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I "only" make $1.15 per report and have made over $62,000 this year so far. I only work 8 hou

Posted By: Rad-only MT on 2005-10-20
In Reply to: the norm if .. - CMT-me

5 days a week and pick up one 4-hour weekend shift a month. It depends on the account, your company, the report length, your expanders, normals, etc. I made $1.43 with Edix before I switched and even though I took a per report loss, I make more money in the past 2 years than ever with Edix. I rarely run out of work, which is a HUGE factor. I know that the company I work for is both praised and condemned on this board, but I am happy at KS.


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Are you saying that Transcend DOES make you work 1 year before? : (
Thanks for the info!  I was thinking of applying there.
How much can I expect to make the first year of MT work, around $20,000?
or more
my first year I made 16k. Doubled that second year. Going on year 6 with (sm)

two local accounts I earned 23,000.00 and a national I earned 35,400... 58,400 this year.  Don't ask me how many hours, though, I really have no idea.  I'm pretty motivated.  (When people ask me how many hours I work a week I reply as many as it takes  I'd say 40-50/week.  I am also a fitness instructer and personal trainer, about 5 hours a week or so.  Decent money (sometimes under the table!) but mostly I just do it for fun and to be social and wear cute work-out clothes. 


that first year was a rough one... but I consider it part of my education. 


 


I'm pretty motivated. 


I get $1.25 per report and $3.50 for IR. I made over sm
$72,000 last year and will pass that this year. I work 5 days a week, 8 hours a day with an occasional extra day but not many. I do work most holidays though as I do not have family in the area and am not married.
I don't consider $1.25 a report good pay, I made that
in 1985. Now I get $2.25 per report, some count as double, i.e. CT of the abdomen and pelvis, I was left MQ at $1.90 per report a year and a half ago. I have a quota to meet, but am not chained to my PC, can spread it out anyway I want. I'm glad you are doing well, but $1.25 per report is just to cheap.
Are they kidding, made $1.25 per report over 20 years ago. nm
x
I have ALWAYS made more than the year before as an MT sm
I thought I had topped out at $30K, but no, I made $33K, surely THAT was the top. No, then I turned around and made $36K. I thought...maybe $40K was reasonable? Will do better than that this year.

I keep waiting for it to stay the same or drop, but not yet, not in 15 years.
I'm not a psychologist and I made nearly that last year.
So... maybe don't believe everything you read works both ways.

By the way, I work for a national and do not have my own accounts so it is possible to make that much with a national.

My QA score has never been less than 99%.

It is possible but it takes a lot of hard work and getting organized.
I have more than 1 job, I am an editor, and I made 106,274 last year
xx
just so you know, the government has a free credit report per year
lots of experts say get 1 free credit report from Equifax in January, get 1 free credit report from next biggie 4 months later, and then get 1 free credit report from the other big one 4 months after that - that way you are monitoring all 3 big credit co per year. Forgot the website but do a search - why pay for something the government (and your taxes) gives you for free.
I made excellent money in my very first year but ...
... that was about 13 years ago, and it was with a local MT who needed help for all her own accounts, all easy family practice office visits.  She paid 9 cents gross line, didn't use a counter, just said to manually count the lines on each page (!) but was always at least $5 a page.  We didn't use expanders, had no platform, just used a dictaphone machine hooked up to their office and just typed as it came in, 24-hour turnaround time, and anything that came in after 5 p.m. that day was considered the following days' work.  It was great.  Too bad the big corporations spoiled it for all the little guys out there like me and my mentor.  I haven't made anywhere near what I made that first year since because the big corps ate up all the local accounts around here and won't pay more than 8 cents a line for clinic work.  Sucks.
HA! First year made $30,000, that is working six months SM
for hospital and the next six months for small MT office with a very big account. Oh, those were the days!
Well, i can make up to 36/hr going by 1.80/report. That'd be
REALLY hard to do on a 4 cent per line basis.
What do you mean - if you make less than $600 you don't have to report it ???

Of course you have to report it as income.  Whether you have a 1099 or not, you report any income you earn.  It is called income and you pay taxes and report income.  Bad and inaccurate advice to give someone, IMO. 


I only check on here once a day (was feeling like it was an addiction). Last year, I made sm
$52,468 on my 1099.  I am at $1.25 per report.  I do work 8 hours M-F and 4 on Sunday.  I average 18-22 reports an hour.  I know that they are hiring for 3-11:30 on a really good account right now and 2-10 on another.  My lead emailed me this morning to ask if if I knew anyone who might be interested. 
This is true..Put it this way. I made $45,000 this year but worked 3 jobs and at least 60
hours a week and sometimes up to 80. I have no desire to do that anymore. I'd be happy with $35,000 working 40 hours a week. What a dream job.
Go for it. I made the move a little over a year ago and have not looked back.
Plenty of work, nice people, decent pay. All in all, one of the best decisions I have made.
Agree. I have QA'd MTs who will make a report APPEAR sm
correct by using the synonyms to what was actually dictated and having it all make sense. However, what they transcribe is not what was dictated! Only by listening to the dictation (or the physician actually reading the report) can the integrity of the report be discerned. (clear as mud, eh?) This is what probably got the OP past her QA department but getting nailed by the account. This is why I advise newbies to have mentors or work in an office with other MTs.

