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I made excellent money in my very first year but ...

Posted By: sm on 2005-12-21
In Reply to: If you get an hourly job, you can. But alone, on production as a newbie, sm - MTx32

... 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.


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I worked there for abour 4-1/2 years and made excellent money.
I hated to leave but I was only scheduled PT but allowed to work up to 40 hours a week as I wanted. Certain family obligations made me have to choose between FT at Spheris or my local accounts and I chose my local accounts.

I was pulling in about $40,000 a year.
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 am not ER or rad. I am acute care and make excellent money on an sm
account that was supposed to be difficult.

There is no reason, on any platform, for any company, that a good, seasoned MT cannot get over 200 lph. I have used dial-up and DSL, Meditech, EXText, MiSys, TA and EmDat. Once familiar with a system, they are all basically the same.
I do ER and basic 4 work and make excellent money
NM
Me 3, made good money with less cpl than now. nm
xxxxx
I worked that way once, best money I ever made.
.
Is there good money to be made at Transtech? nm
nm
Me, too. I've made so little money this month that I can't even
make my house payment.  This is getting beyond ridiculous.  If it's not one thing, it's another.  I suppose I could go pawn my computer since I'm not getting any work.
RN versus MT, which would involve the most money to be made. I am not sure if I want to go into RN
nursing or remain an MT.  I wonder which one pays best?
You said it: "They made good money."
I don't mind working hard if I am getting paid accordingly. Doctors and nurses make good money to work weekends. My sister even gets a very nice shift differential for working evenings, nights, and weekends. I get none of that. I get the same 7 cpl regardles of when I work. Hardly seems worth the $12-13 an hour I make to give up the precious little time on the weekends I get to spend with my family. Guess each just has their own priorities in life and mine is not work.
Doing great! Made more money in one week at TT than I did in a whole month
at previous job!
Be wary of their platform. If it's Apex, I'd run. No money to be made there.
I would do whole pages and only end up with like 30 lines. No thanks. I would have starved at that rate and it could be their line counting system too. They do it based on only black visible lines which obviously means no spaces. Good luck though. If I remember right, they send you the footpedal but it's been a while.
Hated VR. Made less money that straight transcription..sm
I was extremely boring and mindless work.  People say they doubled their production/lines with VR.  That is true but remember if you make 0.08 straight typing and 0.04 doing VR, you are making the same amount of money.  I made about 150 bucks less a month because the dictators were horrible and I had to end up typing almost all the reports over.  I will never do it again.
I agree. I was with MQ and made fabulous money and worked for
large universities.  Finally, I had enough and left 2 years ago and never looked back.  It wasnt easy at first learning new hospitals but I am still at that place and am fine.  Actually, I like learning new hospitals every now and then, takes care of the boredom.  Now dont get me wrong, the money isnt as great, but I cant take the boredom.  I lose my focus when I get like that and get sloppy I think.  You just dont watch as closely so every now and then you need a reality check and get pulled back into shape, at least I do.  I focus much more closely on new accounts.
perhaps she preparing for this for a long time. seems she made a ton of money. NM
=
Why is pay rate confidential? It is YOUR money that YOU made with YOUR hard work. You should be
:+
Any Wedmedx'ers out there. How anyone made decent money with them and how is their platform?
Thinking of applying but would like the skinny on if you can make any money with them.
Just wondering if the platform is productive and if the money made is decent.
I have worked on too many platforms where you really struggled to get a good line count and make decent money. I'm just curious how easy it is to get lines on their platform.
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 am glad to hear that a lot of money can be made with MT work. This gives me hope for the future.
$$
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
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!
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.
I "only" make $1.15 per report and have made over $62,000 this year so far. I only work 8 hou
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.
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.



We're just makin more money every year, and you didn't know it. :) nm
nm
Amherst so we make less money and they get more money for MQ and bigger bonuses. Our guidelines came
from Amherst.
The company takes the money out of your salary, before they cut the check. It is your earned money,
:+
It's about "money, money, money, mmmoonnney. Singing The Apprentice song.
:{
yep, gotta spend money to make money. NM
.
So does yours. Perhaps you need a basic money class to learn to keep money. sm
I am off today and appalled at reading the posts on here.

