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I'm horrible with math myself but was told several years back by a pretty reliable source

Posted By: sm on 2007-01-01
In Reply to: check this link out - Snow Bunny

that w/o spaces is about a 17% reduction in pay - and I would say the figures you gave pretty much leads me to believe this may be true.


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Reliable Source Jobsite
WORDS OF WARNING:  If you receive an email from The reliable Source Jobsite asking you to register for their site - DON'T DO IT.  This is supposed to be a job database for all types of clerical work.  However, I recently registered, realized I had registered at an incorrect job databased and asked for  a refund.  They stated I was not allowed a refund and that I was trying to get something for nothing.  I then filed a complaint with PayPal.  Later that same day, I received an email and also a telepone call stating that if I removed my complaint from PayPal, they would refund my money.  I did remove my complaint.  However, after my emailing them numerous times inquiring as to why I had not received my refund yet, they basically stated, "Ha, ha.  We're not giving you a refund, never had any intention of doing so, and you cannot reopen the complaint with PayPal."  I did contact PayPal and I could NOT reopen this complaint.  After resigning myself to the fact that I'm a member of this database, I decided to use it.  However, even though I have paid for this membership, I still cannot use it.  The User ID and the Password they issued me are incorrect and will not work.  I have made several attempts to email them regarding this matter, however I receive no reply.  It is for the reasons above I thought everyone should be made aware of this - UNRELIABLE SOURCE JOBSITE
Reliable Source Jobsite
gnat is right. Tell us the URL and perhaps we can all band together (for once) and help a fellow MT. Hey, it's worth a shot.
Reliable Source Jobsite
For those of you that wanted there website it is:
www.freewebs.com/wahtelecommuteemploymentservices - I hope you guys get this okay. If you can't get it off of here, feel free to email me. My email is: tousuns@rochester.rr.com
I want to thank all of you. You would not believe how they acted on the telephone with me. Since tricking me into cancelling my complaint they lifted my user priviliges. I emailed them four different times and they do not even extend the courtesy of a return email. However, they still have my money and will NOT return it. Thanks for all of your help.
anyone know if this is a reliable source for this information? thanks...

taken from their site (I especially like about the outsourcing and 'robot transcriptionist' : 








Allied Health Profession of the Month - March 2005
Medical Transcriptionist contributed by Paul D. Mason, Oxford, NJ



What is Medical Transcription?


Medical transcriptionists (MTs) are the miracle workers of the medical records! They turn doctors’ daily dictation tapes - rough, hurried, harried, mumbled, muttered, highly technical, and always absolutely crucial - into clear, concise, polished gems of documentation. They work this amazing transformation every day under tight deadlines using just a simple tape or digital audio player, a computer, and a stack of medical books and online reference sources.


Jobs Outlook – “Boom”ing?


Remember all those “baby boomers”? According to the U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), job opportunities for MT’s will be good - growing faster than the national average for occupations through 2012, with the demand fueled by the increased healthcare demands of a growing and aging population.


It’s not hard to see that lots more senior citizens needing lots more doctor visits means tons of new medical records to be generated! There’s going to be plenty of work out there to go around.

Then there’s the big “O”: Outsourcing…


There has been a steady stream of news lately about various US industries improving their bottom lines by replacing American workers with low-wage overseas labor – skilled jobs like computer programming, telephone help desks - almost any job that can be performed remotely.


In medical transcription, however, issues such as little or no foreign enforcement of US privacy laws, instability of foreign labor, lack of English fluency, expense and uncertainty of adequately training foreign labor, etc. can greatly complicate foreign outsourcing and offset the initially perceived cost savings.


Legal questions have even begun: The California legislature has discussed prohibiting all California industries from using foreign outsourcing involving confidential data, mainly because it is simply not possible to guarantee privacy outside of the country.


The BLS states that foreign outsourcing should not significantly impact the medical transcription profession in the US.


Robot Transcriptionists?


Another MT industry buzz involves new technologies such as speech recognition technologies (SRT’s), computerized “smart” data entry forms (EMR’s, CPR’s), etc. that promise to automate or eliminate traditional transcription work. Several software vendors have been very successfully selling tools of this nature to various industries and have been making noise to promote their use for medical transcription.


It is becoming apparent, however, that the complexity of medical diagnosis and terminology combined with the life-and-death importance of accuracy will prevent large-scale acceptance of these technologies in the medical field for the foreseeable future.