In addition, OP says below she doesn't need reference books anymore. Therein lies the real problem--attitude.
thank you. I already knew but this validates that I made a wise decision last year.
I was being paid 3.5 cpl, and I always did 100% proof to voice because if MY name is on the report, then it WILL be without errors, and quite honestly we did not have even one MT that I trusted enough to not do a complete proof to voice, which is actually very sad. I provided feedback on errors, for which I was not compensated since I was on straight production. We had tons of new MTs constantly, many of them abysmally bad.

My supervisor loved my work. She said I was the best QA Editor they had, and boy howdy I was because I also worked QC for a bit and got to witness the handiwork of my fellow editors. Nice that they paid their best 3.5 cpl, huh? I stuck it out for as long as I could because I genuinely loved my job, but there comes a time when you just have enough of being taken advantage of. They had wanted to promote me to something that was akin to a QA lead that would also involve training new MTs as well as continuing QA and QC. I would be paid salary, so that's good, but they arrived at the number by basing it on what I had made the previous year (at the lowly 3.5 cpl, mind you), so basically I would have been doing MORE work for the same money. Right. They obviously think we can't do math...lol.

I have gone back to MT. It's harder on my body, but at least I'm not being screwed.



Make the right phone calls and report her
xx
I WISH I made $11.75/hour! Used to make more
This business makes no sense at all.
I make $1.10 per report and make much more sm
than by the line. Day by day it varies and goes back and forth, but over a long period, it is better by the report. Make sure they pay links though; this is key.
I just started with them also...trying to make sure I made the right decision...nm
nm
Everyone has different experiences there. I like it and never ever made 3 cpl on editing. I make
a lot more than that and started at more than that. They treat their MTs fairly.  I have worked there over 2 years and won't be leaving. I make a lot of money plus have decent benefits. They have my vote
I make twice what I made working at a hospital.
And I even work for MedQuist, no less!
Last year $36K part time, going to make more this year full time BUT sm

I AGREE it IS getting harder to make money.  I used to make $24 very part time 10 years ago and now...well it is Word and platforms versus WP5.1.  I got 7.5 cents a byte line then and I get 9.5 cents a character line now.  That IS a huge different in point of fact.


OH I WANT MY WORDPERFECT 5.1 BACK!!!!! Bwaaah!


Why should I go back to making 9 cpl when I make 11 cpl now?? I made 8 cpl over 12 years ago.
nm
now I know you ARE definitely crazy..no further responses will be made to make you feel good about y
NM
I guess what you make at Transcend is based on what you made when you came on board, 8 cpl here. sm

I guess since the last 2 companies purchased made good cpl Transcend is willing to pay them what they made, really not fair for others only making 8 cpl, but I guess they gotta cut corners somewhere in order to keep the new Transcenders happy.  I think you all are getting the best deal they have to offer. 


It does not say "only"
x
Yes, but you seem to be the "only" one
The OP asked which to go with, and I say Axo is probably more user friendly.  KS may have the rep of being nice with loads of work, but working in a hospital platform is very difficult to make productivity. 
I actually did make over $20,000 my first year
I'm definitely not a genius, to say the least, but I think being an MT is just a good fit for me.  I already had a background in journalism and typesetting, so I had a grasp of grammar and could type very, very quickly.  I'm good with computers and the Internet, which helps with the tech part and with research.  I didn't make as much the first 6 months, but once I got going the income started picking up.  I was lucky to land a job making 9 cents a line that first year which also helped, and I also was working A LOT, for a few different companies.  I'm now in my fourth year and am making over $30,000, a year but am not constantly working as I was that first year.  Obviously not everyone can do it.  All of the pieces, the skills, have to be there, along with some luck in landing a good account, but it can be done.
no- you will not make 25K your first year
nm
Yes, I make over that every year, always have. NM
.
For LOL, re: "only" radiology MTs
I'm so sorry that all of you are going through this, but it doesn't help to start sniping at each other. I wonder if there is a way to unionize MTs? AHDI is great, but really...they don't do much for us as professionals other than standardize the way a sentence should be punctuated, a gross oversimplification, I know. This if you've got a pulse and a computer, you've got a job attitude that seems to have been adopted by most MTSOs has gone way too far. We are completely overlooked and under-appreciated, invisible employees. They cut our pay, send our work overseas and then look at us and go, Whaddya gonna do about it? I'm beginning to feel like a coal miner, or a mushroom (kept in the dark and fed bull flop). And for LOL, I don't think the person who posted the it's only rad MTs that have to worry message meant anything nasty by it, I think it was an attempt to allay some fears, albeit not a very successful one. I've been an MT for over 20 years and I wouldn't know a radiology report from a hole in the ground. Keep your chin up!
Do 16 y/o babysitters make $74k/year? That's what I sm
did this year :)
Oops sorry, thought you said you "only" get out of bed for 6.5 ! lol
x
How do these MT schools get away with saying you can make $40,000 per year. That is a fake
advertisement and should be banned!
I disagree...I make a nice $37,000 a year, which is
really good for my area, paid hourly rather than production. I worked my way up to get to this point. I guess it depends on how you look at it and your lifestyle.
I also got put on 2 atrocious ESL accts with them last year. Couldn't make any lines. These dudes
s
I make 4 cents a line, work part and make
over $500 a week on part.
I will only work by the report for radiology and only if sm
I am paid for links and extra for specials. I type 120-200 reports a day for Keystrokes and make more money by far than when I worked for another service and when I worked for a hospital. But make sure that you are paid for links and make sure that the person who hires you and/or trains you is familiar with the account and can tell you what the average report count is. Go with a service, such as Keystrokes, that is known for radiology. There are a few out there but make sure that they have enough radiology accounts to keep you busy. There are slow periods just like with any speciality and a good service knows when they are and how to schedule for them. Do your homework. Not sure if KS is hiring but they have the most rad accounts based on what I researched two years ago prior to going with them. Good luck!
They'll work with the report being created in front of them...sm

