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Has anyone ever worked for this company?  I am considering employment with them, and was wondering if it would be worthwhile.  Any advice would be helpful.  Thanks!

A local accountant has been doing our taxes and every year he goes up another 50.00, so this year will probably be 350.00/400.00.  I work at home as an MT, and claim a home office, which is only used for working.  Does anyone know which Turbo Tax I should buy or any other tax format I should use?  I tried H&R Block a few years ago and they are expensive too.  I have my tax forms from last year, nothing has changed really.  Just thought I would try to do the taxes myself this year.  Any help would be appreciated and thank you.

I'm in Ohio and work for a service in California.  It's been a real problem finding a true unlimited plan. 

Have tried Vonage (call quality was substandard), ATT "unlimited" long distance (got one of those nice letters), and now the phone card company I had been using apparently decided to jack their rates way up.

Looking at ATTCallVantage, using satellite internet service (no DSL where I live).  Anyone have experience with this, and do things work well for you? 

All help is much appreciated!

I would like opinions from everybody but especially those that have 20+ years experience in MT.  What are your opinions on the Book of Style?

This is my opinion.........I think its a bunch of crap!  Seems to me a few people got together and decided to come up with this BOS and then put it on the market as "the law" of medical transcription. Of course they make money from it.  I have wondered who gave this author or authors the authority that everything they say to do is correct and anything that deviates is incorrect?  

On top of that, every now and then they decide to change it MTs learn this baloney all over again, thus more money for them.  I see so many questions and comments on here about the BOS that it seems to me it has become the
"end all, be all" in the medical transcription profession.  Horse puckey!

I literally have seen companies especially the BIG ONE let excellent MTs get away simply because their test scores were not what the "X" wanted with the reason being a comma here and a comma there when the content was EXCELLENT!!!!!!!!!!!

If I were hiring folks again, that BOS would go out the window and I would take an MT based on their MEDICAL TRANSCRIPTION SKILLS!  The preferences for punctuation and other things can be learned on-the-job.  Not all companies think the BOS is the BIBLE of Medical Transcription.  Personally I think BOS is a crock!.

I forgot though, AAMT started all this and they are not AAMT anymore.  That tells me a whole lot too!  Money, money money!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Tier level/pay based on years of experience OR based on harder dictation.  Seems all the dictations now are not only bad, but impossible to understand.  One dictator for two whole sentences, an ESL doctor, said what sounded like zzzsssszzzzz...it was so fast that is all I heard.  I've been doing this 11 years now, the dictation is unbelievable.

So, what do you think?  Tier pay based on experience or harder dictation?  Make me a Tier 4 because I've done this for years but leave it an open pool to balance out my day, or make me a Tier 4 and let me not understand absolutely anything, or at least 99.99999% of the stuff.  Is higher pay worth it?

Just wondering how many lines within 8 hours do you "speciality" transcriptionists type?  Not acute care, not SOAP notes, just the specialty accounts?

I type for 11 different specialities that just feed into my "pool" of dictation randomly and am lucky to accomplish 1000 to 1200 lines within 8 hours -- any suggestions on how I can increase this number of lines would be greatly appreciated. 

I am a self-employed MT, trained by the office I have been contracted with for 9 yrs.  When I started, it was myself and an in-house Transcriptionist working for 4 physicians.  I gave a 24 hr TAT.  I had one 18-month-old child when I started, and was able to work around 6 hours a day.  I drove about 40 min to work and back, picked up tapes, working sometimes 6-7 days/week.  Since then, they have hired 2 more drs. and 3 NP's.  The in-house MT retired, but they did hire another MT who works at home.  I had another daughter, and a set of twins in those 9 yrs.  They have always known I try to work around my children's schedules.  As I am sure many of you do, I was getting up in the middle of the night working, working on and off throughout the day and at night.  The new MT and I are backed up now and we can't possibly get it all done.  It is more like 48-72 hr TAT.  They call all through the day asking me to stop what I am doing right then and search the tape, type the note and fax it ASAP.  I picked this profession to work around my children's schedules, not have to push them aside at every moment to cater to the office.  I do not have a certificate in MT, was just trained by this office.  I checked in to other places, but the pay is much less as I get paid 65 char/line including spaces at $.125/line.  The reason they pay so well is because they know I probably can't get on somewhere else with no certificate and no experience in any other field.  They want to make sure I stay there.  Also, the driving is ridiculous.  They refuse to get technology for telecommuting.  They refuse to hire someone else.  On top of that, I was just diagnosed with IST, and am on Toprol and not capable of working the hours I once did.  Is there anyone else out there who understands or has any advice?