According to the Medical Records Institute (an organization that promotes the adoption of computerized medical records systems), most current research shows that penetration into the medical field by EMR’s is only 5-8%, with SRT’s at less than 1%.


I use it and have for years. It's reliable and cheap
at least in my area. I can call anywhere in the country and talk for as long as I want for around $50 a month. I have two phones and just forward calls from one phone to the other when I'm typing an account that uses the phone.
I've had Bellsouth for a couple years now. Reliable and no problems. nm
xxx
I'm pretty sure they told us it would not work with Word 2003 at all. NM
xx
I worked for Cbay for 3 years. I was also part of their lay off back many years ago. sm
Even though I got stuck in a lay off era, I still love the company. They paid well then. The people were nice (exception of 1 person) and if I had the opportunity I would go back again. Fortunately (or unfortunately - depending on how u look at it), I have a great paying job right now, so I am not looking for a change. I do know that at one time, they asked management to accept late paychecks, but never sure of the reason why. My check was never late.
Actually, I was told that back in 1972.
When I started my first transcription job at the marvelous wage of $2.00 an hour. At that time, my friends who worked at McDonald's were only making $1.60--and I think, but I am not sure, that the women who worked in medical records (back then we called it "filing") were making less than me, because my job had a higher skill level. Even now, discussing one's pay rate can cause dissension in the ranks, because despite my nearly 37 years in the business, if you've only worked 10 years and you make 1/2 cent more per line than I do, it would seriously annoy me, and I don't want to get annoyed because it kinda ruins my day.
I know it used to be 5-10 years back, but the laws changed within the last 2 years. They can only g
x
Whole point...Told you have the job...Call back, oh sorry, I guess not
You just don't tell someone they have the job, then call back and say, oh I didn't check your test, you didn't do good enough for the job. Sorry.
Contract not renewed. She was told she was not coming back.

:=


Sorry, I got cut off and didn't realize it. I was told it was more of a way to get the work back
I was told it was more of a way to get the work back and forth.  Does it actually affect the line counts? 
Someone told me years ago.....
"consider the source".....therefore, I don't get upset or bothered by obnoxious posts by others.  Apparently they are having some problems that THEY need to work out.  Actually as I go through this board, if I see a "title" that looks inflammatory, I don't even open it up.  I don't need to ruin my day because that person is having a bad day.  That truly is a good thought to keep on hand....."consider the source"......that goes for business as well as emotional!!  Who cares what some maladjusted person may say....I don't!!!! 
this is what I was told over the years.
It started out disc. Somewhere along the line someone decided they wanted to differentiate between the eye and the spine, so disk was created.

orbital disc
vertebral disk

then aamt changed it to disk all around to stop the confusion. (Kinda like the old verb follow up, adjective follow-up, and followup noun.....OH, just do followup!)

but in the end your account will have the final say and they all have different requests. Since what they say will marke me right/wrong in QA, I go by that. currently disc has been requested across the board to match up with their report templates.

and like the Eglish language itself, theres 10 exceptions to every rule.

don't attack, I'm not saying this is the law, written in stone somewhere.


I've been using it a few years now. It's pretty good. You'll get used to it. -nm
x
Unfortuantely this lady has pretty much burned her bridges with everyone years ago. sm
No one...and I mean no one will set foot in that house to relieve my in laws. It is a very sad situation.
about 23 years ago a dentist told me I needed 4
crowns at about $800/each.  Changed dentists a couple of times since and no one has ever told me I needed crowns. 
When I trained, back years and years ago
We did not have spell checking nor the internet (Google for instantaneous help). OMG, how did we do it? We used Correcting Selectrics with the lift-off tape to correct errors- you only had dictionaries, both English and medical, to look up things so yes we did have to learn to spell all those big longgggggggggg words.
Horrible, horrible place to work. nm
 
