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Serving Over 20,000 US Medical Transcriptionists

It's harder to get your own accounts

Posted By: when you're a male on 2005-10-29
In Reply to: You are less apt to do it with a national! - Icee MT

Most guys don't have a choice but to work for nationals in this business or own their own business.  Would like some input into how guys work at making that much money in MT.  Thanks.


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I was doing VR, too. For me, the work is just harder to come by.
I work second shift, and it used to be early evening the OPs would start coming in. I could really roll on those, but they have all but disappeared. I now only get handful per shift and mostly EGDs or I&Ds. I also worked Fridays and Saturdays, which were great for work, but even those days are depleted now.

I think now I just am bummed out thinking I worked my butt off to get to the 5 to 6-year mark where I could apply with the better companies, and there just is no work. My daughter is almost done with her transcription course, and it is scary to me that she has to work for 3 cpl but even scarier that I might have to pretty soon :(


Seems like they are just making their job harder.
They should be taking the time to do the job correct the first time. How is rushing through going to help them in the long run? The reports are just going to come back for corrections, which is then going to take them longer to fix in the end then just editing them properly the first time through. I understand not wanting to get pay docked, but it seems they are only making things worse for themselves in the end.
Working harder for less pay.........
to achieve the same figure on one's paycheck is circular reasoning.

As has been stated before here, it is a pretty sure bet that the clients are being charged the same for their reports whether an MT physically transcribes it or whether a speech engine translates it and an MT cleans it up. That being the case, with the MT being paid even less for speech recognition, the middle man (management) is making way more money off the MTs back and will continue to make more as the MT is pushed to turn out more production.

As for adapting to more coming technilogical changes, you'd better prepare to adapt yourself to another line of work because the MT field will become obsolete as we know it even today. There will be fewer MT positions needed as speech recognition becomes more and more proficient at creating a medical document that is within acceptable limits.
Work Smarter, Not Harder...
Exactly! Go to work for a company that pays for ALL of your work, not just what is reflected in your typed reports. What about time spent looking up physicians out of a data base of 50,000! Trying to figure out what in God's name the doc is saying when pronouncing some foreigner's name, and wasting 10 minutes doing so...with no pay! ALL of my expertise is worth compensation, not just what they see on the final report. How many times do you type an entire report, just to hear at the end, Erase this, I'll redictate! No credit! What a waste of time and I deserve to be paid for the work I did, even though the DOCTOR screwed up and screwed me out of earning my pay for those lines! What a bunch of BS!!!
I must agree with you. Seems harder the older you get.sm
When I was in my 20s, sure I could do 1800+ a day, but it's a different story now that I'm in my 40s. Sore wrist and fingers. Forearms tight and painful.
IT SUCKS!!

PS: Chinamom, sorry, I didn't mean to reply by email. Clicked the wrong thing by mistake. I must be getting old!!
Yes, for some reason Bayscribe does seem harder (sm)

Harder to make your lines, that is.  The only time that Bayscribe will not add demographics (or autopopulated info) to your character count is if you mark the report as a No Report.  Otherwise, on all reports, including the ones marked Incomplete Report, it will count all the demographic info too.


They say that Bayscribe is Word-based, but personally, I haven't seen much simularity at all between Word and Bayscribe.  I do know that when I switched from using Word to using the Bayscribe platform, my average lines-per-hour production dropped somewhere around 25%.


So yes, with Bayscribe, I do find myself working longer hours in order to make the same line counts that I used to make.  I'm not really sure what the answer is, but I don't think that it's the accounts.


Sometimes the bigger they are, the harder they fall.
Lots of these big MTSO co's are in bed with AHDI, and I have a hunch the whole kit-n-kaboodle of 'em are ridin' for a fall. Or a public hangin'.
Even if some of them aren't harder to manipulate,
it's just assumed that they are. I've found that the few guys I worked with on-site in the past WERE fairly woman-like in their willingness to be manipulated and taken advantage of. Which is probably why they got into, and stuck with, MT in the first place. Those guys who won't stand for that sort of thing never got into MT at all. Which is probably about 99.999% of them.

The benefits to the MTSO for having at-home MTs is not only the savings of NOT having to run, maintain, insure, heat, cool, and clean a brick-and-mortar building for their workers, but more importantly, the physical and social ISOLATION of those workers by basically chaining them to their desks at home. The isolation makes it far easier for us to be lied to, intimidated, cheated and overworked because NO ONE ELSE SEES IT HAPPENING.

The internet, and forums like this one, have broken us out of that isolation to some degree, but obviously not enough of a degree for change to happen. It's likely that for every MT that knows of this, or other MT forums, there are 10 who don't.

