Does anyone really make a good living doing VR??? sm

I currently work for one of the larger MT companies that is mostly VR, platform isn't bad, but just not able to get my line count up.  I was curious if it just me or if there were MTs out there who were doing good on VR and glad they have made the switch.  Thanks. 

• Does anyone really make a good living doing VR??? sm - passing through
  • not as good as typing but depends - RM
  • ATTENTION MTSO's...Pay more for editing or you're going to lose all of us! - Fed up MT
    • READ THIS...ESP. YOU MTSO - MT
    • Agree. MTSOs are abusing - I Believe In Karma
  • No way - C. Simpson
    • Also.......sm - C. Simpson
  • I am glad I work on VR but what kind of line count - Lara
  • VR/ASR/MT pay rates & line counts - Nope, Not Me
    • No way!...nm - Jan
    • What company does not have VR? - NM
      • They are out there - LK
        • Do they offer health insurance? - Just wondering.
    • Same experience. Half the pay for doing work that would take - less time transcribing. It's bad for MTs. nm

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I have been an on-site MT for 15 years and have clinic-only experience in several specialties.  I am considering a change to working from home.  I am wondering if it is possible to work from home and still make good money.  Do you folks feel that you do just as well as you would working on-site? 

situation that is getting worse all the time with lost accounts and over hiring and not knowing yet what the pay scale will be.

And while you are at it, TT Management,

BITE ME!!!  You were fools to file this lawsuit.  $294.50 to lose all credibility in the MT World.  Sad, truly sad...

And many thought you were one of the good guys.

Just thought I would add my 2 cents worth.  It would be great to be paid 10-11-12-13 cents per line (as an employee not IC), but that is not a reality in this job market.  Yes, MTs will take jobs that pay 7 cents per line, but that MTSO is not necessarily underpaying or demeaning the MTs that work for them. 

Bottom line is that you have to do your homework because, yes, there are people who can make a living on 7 cents a line and will take those jobs.   It really depends on your skills and how dedicated you are to making your maximum possible lines per hour.  The MTSO that is offering only 7 cents a line but has easy dictators can actually pay you more per check if you type more lines per hour than an MTSO that is offering 10 cents a line but has horrible quality, ESL dictators, nasty QA, etc and you can barely type 100 lines an hour because of it. 

MY TIP:  When you interview, ask what the approximate minimum and maximum lines per hour that the other MTs that are doing EXACTLY the same accounts that you are going to be doing are achieving per hour/day/pay period.  If the recruiter/MTSO will not tell you that information, you probably don’t want to work there anyway so just terminate the interview before wasting any more of your time.  The slowest MTs are probably new and the ones achieving 200-250-300 lines per hour have been there a long time and know the account(s) forwards and backwards.  If you plan to make that MTSO a long-term employer, you will have a pretty good idea of what you can potentially achieve if you stay there long enough.  Don’t let them tell you the “average” of all the MTs that work for the company or what their perfect employee Suzie Q types.   We all know every account is different, so Suzie Q who just started last week and is already doing 150 lines per hour may have easier accounts than the one you are going to be working on, so that is not very representative of what your account(s) is really going to be like.  Ask specifically about the accounts you will be assigned to and don’t let them distract you.  Again, if they don’t want to tell you, terminate the interview. 

According to the US Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook, in 2004 !!!, the MEDIAN hourly earnings for a Medical Transcriptionist (probably  mostly hospital and office based) in May of 2004, was $13.64 an hour. 

Just for reference, it seems like most MTSOs have a 6000 lines per week minimum production standard which is about 150 line per hour (40 hour week) on average for full-time MTs.   

·        If you are being paid 7 cents per line, you are making a minimum of (150 x 0.07) = $10.50 per hour.

·        If you are being paid 8 cents per line, you are making a minimum of (150 x 0.08) = $12.00 per hour. 

·        If you are being paid 9 cents per line, you are making a minimum of (150 x 0.09) = $13.50 per hour. 

