Hard to compare lines from different
Posted By: think about it on 2006-01-18
In Reply to: New question: How many lines a day do you do for full-time transcriptionist? - Wondering
companies and different accounts.
Are you paid for spaces?
Headers/footers?
65 character lines?
What is percentage of ESL?
How large is the account?. Hard to get lines if you do not get the same dictator more than once a week.
Is the platform easy to work on?
Can you use an expander?
Do you have to enter demographics?
Is the account verbatim?
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There are so many variables at play that it's dangerous to compare to others along these lines. s
I know that there have been occasions when I've had a run of one of my more familiar docs -- one for whom I have a lot of canned text and who tends to dictate with a great deal of regularity, and quickly -- and I've been able to break the 500 lph barrier, but only briefly. Otherwise, working a large hospital account as I do, with dozens of regular docs and a hundred or so others who just crop up now and then, I can't conceive of anyone averaging anything close to that ... I'm luckly to average above 250-275 lph on a typical day, and some days -- when it's resident and ESL heavy -- that can go down to 150-200.
But, again, it's really pretty silly to compare lph between different MTs unless the variables are the same.
Right. Can't compare the two. Just like you can't compare clinic and doc office work to acute
.
If it is very hard to get your lines at SS, which is
happening with everyone as SS seems to be stealing their lines, you'd be better off with Accustat.
No, hard to get lines on it. And
you can type faster than you can edit most of the time.
Is 1300 lines biweekly hard to achieve?
I am considering an offer that sounds good but it requires 1300 lines biweekly. I have been away from transcription for quite a while. Wondering if you'd have to kill yourself to achieve it or if easy enough to do. I guess it would depend on account, also. Any opinions??
If it rains hard, the wind blows hard and there are trees
nearby, it snows heavily it will mess up the signal. The speed is not constant, sometimes as slow as dial-up, but at least still connected. Many companies will not allow satellite.
So, you think it is okay for hard-working MTs to earn 7-8 cpl for their hard work?? nm
:{
The best way to compare the two is...sm
open a document you have type and count it in a 65-cpl versus a gross line count....any counting program can be set to count in gross lines. Personally, I count my lines in Word Perfect. It has a line counting feature where you can tell it not to count blank lines and then you just multiply by what you are getting paid by the line. You come out much better on the gross line count.
I don't think you want to compare yourself to Yente
Busybody supreme! 
You must compare your documents..
with MS-Word Word Count, which is the standard. MS-Word count tool is used by FlashCount.
In case of any problem, feel free to ask.
Webmaster@MTStars.com
Compare it to a 'regular' job . . .
I tried one of those plans that swore up and down that it wasn't a multi-level marketing program, it was just "direct marketing" to your circle of influence. It cost me money to join (does a regular job?) and while I didn't stockpile stuff in my garage, I did have a quota that I needed to personally purchase every month in order to stay an "active member". Part of my $60/month that I spent actually went into the pockets of the 7 people above me. If I achieved the next level (certain number of individuals below me) my quota for the month would double. I would go to your state's Attorney General's website and search for pyramid scheme/ponzi/etc . . . Having to spend $120 a month to make money, especially when you can alienate a bunch of your friends in the process seems a little too much to pay . . . just my 2 cents . . . best of luck whatever your decision.
Compare old documents
Look at some of your old documents and see what your gross line is and then see what they would have been paid if you had been using a 65 cpl. In word you can do that. Now some software will count double character for capitalization, bold, underline, tabs are counted, indent and count spaces. So that will also make a difference. When one of my accounts was using Sylcount we always counted that way. I do not think that there is a simple chart to use and since your documents could be very personalized with formatting, i.e. indenting lines which makes a gross line smaller, to me it would be best to compare your specific documents rather than a generic table. There are a lot of variables (how long is your gross line) and I don't think a comparison table could take that all into account. But I would think I think an estimation has always been 30% less lines for cpl versus gross.
how does 11/cpl IC compare to 8/cpl employee
are there pros and cons to both, and is it fair to say that it all weighs out about the same, considering what the IC has to pay in taxes, do they travel for their accounts, do they have any benefits, etc.?
Oh, I know. I wasn't trying to compare myself to anyone.
I was trying to figure out if this is even possible. I know when I did acute care I could never get 200 lph. Now I am on a clinic account and doing close to 300 lph. I just assumed I was at the max, so to see this post, it just made me wonder if it is possible to do more, not that I am going to strive to do more at this point. Right now if I go above 300, I am afraid my accuracy would suffer. I was just curious if there are others out there doing 400-500 consistently as these MTs are said to be doing. If there are, I would love to know some secrets! :D
You can't compare apples with
oranges as he had lost his job and who knows the real truth. Tragic loss of lives.