Dear Sirs:

I am turning in my resignation with giving the required 2 weeks notice. I have enjoyed working for your organization for 10 of the past 11 years; however, I feel that I must step down at this time.  Over the past year I have been asked increasingly to work outside my schedule because work isn't available during my daytime shift because you're now sending the work on the account overseas overnight, leaving little work for the day shift employees.  In addition, the benefits have decreased and while my cost of living has gone up, requests for a line rate increase to 8.5 cpl have been denied.  You forget that I am a top producer and transcribe over 2500 lines a day & have QA scores of 99-100, so perhaps you'll enjoy paying benefits for 2 employees to replace my production. 

You may wonder where I am going to work.  I have found a small mom and pops company that refuses to send our work outside of the US.  I will have guaranteed work from the same doctors each day and will have 24 hours to return work that I obtain Monday through Thursday, and Friday work received will be due back by Monday afternoon.  This will allow me to schedule my own work hours.  They are going to be paying me more than you are, because they realize that hiring one excellent Transcriptionist and paying them more per line is cheaper than hiring 2 inferior transcriptionsts, especially when you consider the cost of keeping that extra employee working for you.  The owner of this company is well known to take very good care of the employees and not jerk them around, and that is the way they also treat their clients.  Doctors love them for their dependability and accuracy of reports, and knowing that work will not leave the US unless they specifically request it do so.  

Sincerely,

Suzie Q Transcriptionist

===

Okay, I have a doctors account and he is an ESL, but I have been been on his account for a few month and have no problem understanding him.  His files are all usually fairly short 1-2 minutes, and I have lots of normals for him.  I just cant seem to pull in many lines per hour on him.  I feel like I zoom through them, but I am always amazed to see what I am pulling for lines after an hours work.  Do you think my problem could be the short files?  Is it easier to pull in more lines on longer dictations, since you dont have to keep switching to the next dictation?  He does talk SLOW as well. 

Thanks in advance for taking the time to answer.

I am trying to find out what are the advantages/disadvantages of Lanier versus other platforms? 

Harder/easier?

Outdated/up-to-date?

FYI.  This was on Kim's Cool Site of the Day for June 15.

http://www.komando.com/downloads/category.aspx?id=6420

my short-term disability insurance coverage option says it pays when there is no state disability plan.  How does one find out if the state she resides in has such a plan? 

Insurances seem like such a racket.  Seems they should not be allowed to take your $ if they are not required to pay-out in the event of a disability.

Thanks for any help.

I am hoping someone can help.  I am trying to connect to a server (new job) and the MTSO I'm working for is away for the evenig.  She told me to connect by  REMOTE DESKTOP to log into their server.   I have no idea how to do this.  Boy, do I feel dumb. 

TIA.

I picked up some extra IC work back in May, and since that time have covered for the owner by editing for her while she was on vacation for a week, and then taken extra work as the MT with whom I share dictation from this doc was on vacation for a week, then sick for a week just after return, the next Friday had a family emergency, etc.  This was supposed to be part-time work, and has turned out to be more than I would expect for part-time . . . to the point where when this doc was going on vacation, I was trying to hold out and not say anything about it being too much, thinking that I'd be caught up and fine to take on the work when he returned, but wound up "breaking" with one day left to go, and told the woman it was too much, and she asked if I could just hang in there with her as she was testing another MT, and would reduce the amount she gave me if this girl worked out. 

