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Serving Over 20,000 US Medical Transcriptionists

Don't be too hard on yourself. You'll get it eventually.

Posted By: QA'ing correctly lol on 2005-09-26
In Reply to: Uh...what? Like I said, I wonder some of the people - in this profession

nm


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YUP, health problems eventually set in and with working 17 hours/day, they'll be popping up very
You're so right.
You'll work twice as hard to get half as much, it seems
z
lol You'll be hard pressed to find work with
nm
You'll be hard pressed to find a company
that pays hourly and allows you to work at home, that just isn't the way the business works.   I'm not saying that those type of positions don't exist, just that they are extremely rare.  Now if you worked on-site that is a different story. 
Eventually...
they are eventually going to change everything over to Triton and voice, but all of my accounts are on the same platform now (Extext). The pay is going to be 4 cents....no way near worth it for me. I can type most reports myself just as fast as I can listen to it and edit it so that means to make the same I'd have to be able to double my line rate...don't see that happening.
then I am going to aim to work for them eventually
Then I am going to aim to work for them eventually, ASAP. Excellent benes and computer provided, sounds awesome! Thanks for the info. I will be aiming for that.
What goes around will come around and eventually your clients
They see that all the other doctors are hardly paying anything per line for it and they'll expect you to adjust your rates accordingly. This is precisely what happened in my area. All the doctors started thinking they should get bargain-basement prices because they could use the threat to send it offshore. So wallow in the green while you have it, at the expense of your offshore workers (and hey, if they're truly so great, why not pay them US rates and really do something really noble to improve their lives?)

You might be helping the economy in third-world countries (they'd starve w/o you?! Get over yourself!) but you are INDEED helping to lower ours here. You can justify and deny that all you want, and frankly, I don't care that you sleep at night. The fact that you are here defending your stance so vehemently tells me you know deep down.

You can also claim there are no good workers here, but you're wrong. We just don't work for MTSOs with your attitude. And guess what? There ARE plenty of doctors that DO care where their work is being done. You might have found a few who don't care (if you truly told them), but that's not par for the course in most places, my dear. Most ESL clients are the most adamant that the work be done here because the US MTs are the only ones who could clean up their grammar!
Do you know if they have plans to eventually sm
start up SR on the DocQScribe accounts?
it will change eventually when the sm
companies get tired of the crap being pounded out in India. Then what will happen is the MTs who have hung in there are the ones who are going to have the jobs. It won't be the entitlement crowd or the whiners.
My 2 cents on whether my pay will be cut eventually
From 1991-97 I worked for a small company that was bought by MQ then (97-98). MQ took a long time to make major changes (except they cut pay for QA by $4 almost immediately from 20 to 16 per hour), and I mean YEARS. I believe this was because they had gobbled up SO many small to midsize companies in a span of 4 to 5 years (the company I was with was the 14th or 15th company they had merged with since 1994). So, as I said, no immediate changes that affected me personally. I had a great transcription supervisor, and actually asked for a raise that year 97-98. I was raised to 10 cpl. Over time, one of the things MQ did was try to standardize all of its companies slowly but surely to all one thing. At first the allowed us to remain SE (you pay some of your taxes)... then IC (you pay all of your taxes)... did away with bonuses that I had had with original company. Years later, you all know MQ forced everyone to become employees, no longer offered IC status, enforced strict scheduling and punching a clock and no overtime at all unless approved. I'm assuming it is still the same, it was when I finally left in 2007. I will say that I did not get a pay cut directly from MQ, but, in essence, received one when they did away with a tiering bonus program.

I took a lateral move at 10 cpl. What amazes me is that this is a great cpl for here and now, but the reality is is that I have been making the same amount since 1997. Twelve years with no raise, no cost of living, and prices of everything including my health insurance (individual policy) have shot through the roof. And to be faced with the choice MDI made for its MTs - to have to negotiate and possibly lose a pay rate I have been making for twelve years - to go down even more? Or be forced to VR to take even less? and my options, because of the upside-down-ness of this industry is to find another job for 8 cpl?

What is wrong with this picture? My guess would be greedy CEOs telling us that it VR and offshoring cutting our pay not them. Everyone from the CEOS who say we are family to AAMT has not advocated for us, for keeping work here - because of the bottom line, money. If the CEOs, if D were TRULY struggling and about to lose her house, barely making payroll, changing their eating habits and lifestyle to make ends meet - then I might buy that VR and offshoring are the direct cause. More and more I think the direct cause is simply greed. They want more and find ways to do it, and that means happens to be VR and offshoring. Okay, nuff said. That's my 2 (and then some) cents on whether my pay will be cut by Trancend.