I did and was told that 6 years of editing experience wasn't enough?!?
nm
Yeah, all that stuff is hard to deal with. I told my mom years ago to - sm
make a list of what she wanted to go to who-- she poo poo'd it saying people shouldn't fight over the stuff, etc.and that should not be necessary. Now luckily my brothers and I have not fought over things, as the only daughter my dad let me have what clothes and coats I wanted (plus my brothers had no desire for this and I was the only one the right size too), though he wanted to keep her jewelry for some strange reason. He did divvy out a few things between me and my 2 sisters-in-laws; but held onto the expensive stuff. At the time he had plans to give it to his then new girlfried, which needless to say pissed me off a lot. He also wanted my mom's fur coats back for the same reason, though he never formally asked he did heavily hint, and I did not volunteer them. He has since married this lady and FINALLY has come to the conclusion that he shouldn't give her my mom's good jewelry, though he has not given it to me as yet which is what she wanted...she told me many, many times she wanted me to have her stuff with a few things to go to my sisters-in-law (which my dad did do). So I don't know if I will ever get her other jewelry or not (I am a gold and silversmith to boot so I love jewerly as it is), my dad might have sold it for all I know, I hope not. I don't want it for the $$ but for sentimental reasons and to pass onto my 2 daughters eventually. One of these days I will get the nerve to ask my dad about it, not the easiest of things to discuss.
Several years back it was

an 8 or 10 hour shift and your only break is for a meal.  Cubicles with no outside world communication.  Heaven forbid if you need a potty break. 


Hopefully things have changed, but I have my doubts.  Huntsville Hospital is more worried about being "the biggest" than employee relations.  There was a great letter to the Editor in the newspaper recently about the problems still going on there. 


And, I'll state, this is JMO.


Back 25 years ago, the FDA.....sm

Back 25 years ago or so, the FDA refused to allow a cheap drug called Latrielle into this country for the AIDS/HIV patients.  So, all the gay people went to Mexico to get the drug.  Does anyone remember this?


Our problem is not with *crack-pot* medical systems in other countries.  Our problem begins right here with the darned FDA.  For those who do not know what the FDA is - it is the Food and Drug Administration....you know those people....much like the USDA (the US Dept of Agriculture) which allows a certain amount of feces and rat hairs into ALL our food.  Start reading Consumer Reports!!!


There is better treatment all over the world - so please do not delude yourselves into thinking that the medical care in the USA is THE BEST because it certainly is not....it's merely BIG BUSINESS in the USA as usual.


I was out for 7 years and got back in, so...SM
you seem well within the time frame to do this if you have your heart set on it. I took some time off for raising kids and then worked at a school for 5 years in the meantime, then decided to pursue it again now that all 4 kids are in school (finally!) and I researched what company I thought I wanted to work for and took their test and was amazed to pass. After 7 years, I figured I'd really be out of luck. It worked out just fine. If I can do it after all that time, I don't think you'll have trouble. I only had about 2 years' experience before this, too, where you have much more. Good luck.
I used them some years back and have some feedback...

The service was great, and sitefever.com's FTP servers were very fast. The only thing was that when I got more than one client or if I had a large client I wanted to use FTP for, their free service didn't cut it. But, they have a 300mb plan which is like 45 or 50 dollars for an entire year, and it gave me access for up to 10 different clients and plenty of space for them all.


So, if you're looking at sitefever.com as an FTP provider, you're looking in the right direction. The only thing I would suggest is if you plan on growing, just pay a few bucks for their larger accounts.


P.S.- The free FTP accounts only work when you have the public ID number, which changes monthly. I see whoever started this topic had posted a current ID number.


28 years - OJT. That was the only way to train way back then. nm
x
This happened to me a few years back (sm)
when I was working for a national and they had a huge teaching hospital in Southern California.  Must have been 500 docs, 500 specialities and 500 subspecialities - never had the same doc more than once......... I was so frustrated!!  Sorry - not much help but I do feel your pain!
5 years and still going strong, I have a back up one though- sm
that I use for travel, that is about 4 years old but only gets used about 20 days out of a year if that. That one gets abused a bit and still works fine though.
I just went back to radiology after 12 years
doing another specialty. My biggest problems were the names of MR images complicated by fast talk and different images for different MRs and different language from many different docs. Sometimes 6-8 lines detailing acquisitions, sometimes not. Cardiac MR was the worst for me. I had 8 plus years of rad, but hadn't done it since PET was invented,lol...It helped when I had good dictators.I found a list on line of names of MR images, isn't complete. NM cardiac was another trip. I spent a lot of time going to google,just to make sure I was hearing what I thought I was hearing. I really like the job. You should get sample reports for the different docs for procedures, reading them will help, and you will have them for reference.
I've used it for several years and won't go back.
It's very easy to learn and user friendly. I won't work on anything else.
We did and moved back after 4 years.
For us, we decided the big home and extra spending money wasn't worth it. I was depressed the whole time we were on the mainland. This is our home and this is where we want to raise our child. We are happier here in our little condo than we ever were there.
I have work going back years - sm
others keep it a month or two. I have one doctor who sees patients on a yearly basis, I pull the previous report so I don't have to retype a lot of it, as he basically repeats the old one with a few changes, I'd have a lot more work to do otherwise. I have another account that constantly misplaces their work, I have to retrieve work from months earlier because they cannot find their copy. I can either pull it from my stash, or the MTSO has a FTP where we back up all our work just for this purpose, she keeps it all there going back years. I have no idea how often she cleans it out, but she hasn't in the almost 2 years I have been with her. On another note, I only keep the sound files for a month, then I dump them.
Horrible, horrible platform. Not
user friendly at all.  The best tip I can give you is don't do it. 
Bless your heart. Back several years ago
I worked FT for a large hospital doing MT and ran an MT business full-time but I had 2 partners in my business. I slept every other night. Hahaha I was younger at that time. Made INCREDIBLE money. Still can't believe today what I made then. It was a killer though. And with running my own business, I was not doing actual transcription the whole time, there was a lot of normal business activity/transactions/planning to do. That is why I think I held up to it as long as I did.