Suffice it to say, it's pretty scary out there these days with so much misery over job loss, home loss and no hope in sight. It's like the domino effect. It's all happened so fast and there is no stopping it. Certain people will act out. No doubt immigrants are much harder pressed in times such as these. Even doctors are suffering from this economy. Hard to believe but it is true.
There is no way you can compare security
x
Just some things to compare...
Example: If you type 1000 lines a day at 8 cents a line ($80 a day), minus 25% for taxes, you would have $300.00 a week clear. Assuming you do 200 lines an hour, 5 hours a day, 5 days a week, your pay would translate to $12.00 an hour.
IF you can maintain $12.00 an hour after taxes in an office job (sales job, at that), I don't know that the benefits offset the cost of keeping a wardrobe up, gas, meals out or items to take for your lunch, and child care, plus the hassle of being back out in the public.
To answer your question on how much income it would take for me to leave this field - Considering all the pros and cons, I personally could not afford to change careers. It would take an offer of double what I make now to make me even consider it, and there are NO jobs that pay that around here.
I wish you the best of luck with the decision.
Perhaps OP is not new at all. How could you declare MQ the greatest with nothing to compare.
I suspect MQ has a lot of people positioned for damage control on the boards these days. It was a stupid post that would be meaniningless to anyone but MQ damage control. Watch and see what is coming down the road in the next six weeks with MQ and MTs. That's why there is damage control in place and there will be for the next six months or until MQ is bought out.
Can anyone compare Spellex to Stedman's and
tell me which they think is better and why. I've always used Stedman's but DOS-based. Changing jobs and now need something Windows-based.
Can't compare autocorrect to an expander (sm)....
After 20 years as MT I found a word expander, and still mad that I went so long without one! I would not consider being without one today, it adds so much to my productivity. And an Expander does much more than autocorrect does, so I personally don't think they are even comparable. For example, you can make entries bold or italicized; you have no limit on how much text you put into each entry; and most importantly, your possible choices show up on the screen as you type letters, so you can be very specific in your use. Autocorrect does just that, it makes an automatic correction, and so quickly that you might not even realize something was changed/expanded. Expanders are not cheap, but to me they are as essential as a medical dictionary!
Does anybody use ShortKeys? How does it compare with ShortHand?
I tried ShortHand but I never could get it to work like AutoCorrect, which is what I prefer. I don't like to take my fingers off the home keys to hit "Alt" or "Ctrl" or whatever.
ShortKeys is okay, but it has some limitations. I just wondered if anyone had tried both and how they compare.
TIA.
Would like to compare Meditech speed (see msg)
We home MTs have a much slower download/upload time than those working on site, and I'm trying to determine if there is something our IT department can do to speed it up for us. Since Meditech is so big with so many clients, I just can believe the rest of the country would work like we do.
What I would like to compare is:
After entering your patient information on the data entry page, how long after you hit the right arrow key to open your document for typing does it take before you are ready to type that document?
For me on the very best day it takes 20 seconds of staring at my screen before I can type, some times as much as 60 seconds.
Looking forward to comparing. TIA
Are you in a position to compare your progress SM
with others on your accounts? (If you work at home maybe invite them to email you through this site to discuss?) That's the only way to get a true picture of how you're doing so you can figure out how to fix this situation. Have a nice Thanksgiving tomorrow.
I'm done trying to compare apples to oranges. sm
You are free to go on beating the dead horse, however. Best wishes.
seriously, do not compare an hourly wage job with
nm
Store chicken doesn't even compare (nm)
x
Just FYI, you should compare line count with another program (sm)
FlashCount gave me a much lower line count when I compared it to Abacus. I notified them about this and they never responded.
Fun topic: How do you compare with TV sitcom marriages???
Are you and your spouse more like.....................
A) Tim and Jill (Home Improvement)
B) Roseanne and Dan (Roseanne)
C) Howard and Marion (Happy Days)
D) AL and Peg (Married with Children)
E) Raymond and Debra (Everybody loves Raymond)
F) Steven and Elyse (Family Ties)
G) Other ____________
We are probably most like Tim and Jill but a little bit of Raymond and Debra thrown in. LOL.
Compare line count results
Hi,
[disclaimer: We are the publishers of MPTools.]