just started and so far so good, i will eventually
be a reviewed but I am typing while in training to become familiar with the accounts. I do recall the the pay per line rates were in the 7 to 9 cent range with incentives to make more, which I believe is about the norm these days. Also, while in training you get feedback on every report you type.
in my case, eventually found out
yeah, she wanted the easy stuff, even though she was making money, she wanted to add to her income and took all my easy jobs
MTs working for offshorers will eventually be let go
American MTs working for them now, gives those companies time to develop their Indian resources and once the Indian MTs can pass muster, the American MTs will be looked at as high overhead and they will be eliminated in a heartbeat.
But if you report them to the IRS, they will eventually stop -
The IRS will determine if they are breaking the law, and if they are, then they will be seriously fined and penalized -- and the IRS loves to get those fines and penalties!!!
Eventually codes are going to be "attached" to
There will no longer be a need for coders.  The diagnosis will be entered into the computer and the code will already be coded in with the diagnosis. 
QA will eventually be replaced by Indian QA/editors.
dd
Yep, it will eventually happen; just don't be stupid like I was and train them to do YOUR work.
You will eventually knock yourself out of your job if you allow it. Don't agree to it, don't allow it, and don't train ANYONE not even a backup MT, and most importantly DO NOT edit. Once they get it down, bye bye to you it will be.

Good luck to anyone going through this with Medware. I feel for you as this happened to me in the past as well back when I made real good money and cannot ever make that now.
Guess our work will eventually go to India now. Going to start looking for another job! (NM)
nm
If you'll read through past posts you'll find lots of
recent info.  Why do you need menitoring if you already work as an MT.  Unless you do clinic work most companies will require you to work at least one weekend day, at least initially. 
If you'll read the archives you'll find out everything
you want to know, none of it good.
Probably figure you'll want Way more than they'll offer, whatever it might be. :) nm
s
If you'll read more carefully you'll see
I was referring to AFTER she's missed out on a job, having a friend do sort of an audit to tell her what what was wrong with her test she submitted -- not cheating.
Hard to say...
In my experience, one minute of dictation is roughly equivalent to 10 lines of transcription, so, approximately 180 minutes of dictation, and figuring an average length of a report at around 3 minutes, that's probably around 60 reports.
Hard to say
what the situation is.  It is fairly common to have times here and there where there is no work in this business due to many different things.  The company may have over hired and don't have enough work.  Do you work on clinic or acute care.  If clinic and you work on only one account, is it possible a doctor is out of town?  There could be many different reasons, although I think it is somewhat strange that they can predict that there will be no work at all for you for several days (this might make me a little suspicious).  Might not hurt to try to find another part-time position to fill in the gaps.         
it is hard
to say that our profession is not going to exist. I see a high demand for experienced MTs. If you look on the occupational outlook handbook, it even says that there is going to be greater than average demand for MTs. I copied and pasted below what it says.

Contracting out transcription work overseas and advancements in speech recognition technology are not expected to significantly reduce the need for well-trained medical transcriptionists. Outsourcing transcription work abroad—to countries such as India, Pakistan, Philippines, and the Caribbean—has grown more popular as transmitting confidential health information over the Internet has become more secure; however, the demand for overseas transcription services is expected only to supplement the demand for well-trained domestic medical transcriptionists. In addition, reports transcribed by overseas medical transcription services usually require editing for accuracy by domestic medical transcriptionists before they meet domestic quality standards. Speech-recognition technology allows physicians and other health professionals to dictate medical reports to a computer that immediately creates an electronic document. In spite of the advances in this technology, the software has been slow to grasp and analyze the human voice and the English language, and the medical vernacular with all its diversity. As a result, there will continue to be a need for skilled medical transcriptionists to identify and appropriately edit the inevitable errors created by speech recognition systems, and to create a final document.



JLG hard?
If you thought the JLG phone test was hard, you are in for a rude awakening in the MT field. They are standard questions you would know if you have any experience.
Trying hard
I'm trying to like Amphion, but the platform is awful.  If I could ever get the chance to type, I could really get a good line count, but the filling in the DI screen and constant looking up physicians is killing me.  I kept track over one hour, and I had to look up 14 doctors' names and numbers and cc them.  And this is going into a separate window and then coming back to the chart, not using just a keystroke to look them up.  I love the dictators.  They're very clear, and the supervisors are adequate, not overly helpful, but pretty nice.  Right now, I'm struggling to make $10 an hour.
Yes, hard at first but
you get used to it. I dropped 2 cents a line, but the company part of the taxes worked out equally. At least I don't have to pay in the quarterly taxes anymore! Not as much freedom but if you are with a good company it helps.
Not that hard
I do the acute care on 2 accounts. What I find with Keystrokes is the accounts I do are not 50/50 ESL. I don't mind ESLs but something is fishy with other companies I have worked for when I get over 50% ESL. I am not making a good living. I can't do it with 90% ESLs and I have 17 years experience.

I am now making a GOOD living and enjoy going to work every day. I have ESLs but they are the average ESLs, not every other dictation and the accent so thick I despair.