Well, I'm very impressed. Congratulations. I couldn't do that today (two FT transcription positions) if I tried!
I've been back in college for 2 years now.
and wish you the best of luck! You can never have too much education. It opens so many more doors!
Visited Idaho a few years back sm
beautiful, beautiful state. Decided that's where I want to retire.
I've had a bad back for years and nothing works better...sm
for me than heat.  I have a chair pad that heats and/or vibrates.  I don't use the vibrator much because the noise is distracting, but the heat works wonders.  Sometimes if the pain is real high around my shoulders, I just drape a heating pad over the top of my chair.....also keeps me warm and toasty in the winter time.
The REAL credential was the ART a few years back
WE had to have knowledge to get it. Not just show that we could transcribe. We had A&P with the premed students. We HAD to learn the stuff.
I've been fighting back for 30 years.
It hasn't done one bit of good.  The AAMT sold us out a long time ago and when the computer came into being, it made it way too easy to ship everything offshore.  At least years ago when we used a typewriter, you had to work in house.  Now everything is about faster, faster TAT and hiring people as cheap as possible to get the work done.  I have always said that if they could get trained monkeys to do this job and pay them in bananas, they would.  They don't give a rip about the MTs and they never have. 
have been using Cirque Glidepoint mouse for years-would NEVER go back! nm
nm
No way - MQ is the pits, left 6 years ago and never looked back.
There is greener grass, believe me.
One of my instructors referred our class to them a few years back.
I used them for FTP on a paid account (I think it was only like 20 bucks or so a year) and it worked great until a company I signed on with provided their own FTP servers.
TA has been bad news here & on other boards for years! A search will back up what is
s
I switched from Shorthand after 6 years to IT and wouldn't go back. nm
xx
I switched from SH to Instant Text a couple of years ago and would never go back.
I increased my productivity another 30 percent pretty quickly. And you can still use your old shortcuts with IT. Browse through the IT Commands forum on Productivity Talk for tricks you never thought you could do with a text expander.
looking for people that used to work for small MTSO in Suffield, OH a few years back.
ss
Hi, Deeni! I did Lanier for several years and was always told that Lanier....sm
would only work with/accept/interface with other Lanier products, that everything was proprietary, but that was a few years ago and do not know if anything there has changed, wish I was of more help!  Have a good one!
I was told I needed 2 phone lines, but was told I was dialing into the doctors' system. What woul

They can say that, but I have gotten more reliable
information here than from my CSC, so what does that tell you?
I am a reliable IC, but I can say

where the MTSO promises work anywhere from p.r.n. to asking how much can you take on?  I understand this business waxes and wanes, but sometimes it is just easier to give one IC one particular dictator to be responsible for and then if more help is needed ask if that IC has the time to help.


Another option is to make sure the IC is aware of how many minutes she/he will be receiving.  I have had that happen as well where I thought I was getting say 15 minutes, and then was given 60 minutes.  By the way, your higher pay rate is great because most small MTSOs only are willing to pay 7 cpl. 


I like to learn accounts sometimes just to offer vacation, illnesses, etc.  Please feel free to e-mail me if you are in a bind, and I can provide you with my resume.  I have many, many years of experience in a lot of different specialties and am also flexible in regard to volume.  I also tend to offer Sundays as an option since my work week runs Sunday to Thursday.