One neat function in our new MPTools is Compare Line Count results. It asks you to specify a document, and shows you the results of its multiple line counting methods, including headers/footers and formatting codes. MPTools is available as a no obligation trial, so you can download it, install it, and check things out.
vJoe
Pull up some documents and count them out each way to compare. nm
s
I use the Compare feature on the tools menu.
x
OMG- especially when they compare it to some kind of edible substance! *gag* nm
n
You need to know the program your company is using to count so you can compare.
xx
I dont think you can compare the 2. Talking about 2 totally different things.
:
Long distance site to compare prices. sm
http://ld.net/?6040
Only if you're using the track changes or compare feature. Once somebody else has the document
x
It just goes to show that there is really nothing that can compare to real live transcriptionists -
nm
Totally agree with you. Often compare my work with that of a painter
You give him a job, give him a price and if he does not perform - you find another painter!
Aaahhhh, now I get it. Gross lines vs. Character lines. I guess I've just been conditioned to
think in terms of character lines. One of the perils of working as an IC for somebody who defines what a line is versus owning your own company and defining it yourself. After working for someone else for 15 years, maybe it's time to bust out on my own.
My friends with large families shop at Walmart. I don't. I can't compare
prices or taste. These are not ignorant poor folk who don't know better shopping at Walmart. Walmart has definitely cut into the supermarkets business. Bottom line here folks, people are making Walmart successful and they keep growing. Not for nothing are people shopping at Walmart. They have to be offering something to the shopper.
There is really no way to compare number of reports to a line count. The more experience you obtain
faster it will go and the lines will increase so don't give up. All of oldies have been there. Most companies require 1000 to 1200 a day, so you are not far off from that. Just keep plugging along, you will get there. Use Expanders for your most common phrases, words you find you have to look up constantly, etc. for starters to help build your speed.
That is a lot of work/lines for 2 people. I do 3000 lines per day sm
if you times that by 30 days that only comes to 90K lines a month, that is working 7 days a week including weekends. I don't think 2 people can handle that.
900 lines is below 1100 lines, where the bonus starts.
x
Gross lines include all lines containing
printable characters, so a full line and a line with one word on it are charged equally. Straight lines are basically the same as gross lines, but with this method of counting the blank lines are counted as well (again, equally). I have only had one company pay this way, and they are a middle man. I would think the charge would be about the same as for gross lines, and that not too many offices will want their lines counted this way (the one I worked on was probably inherited from someone who had counted the lines that way, so just continued).
The norm is 1 minute = 10 lines; 10 min = 100 lines - sm
granted this varies per dictator. More lines if a fast talker, less if a slow talker.
I went from 2400 lines to 1800 lines
a day when I switched from clinic (through an MTSO) to hospital work. Not only was the clinic work easier with more macros (and less providers to learn, 12 vs 300+), but I was typing in straight Word (as opposed to Softmed/Chart Script). So you see, it really varies depending upon the type of work as well as the platform used. That said, I am so much happier typing the 1800 lines per day (I make over $15 per hour plus an incentive for any lines in excess of 1200 per day) plus a great health package/benefits, AND approximately 5 weeks of paid time off per year. In my opinion, hospitals really are the best employers WHEN they appreciate the work we do.
My advice for you is not to judge a job by any one criterion but rather the entire picture. The 'extra's can really add up.
Good luck in your job!
Which is the one where they are sc*&ing us the standard lines or the qualified lines? SM
Mine show up as STD when I pull up my transcription log. But I see now there is STD/QT.... So which is the one where they are ripping us off, standard or qualified? Need to know. I am about to switch companies and I will not do if they are actually taking lines from me. Thanks guys.
Question versus gross lines versus 65-character lines....
I have always charged or been paid by 65 or 60 character lines or per letter or space typed, but have never been paid or charged per gross line.
What is the advantage of this? If I were to charge 11 cents per 65-character line including spaces, what does this figure out to for an average line rate and how do you do this calculation?
I'm wondering if it is financially beneficial for me to bill by gross line or to keep it the way I have it. I do know some accounts will only pay per 65-character line, as this was the deal my first own account I recently acquired. They were adamant on a 65-character line, but didn't specify with or without spaces and I personally would never not charge for spaces.
Thanks for explaining this. I appreciate it and hope everyone has a speedy day.
Word count: 824 lines. DocuCount count: 897 lines.
I just counted the same file in Word and then in DocuCount, and DocuCount was higher than Word.
Just as an aside.
come on.. you cannot compare a 2-year-old and a 15-year-old
x
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