just think anytime you put in a resume you should automatically get the job? Enlighten me please, because your post has me confused.

couldn't -- you couldn't care less
lol
Couldn't...you couldn't care less.
nm
Current Amphion employee...I'm very happy. The part of Amphion I work with has no faxes, lists,s
minor demographic work..superb QA and feedback.  Fellow MTs on same account are more than willing to help and now they also have mentor program.  My pay is what they said.  They do have different pay for different levels. 
Min. wage
That isn't even minimum wage in San Francisco, where it's something like $9.25+ per hr.
Min wage in NY

In NY minimum wage is now $7.15, so that is not min wage here either.


 


Min wage

I thought I had read something recently that stated Nuance/Focus was developing some software that would completely do away with transcriptionists in the next few years.  I worked for Focus 5 years ago and they were a terrible company then to work for, I see they have just kept getting worse.  You are entitled to minimum wage if you are an employee. If your line count does not come to that contact your local DOL and apply for unemployment benefits.  if you don't you are hurting yourselves and other MTs who come after you.


 


don't accept the wage, but I would!!!!
nm
Medware Wage

The most you can expect to make at Medware is 0.08 a line.   Medware has some extremely difficult accounts with a lot of ESL doctors.  It is very hard to make a good line count.  Additionally, Medware watches how many minutes you work during the day.  You must work a full 8-hour shift.  If you have problems and need to call your supervisor, need to email your supervisor, create samples or go over files from the editors, have a problem with pay or vacation time or anything similiar, you will do it on your time.  You have to put in your 8 hours TYPING, nothing else counts. 


 


Is this a fair wage?
I'm a new graduate and I got an offer for 0.75 cpl.  Any input would be appreciated.
QA Wage question
If getting paid hourly for QA, let's say $10.00 an hour, do you get paid for every hour whether there's anything to QA or not?
if you are still working there for that particular wage...sm
you are settling. 12 hour days x 6 days per week? You are definitely selling yourself short if you accept this. I was only trying to be honest based on the information you chose to share. I don't want others to think this is the norm in this industry because it most certainly is not. Again, I am basing my comments solely on the information you provided, which in fact saddened me as an MT who has been in this profession for many years. I apologize if you see this as an insult, but I was just overwhelmed by your breakdown of pay. To me this is completely unacceptable. Good luck to you.
GOOD WAGE
If you find anyone that pays 10 cpl to start, let me know!!!

I took me 4 months to find a job as an IC where I would make 10 cpl after 90 days!! and that is maintaining minimum line count of 1000 lines the whole time...