Are you always this bitter? Do you have a family and friends who are safe and healthy? Count your blessings instead of being so angry and you might see that this is not a bad field to be in. It has kept food on my table for 27 years and will continue to do so. Is it harder now? You bet, but it is not impossible to make a good living of $50,000. You just have to work hard, give it your all and appreciate the good companies that are out there.

If I were an MTSO, I would find out who all these people posting such bitter posts are and find replacements for them a.s.a.p. Negativity spreads like poison, and with the world in the state it is, we should bond together not make it worse.
Money is not the root of all evil, the LOVE of money is. nm
x
Last year, there was a letter sent that told us what we earned the previous year. sm
In the past, it has been all or nothing; if you did not hit the lines for full time for the year, you did not get PTO. I talked to my lead this morning about a last-minute vacation and she told me that the yearly packets are going out in a week or so and that the new policy will acrue PTO by the pay period or month. I like that a lot better, but she also made it sound like they are upping the amount of lines needed to acrue PTO. I normally get between 15 and 20,000 lines per pay period, so I am sure that will be fine but I am worried about the periods that have lower volumes, like most of January every year.
u made 300 a week? That's more than I made there.
But no work, no pay. Nice ppl, they really are, some of the nicest in the business. Just can't communicate to save their lives and the recruiters are lying dogs.

I'd say if you're looking for part-time work, as in less than 20 hrs a week's worth of work, then this place is for you. Use them as ur backup. Because guaranteed that's all they're using you for.


Webmedx lets you carry them from year to year sm
You can accrue up to 140 hours (I think) before you stop the accrual process. Don't have to use it all in one year.
I would stick it out, most places are slow now through the end of the year every year (nm)
x
Excellent cpl for right MT

Transcription Systems of Illinois has an immediate opening for an experienced acute care MT (hospital dictation). This position requires a minimum of 4 hours a day, Monday through Thursday, 8 hours on Friday, with the flexibility to do more if necessary. No weekends. Employee status. Only MTs with a strong background in operative reports, discharge summaries, H&Ps and consults will be considered.


This account requires a C-phone and has a high percentage of ESL's as well as a few difficult English-speaking dictators. No long distance charges. We provide many samples and lots of feedback. Our MTs like this account, once they're over the hurdle of the learning curve, and reap a very nice income from it. We guarantee no cherry-picking and you will not be switched to different accounts. A line is defined as 65 characters with spaces, and you calculate your own line count.


We are a very stable company who has been in business for 25 years in Central Illinois. Our MTs are so content with our company that we will be happy to provide MT references to serious applicants. 


All resumes will be reviewed and responses sent promptly to those who qualify.


Excellent
Post - those are my exact feelings!
Excellent! Thanks so much! nm
xx
excellent all around! nm
/
Huh? I do excellent at 9 cpl.
I have 2 great accounts and am able to do well over 2000 lines per day. I usually average around $200 or so a day, so I don't think that's bad at all. No food stamps needed here.
Wow - most excellent - sm

You obviously spent a great deal of time on your post. If only all of us could have you as our representative when we apply for positions with companies you treat us just as you have written. Thank you for taking the time to come up with the list and sharing it. What a great job. Kudos. You hit it right the nail right on the head.


Excellent! ... :-D ... nm
nm
This is an excellent tip
Many times at the conclusion of the report the dictator will repeat whatever word/phrase was unintelligible earlier in the report and you'll save valuable time spent chasing your tail trying to research it.

Once I started blanking the first time around I probably saved at least 50% of the time I spent on research and my production went up as a result.
Excellent post, MT! NM
x
eTrans plus is EXCELLENT!
love my job at ETP! Good folks, good benefits, good pay, good accounts, feel like I'm in MT heaven!
If you are an excellent MT, call me
I don't really care about tests and stuff like that.

We have got a great recruiter in Deb Hull. BUT.........

I have been in transcription for such a long time. When I talk to an MT, I can tell if she knows what she is doing or not.

If you feel you have trouble getting hired by MDI-FL, honestly, please give me a call.

Thank a lot,

Liz McGrogan
800-205-7047
They are an excellent co to work for as QA.
I have no idea why they are still looking, but yes they are a really good co to do QA for as they pay hourly and have benefits.