·        If you are being paid 10 cents per line, you are making a minimum of (150 x 0.10) = $15.00 per hour. 

If you are one of the highly trained experienced MT and type 200 lines per hour on average, you are even better off. 

·        If you are being paid 7 cents per line, you are making a minimum of (200 x 0.07) = $14.00 per hour.

·        If you are being paid 8 cents per line, you are making a minimum of (200 x 0.08) = $16.00 per hour. 

·        If you are being paid 9 cents per line, you are making a minimum of (200 x 0.09) = $18.00 per hour. 

·        If you are being paid 10 cents per line, you are making a minimum of (200 x 0.10) = $20.00 per hour. 

The median hourly earnings in 2004 was $13.64 per hour.  That was almost 4 years ago.  With a minimal 2% per year cost of living/inflation increase, by 2008 the median hourly earning should be about $14.76 per hour.       

2004 --------- $13.64

2005 x 2% = $13.91

2006 x 2% = $14.19

2007 x 2% = $14.47

2008 x 2% = $14.76

So, in my humble opinion, if you are an experienced MT with 5 or more years of experience, when you call that MTSO offering 7 cents per line the accounts you will be assigned to should be easy enough so that you can make an average of 210 lines per hour within a relatively short period of time.  If they say their experienced MTs are only doing 175 to 200 lines per hour on average, that MTSO is drastically underpaying their experienced MTs and it is time for you to move on.  If they say their MTs are averaging 250 to 300 lines per hour, then that MTSO may be worth looking into further, even if their starting wage is lower than what you originally thought you should be getting paid. 

I think if WE ALL start doing this, the MTSOs will start to figure out that we are not going to work for companies that underpay our skills and experience.  If enough experienced MTs hang up on these companies, eventually they will figure out that the recruiters/supervisors need to be more honest with us regarding their pay structure and the difficulty of their accounts. 

Some food for thought !! 

More information from the US Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook: 

Medical transcriptionists had median hourly earnings of $13.64 in May 2004. The middle 50 percent earned between $11.50 and $16.32. The lowest 10 percent earned less than $9.67, and the highest 10 percent earned more than $19.11. Median hourly earnings in the industries employing the largest numbers of medical transcriptionists in May 2004 were:

If you want more information, check out the US Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics web page for Medical Transcriptionist. 

http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos271.htm

Why is it so hard to share their profits with the at-home MT's? ? ?   Give me MONEY for Christmas because so much has been taken throughout the year -- I won't it back -- or at least some of it !  I will buy my own gift or pay my light bill or buy my children/grandchildren a gift with it.

In general, the top echelon is getting so greedy at most MTSO's!   They would have nothing w/o the MT's constantly tapping those keyboards . . . and I mean it gets more and more difficult for us MT's as with each passing year to make a decent living . . . I dare say a living of any sort.  Only those MT's who have husbands to support them are happy with whatever few cents they are offered, because it is only play money for them anyway.  Hubby pays all the bills.   I guarantee you that if a poll were taken of the Happy MT's with their at-home job, it would either be hubby making living for them OR mommy not having to pay a babysitter to work outside the home.  Those in HR/management, with a little research, can easily see how our paychecks are dwindling month by month due to lower wages because ASR/VR is taking away the decent dictators and leaving only the horrible dictators (who take lots of time to transcribe a quality report), lack of cost-of-living raises, rising electricity bills at home that the MT has to pay, high-speed internet/phone bills higher and higher and loaded with taxes, rent/mortages/taxes/insurance continuously rising. 

The office staff don't have to think about those at-home costs, as theirs are paid by the MTSO during their working hours/shift, nor do they have to worry about the lack of raises, etc, because in-house employees get raises automatically with tenure or with a 6-month or annual review or at the discretion of management at any time.