With all the times I've had residents, PAs, or NPs dictate sentences, erase them, start again, erase them, and then end up saying go back to where I said [fill in the blank] and put [such and such] instead, I can't see a machine being able to correctly interpret all that.  If they work with the document being created in front of them, they can fix all this stuff as they go along. Just highlight the old stuff they want out and replace it with the new stuff they really wanted.


I can't see the computers picking up medication errors, dosage errors, incorrect dates, new operative equipment, being able to correctly flag right/left, or correct spelling of cc'd physicians' names. Most likely there is another program running with it that would do a pop screen for amoxicillin 5000 mg tid to question it. Physician names are probably in a pop up screen too. Of course, it's not going to correct everything but when the COX-2 inhibitors were taken off the market do you think a human could go through all 5,785 charts to find the people who had been prescribed Celebrex to call them to tell them to stop taking it? Of course not.  It's not a matter of IF MT's will be replaced, it's already happening.


 


 


Since we work over the internet who do you report bad labor practices to...sm

I know one of the MTs that had their job eliminated at Medware last week.  The problem is this person's job was not eliminated, they gave it to someone else, but in the generic email it stated that there was no more job.  Seems like this should go against some labor law, but since we work over the internet who would you ask or report this to?  The job that was eliminated was the day person's job and the day person was given the evening person's job - the job that was supposedly eliminated.  We are trying to figure out if there is something that can be done about this or if this person should just say the heck with it and move on.  Thanks for any advice. 


 


That's illegal - an IC cannot be made to work sm
either a schedule, a set number of hours, or mandatory overtime.
I make more than that with Spheris but never have work. I would rather make $1.25 and have work. s
My SIL works for KS, and she gets paid double for linked reports too. Where do you get $2.25? I am ready to leave Spheris.
Some of the VR editing work you have to retype the whole report and then you get pathetic job offers
I had some offers for editing VR as low as 1.5-3.0 cpl and I just want to say to them ARE YOU SERIOUS!!! That is not realistic. I am really afraid to see where this profession is going. Slave wages.
I actually left about a year ago and work for another company that's running out of work. Have to
x
I thought it made a difference to work
but unless you are working for the hospital it doesn't matter, you still get what they want you to have. I asked my last supervisor if they get psych work and was told they did but she saved them for another MT who liked them. The work I would get would be one-minute mush mouths. It sometimes took 20 minutes to complete one. That's the way it stayed until I finally left. I think that's an MT service thing because when I worked for the hospital, I typed whatever was next in line, no cherry-picking and no favoritism.

Sorry to hear that is happening to you. Hopefully, things get better either through communicating the problem or by getting a better job situation.


I think I work for the comp. with an M that you mention but they are the ones I made more with than
I had previously at another job..huh?? I do notice a discrepancy in accounts. On one account, I get a great line but when I tried another one of their accounts I was not making the same..not even close. I questioned it and was told that the way it is counted is per the hospital/client's contract and they set the rules. So, I just assumed that that facility got a contract that paid for less things than my main account. You can email me privately if you'd like to compare accounts. Trust me, I wont share with anyone. I have had more than my share of issues with this company and am seeking to move on. Good line count or not, sometimes it is just not worth it.
Actually, I'd be happy to work for 80s wages -- I made a lot more then. nm