Further compounding the trouble those of us who DO use online forums to communicate with each other have, is the fact that we all know the MTSO suits cruise these boards, and we have to be careful about what we say, and to not reveal our identities, or else we'd most likely find our little selves fired.

So to date, medical transcription, and the sweatshop conditions it's done under, is the healthcare industry's best-kept 'dirty little secret'.
Is it getting harder for anyone to get jobs now with all the people applying for them. How does
this seem to be going for most MTs looking for jobs.  What seems to be the one factor that gets MTs a job before all the other 100 or so looking for the same job and what are the most desired qualities today that companies are looking for.
Anyone else going from DQS to ExText and noticing lines are harder to get? (sm)

Both accounts are about the same difficulty, just find ExText more cumbersome and where I used to do 1200 lines in 6 hours on DQS I now take every bit of 8 hours and sometimes that doesn't do it. Am i just getting slow to learn new things or has anyone else noticed this same thing?


Definitely harder and I've given it a lot of time. I'm thinking about
nm
You have it all wrong. I work SMARTER, not harder.

I will take on any acct. After months of getting used to it, I see what I am making an hour. If it is worth the work required to do that acct, great. If it isnt, I ask to be taken off acct and so far, have never been refused. Sometimes takes little while for them to get another MT for acct but have never been refused. Company is not working for the prestige, loyalty to an acct, or ME for that matter, or for the good of mankind. Why should I? I am in this for the money, just like the company. I am very much a pro, which is probably why companies would rather have me on another acct, than to quit giving me work all together. They know many companies are always looking for a good MT.   Like other posters, I dont understand why someone would work below their worth. There are too many companies out there to try. I have tried several, staying with the ones where I could make good money.


Acute care is quite a bit harder than clinic.
Definitely. Never a good idea to lie. You won't find anyone at most big companies to ask beginner questions to, on ops or otherwise.
I, too, went from MQ to TT, and line counts are much harder to get at TT with Dictaphone ExText.

I have always been called *firey fingers*, so know it is not me, as I am very fast and accurate on the keyboard.  Line count continually gets harder to achieve.  I know it depends on how the company has Dictaphone set the line count parameters -- whether to pay headers, footers, spaces, demos, normals, expanders, etc.


Also speech recognition using ExSpeech at TT is so cumbersome and awful.  Really made good money and line count with DQS speech editing.  Just must my opinion.  Other comments would be interesting.


The requirement is 50% participation. It is actually harder for a larger company sm
than a small company if they are national to get good rates. Once in, they will have it easy after that. I dealt with it personally for another company and it was a nightmare. Insurance is crazy and once national, it is harder to get the insurance. They should have gone with BC/BS when smaller but chose Unicare for some reason. Now they are regretting it.
Burnout...wanted to work smarter, not harder.

It seemed like I was sitting at my desk for 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, just trying to pull the bare minimum.  I had to hop around from one hospitals operating system to another and to another constantly...and if you've ever had the pleasure of doing that, you know that lines don't come easy that way because you spend all your time waiting for things to load and what not.  There just wasn't enough work to stay on one account all the time, the way I think it should be, so instead of becoming an angry and bitter employee, I left.


They really did try to make me happy, but all they could offer were more hours, or more accounts, and like I told them, I simply wanted to work my 8 hours and make a decent living.  Had a really hard time doing that over the winter.  I think they overhired but I never asked that question head on.  It was a great company when they first started out, but then got really big really fast.  Great benefits though, if you can make the lines.


If I needed to get my foot in the door, I'd work for them, get the experience, and move on.  It's that kind of place.  But during a moonlighting gig I tasted freedom, more money due to a more efficient way to work, and better overall work environment, surrounded by people who truly loved their jobs, and when I was happy to log on for THAT job, and got sick to my stomach when I had to log on at DVHP, well that's when I knew it was time to be on my way.



Sometimes you get spelling and abbrvns over the phone, typing later on. Bone up on your harder
s
It is much harder on the wrist to constanly use the mouse to jump around the report to edit, rather
x
I agree that it is an easy platform, but compared to other platforms I have used, lines are harder
to get, probably counted or weighted differently.
Easy tests versus harder tests...
Having passed both and offered jobs at both, which company would you likely go for?  They both have the same basic benefits and line rates.  Would I be assuming that the harder testing will mean that the dictation is more difficult?  Any opinions on this would be greatly appreciated!
Are they losing accounts. Do most of their accounts stay for long period of time. I have
heard pros and cons about the quality of their work.  I guess it is much cheaper than other companies can offer.
Because the girls that monitor the accounts in the office were told the accounts either go on DQS or
move on. All accounts to be with MQ must be on DQS and no more different platforms. ONE ONLY DQS. They can send more work overseas then.
MDI-FL but not all accounts. Only the internet-based ones. C-phone accounts are fine.