I have some hard dictators but I am making a good living and I haven't for over 5 years. I am also not the fastest typist but I am picky, and I am still making a good living. I work on Ex-Text and the Control I is not blocked. That being the case I can check constantly if I want. I am averagin between 1500 and 1700 lines if I turn the TV off, concentrate and work. Like I said, I am not the fastest typist, but I can live with those lines.
Don't be too hard on yourself, we
spend a lot of time researching words/equipment, looking up CC docs, checking old reports to get proper dictation, etc. You have to figure that in.
It really is hard to believe...
I have been gone now for at least a month, and I cant believe how unaffected my life has been. I mean, I wouldnt leave MQ because I was afraid that I would have to start all over again and worry more about income, etc., etc. Well, stupid me, I shoulda, shoulda, ad. infinitum...
Hard to believe.
nm
not hard
The test was just a general test but beware. I took it along with two friends of mine and they told all of us we failed (we took it for QA/QC) and offered us by line VR jobs instead of hourly.  Then a month later, got called back for an interview for QA, then the next week told they hired somebody else.  Then I got an email asking if I was still interested in a position. I didn't even bother to answer.  There's got to be a reason they are always hiring for every position.
I tried really hard to believe this, but SM

I'm still trying to get past why anyone there would spend all that time and energy doing something like this when they could have just let you go.  They don't have to have cause to let you go.  


Before you call me a cheerleader for All Type, know that I have my own not-so-pleasant experience with them.  I just don't believe they (or any company) has the amount of time to do something like this.  Bottom line.  If you are as good as you say you are, then you should be employed by the beginning of next week.  Don't waste any more time on this, just apply to some companies. 


What is so hard to think out?
OP said people letting work go VR WITHOUT correcting it because otherwise they would be DOCKED. Again, I would not work at any place that wanted to dock my money and secondly you are not much of an MT to just let any and all mistakes go thru so you can make the $$. Oh, by the way hubby NEVER tells me or else.
It is hard!

My first two children, who are 11 months apart, made it very difficult to work at home.  They are 8 and 9 now... and they are SO easy now... because they play with their neighborhood kids a lot and dont really bother me much.  however, I just had a baby and she is very demanding, of course, like all babies are.  You cant neglect them.... so you have to squeeze in your time here and there... Sometimes I do 10 minutes here, 20 minutes there, as much as I can throughout the day.  Then when my hsuband is home I will work a pretty long stretch... I also work at night to finish up my work for the day.  It is hard, very hard.  I feel like I am working ALL the time... Because even when you are not working, it is hanging over your head and you end up being stressed, wondering if you will be able to get the work done on time. 


My first two children will always remember their childhood as their mom working all the time.. because that is how it feels.


My husband goes to work, puts in his nine hours and comes home and it is all over... 


If I could afford day care they would definitely be enrolled. 


Hard to believe . . .
I believe you hit the proverbial nail on the head there when you asked if Larry deliberately minimized the percentage to be deceptive . . .
Hard to get a job now, only very low sm
paying companies hiring.
It's going to be hard to believe this since they've already
Or they'll change it again once it suits their purpose. 
Think long and hard.

Do you want to work for a company that doesn't pay any down time for a platform that goes down almost every day? Even when it's working, it has significant sound quality problems.  Do you want to wait an entire year before getting even one minute of PTO?  Account instructions that are pages and pages long, very confusing and poorly written?  Do you want to do VR or transcribe?  Did they mention their goal of getting most if not all accounts on voice recognition, and then they're going to pay you roughly half of what they promised you now?


A higher line rate is only good if you can get lines, don't run out of work and work a platform that's Transcriptionist friendly and doesn't go down every other hour.  Unfortunately, you're not going to find those things at Transcend.  Maybe they're hiring you to replace me because I couldn't take it any longer and accepted a job offer for what seemed like less money, but I feel I'll wind up making more if I don't have to deal with all the problems I just mentioned.


They pay every other Friday. How hard is that
duh!
A LITTLE hard to understand????
Did you ever figure out how much you would have been paid on the report you just edited and ALMOST COMPLETELY RETYPED compared to your editing pay????
Why is it so hard to get speed
with that company, are they on a slow system or something?
the lines are hard
x
So easy to say, so hard to do. If you were going to do
it, you would have already. It is so much easier to bash companies and service owners than to do it yourself. Just like armchair quarterbacks. If you had the time and talent to do it better yourself, wouldn't you?

I don't think they are hard to learn, but they are much more

technical in the terminology, lots of equipment and procedure names that change all the time.  It seems that each time a new batch of doctors come in that the terminology is different.  They come from other parts of the country/world and they used different equipment or different techniques.  Lots of stuff to look up - just like the new drugs. 


 


JLG did, but it was so ridiculously hard that
I turned them down flat. Some places expect you to know things only a dr would!
Many posts about it being very hard to get
lines because of the way they count them, supposed deducts for low QA, frequently switched from one account to another, they are in the process of training MTs in Trinidad, so obviously they support offshoring. 
That's extremely hard to believe
xx
The ESRs are really hard, but you won't get them sm
on the low level 3 ER accounts. Those are really easy. If I were you, I would test for level 4. Much more potential for money. What cpl did they offer you?
Hard decision.......
My heart would be heavy, but if it is inside information you probably are thought to keep it confidential NO MATTER WHAT, just like if you typed a report on your neighbor and found out they had HIV----IT IS CONFIDENTIAL. I think you should keep quiet about it, even though it will hurt your heart.