Personally, my line count continues to decrease; I don't know what the reason is because in the past many years, I could transcribe 200-400 lines per hour, and I do good to transcribe 100 or 150 an hour with the horrible dictators sifted out by the VR machine Dictaphone ExText.  

Please don't yell at me -- because I am thankful for a paycheck -- but why is the burden put on my fingers to WORK HARDER AND HARDER to earn that paycheck.  Don't say try ASR/VR because it will double your income, because I have tried that and know better and have proven that theory to be wrong -- at least on Dictatphone ExSpeech you can't !

The other thief of a good line count/wage for the U.S. MT's is the majority of our work going offshore because it can get done CHEAPER !  Who is all that extra money saved by offshoring our work going to ??  Not the at-home MT.  That is exactly why I request MONEY for my Christmas gift from my employer, rather than some promo gift that is handed out to any and everyone.

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL US MT's in the good 'ole USA !  ! !

However some attorneys are ''of counsel'' to firms while not actually on staff.  Maybe they are brought in on a case that needs their particular expertise.  So while they work with the firm on specific legal cases, they are not actually employees of the firm, but are paid much like contractors.

Just noodling some ideas here:

My neighbor is a painting contractor who hires subcontractors.  He finds the clients, signs the contracts, arranges for the subs and has overall responsibility for seeing that jobs are done satisfactorily and dealing with the client.  He collects the money and pays the subs, who are are providing services that are a key aspect of his painting business.  (Though maybe we could say his business is actually a sort of broker, selling the jobs and providing the crews). 

He has used the same subs for years, so there is an ''ongoing relationship,'' though these guys can and do work for other contractors.  He loosely supervises these crews as far as maintaining quality and terms of the contract, making sure they use proper materials, don't do damage, etc.  The subs provide their own equipment. Through him, the client specifies the color and type of paint to be applied.   So in a way he does tell the subs ''how to do the work.''  And in a way he tells them ''when to work'' because the contract loosely specifies when it is to be done - not an hour-by-hour schedule, but a time frame in which it must be finished.  When something goes wrong - a sub screws up in any way,  the buck stops with my neighbor.   He has to make it right with the client, then take the problem up with the sub. 

Ruling that these painting crews must be employees of a single company would be unworkable, since the flexibility of hiring them when/as needed is crucial to the process. 

Now compare this to a typical MTSO.  They find client hospitals and sign them to contracts.  They hire enough subs (us) to do the actual work.  They specify format, maintain quality and TAT.  We provide out own computer and reference materials. Our computers must have the proper technical specifications in order to handle their work, but they do not tell us what brand to use or where to buy it.  Our software must be compatible with their system, but in many cases we just sign onto their server and use their program.  They collect the money and pay their subcontractors. 

Seem to be pretty similar scenarios to me.  The whole construction industry is based on contractors hiring subcontractors in various trades for specific work, only when there is work. 

In the past 7 years that I have been an at-home IC (left my hospital job), I have made no less than $50k and this year, will hit my all-time high of $62K.  There are still good accounts out there, with great dictators that pay .10 to .11 cpl and if you are fast, with great macros and expanders, you can still make $40-$50/hr.  Experience and reliability are what get you top dollar and there are companies willing to pay.   Its sad we doubt those that make the good money.  Maybe there is a tad bit of jealousy there!

experienced?

I do believe it has to do with the accounts though.  I've used it for 4 hospitals and have made great money, both VR and straight typing.  VR gives me more than double the lines of typing but I do think it is an acquired skill.  Learn the shortcuts and use them.  It is also only as good as the team training the VR. 

On the other hand I've used it on a clinic account and the lines were just not coming in like they do in AC.  A very heavy, 90%, ESL verbatim account and I lasted all of 2 weeks on that account. 

I'd say I do about 90% VR and 10% straight typing and all in all I'm impressed with the accuracy of the VR. 

IME it's hard to make good money doing clinic when paid by the line; some of the notes are only two sentences long.  Just wondering if it's any better at Keystrokes, i.e., good combination of short and long notes.