So, yes, let me clarify before everyone gets in an uproar.. There is work IF you want to use a C-phone. IF you signed up for an account that is internet-based, you will be disappointed. Not enough work to go around. Just my personal preference.. I have no desire to do a dial-up C-phone account using my long distance.


Some do and have good accounts and fully loaded ESL accounts
Take a look at what is happening in India. For the first time, workers there have money to get themselves into debt by buying high priced items (cars for example). They now protest lower castes being allowed into universities at almost double the previous allowance. Wait until they are highly in debt, begin to feel entitled to a wage equal to that paid inthe US and then, try to form unions, get tossed out into the street and sit back with some Ben and Jerry ice cream and watch the economy collapse and all that dictation come back across the ocean. Timing is everything.
Find out which accounts they are hiring for. They have some ESL accounts that are extremely
difficult to do.  I dont know how many accounts they have altogether but as I say, a few are very difficult and I actually dont have a problem with ESLs but these accounts are almost totally ESL.  I dont do them anymore.
Well it sounds like no work happens a lot at DSG. How are the accounts as far as decent accounts
and their QA. 
You work longer AND harder and the work is
??
Different accounts have different platforms. Most accounts require sm
high speed but I am not sure if satellite is OK.

I don't think that they're hiring right now. I spoke with my lead on Thursday, who said they are focusing on making sure everyone has enough work and moving PTers to FT, eventually moving towards FT only with only weekends as PT. Not 100% sure when that is though.
Hmm..well it goes to show how different it can be between accounts. My "high" ESL accounts s
at WMX are pretty easy in my opinion as well. I wish I had a better answer for you. Hang in there if you can. You have to do what is right for you.
Six accounts?!?! That is nuts! I am on 3 accounts. nm
nm
MQ accounts
You are assuming that MQ has not lost any accounts. Yes the accounts were transferred with the transcriptionists, buy one of my accounts left and went to another service and yes, once an account goes up on the new platform, it is free game for everyone.
I believe they have two ER accounts - one is .09 and one is .10 -

the owner is wonderful to work for, also.


PS:  Hi Connie!


 


 


How many accounts do you have?
When you get 6 accounts, can work on any of them at any given time, sometimes all in 1 day, and still get less than 2% DC percentage, come back and tell me you're better than me.  You're still wet behind the ears and probably don't even realize what a big can of worms you just opened.
Are the Rad accounts going VR?
x
VR accounts
Does anyone find that you can get more lines or make more money on VR accounts?
RE: VR accounts
Yes.
How did you get three accounts?
????????????????????????? No wonder you have plenty of work - you have three accounts. Duh!!
Their accounts are about 90% ESL sm
And I am talking heavy ESL.  Also, even though most of their MTs are ICs, they make you give them a schedule and they bug you if you don't work it.  Pay is okay.  Work is very sporadic. I have two friends who left there because the work kept running out.  QA can be very rude, as well. 
You might be better off just getting your own accounts rather than
trying to look for a service that has them. If you feel you must go through a service, then more than likely a small or very small MTSO would be the most likely to have these types of accounts.
Your own accounts (SM)
I read over the other posts today and agree that many of them were brutal, unpleasant, condescending, and unkind. Do not let these types of responses deter you from your goals, plans and visions.
I had my own accounts before I even took
a medical transcription course. I got into MT by accident. I started a home-based secretarial business doing typing and bookkeeping for people. One day, I got a call from this guy wanting to know if I could do his transcription. Sure, why not?! I had repaired transcription machines in a former career field, so what could be so tough about transcribing? I did fine. I've had his account for 8 years now. I also picked up a physical therapy account with four dictators before I finished my MT education, but that account was el cheapo on pay so I dumped them as my skills grew more in demand.

In my opinion, it's easier to have your own accounts because you're doing the same people and the same reports day after day. You can use your Expander to the max. They'll notify you of any corrections or style issues they'd like you to implement. You make more money per line while saving them money versus in-house staff or a national. Make up some business cards and an intro letter on your computer and start sending them out. Forget about all the negative people who are telling you that you can't do it. They're not the boss of you. You are in control of your own destiny. YOU can do it!
You are a pet, get best accounts.
x
There is no QA on your own accounts. YOU are QA.
QA shouldn't have to catch your versus you're anyway. QA shouldn't have to correct basic skills.
Where was that hop to? Your own accounts?
?
Accounts
Wrong.
Accounts
Sure!
Ask for more accounts, 10-12 may do
z
MDI still does on some accounts....

XXXXXXXXX


 


Edited e-mail address out.  Goldbird (Moderator)


What about their accounts...
Have they lost their accounts, too? If not, who is typing them?
I am on 4 different accounts
and I am always out of work!When I call, I get the run around. The center is in India.
They have just taken on several new accounts. nm