Well, the doc returned from vacation and I did not get any of his work for about a week, and then the next week (this past week), I was given slightly more work than in the weeks prior to his vacation, although I had already told her it was too much, and it was still the same girl working the account with me.  At the end of the week it seemed that she had hired another girl, but did not reduce my work, just switched from girl 1 to girl 2. 

Sorry so long, but here's the BIGGER problem . . . in the early part of the week, the owner e-mailed with an attached voice file, requesting that I download the voice file and listen to a blank she was trying to fill-in.  I listened (over and over) could not find her sentence, so responded with what I was hearing in and around that area.  She then gave me another location and said that she had two counters on her program and did not know which one my program used, could I listen at xxxx location, so I did, gave her the fill-in, but was a little bewildered as to why she would request my assistance in that way as SHE IS NOT PAYING ME FOR THIS KIND OF HELP. 

Here we go again, yesterday she sends an e-mail with some voice files attached and some sentences with blanks, and she is requesting the same thing, that I listen and fill-in the blanks.  I am just not sure what to do here.  Early on, a couple of weeks after she returned from her vacation, she asked me if I could "proofread" the other girls files for that day as an appointment she had was "screwing her up".  I e-mailed back that, due to my heavy workload, I would not be able to EDIT work for her.  (The girl's work requires editing, not proofreading, which I quickly found out while covering the owner's vacation.)  I thought that I had let her know then that I do not work for free, in a nice way.

I would like to keep the work, but only what I am being paid for, so . . . How would you handle this situation? 

Is there a caps toggle keyboard command?  In other words, is there a way to change mixed case to caps without typing it all over again?  TIA!

 all you hard-working MT moms (and Mr. Moms, i.e. single dads) a very happy Mother's Day !

and gosh, it's been so long since I've been to an interview...I'm looking for some tips on questions to ask the interviewer.  I don't like going to an interview and NOT asking any questions.

Also, I do have the experience they are looking for, although it has been about 8-9 years since I've actually done hands-on back office work...tips on explaining this would be appreciated too!

I have to vent.  I asked a question a few days ago, wondering if anybody heard anything about the big MQ lawsuit.  Now we all know that this is BIG.  But, not only did I only read maybe two responses (thank you, responders) to my specific question, but I have also not heard anything from anybody ELSE on this board regarding what is up with that. 

I am wondering:  a) is it under tight wraps and hush-hush for open discussion; b) do we have damage control by MQ intercepting posts of an informational nature on this;  or c) SOMETHING ELSE? 

Sure would appreciate if someone threw us a crumb.  Thanks in advance from the mushroom crew!

If you are talking about President Obama's stance, action, statements concerning offshoring - it is political.  It goes on the Politics board.

If you are talking about healthcare industries and what Congress, the Senate, the GOP or other leaders are doing or not doing about - it is political.  It goes on the Politics board. 

Thanks,

Moderator

The company I work for uses an FTP server.  I am supposed to delete the files I pull after I upload them so another MT wont do them.  No matter what I try I cannot get the files to delete. When I right click on them, there is no option to delete in the drop-down.  I have also tried highlighting the file(s) and pressing delete on my computer.  Neither one of these works.  These are the 2 ways my QA said to do it, but it just wont work.  Any suggestions?

Thanks :)

Hi all,

I was wondering, do MOST of the companies require you to sign a contract to work for them? You know, saying how long you will work for them, etc? I have heard a lot about this lately. Is this the norm? It seems to me that one wouldn't want to work for a company requiring this, as I would think that if they were a good company, employees wouldn't need a contract, they would just stay because they are happy?

Can anyone tell me what FTP Server is, and how I can find out what type I have.

Thanks