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I typed 600 lines more this week than I usually do

Posted By: pyo on 2009-06-06
In Reply to: How much did your income fall? - Sally

(working extra hours) and my pay for the week is still 50 dollars short because of the VR pay. I don't know if we should say something to our companies about this or what or if it would even help but it really ticks me off!


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Lines typed an hour or a week?

I know this has been talked about a lot, but I was offered a chance to test for an IC job, and I'm required to type between 2,500-5,000 lines per week.  Since I'm an employee and haven't been paid by the line for about five years, approximately how many hours does it usually take for some of you to type 2,500 lines per week?   


TIA.


About how many lines are expected to be typed each day, minimum, on average? NM

How do minutes dictated equate to lines typed?
In other words, if I commit to type 30 minutes of dictation, how many lines would that equate to (for 150 lines per hour for example)??  Or put another way - how long would an average Transcriptionist take to type 30 minutes of dictation (from an "average" dicatator)??
Here is the best way...open any document you have typed for anything and count the lines both ways.

I have pretty much always been paid by the gross line...occasionally I will take a job with a company that pays by characters and I never make as money.  Remember...with gross lines, a line is a line is a line....that means anything on the lines be it one character or 65 is a line.  For instance....today I type a normal file for a client I have worked on for years...if I counted the lines at 65-cpl I got 398 lines, but counting gross lines I got 641 lines.  This is a 38% difference in pay between the two, so you would be making approximately 5 cents a line less on the character count.  Hope this helps :)


I'm up to 5,000 lines per week.

Now I just wish it didn't take me all day to do it.  I'm not sure how many days I actually worked this week, whether it was four or five, because all the days blend together into one now. 


I only recently started using an expander, so I do spend some time each day adding to it.


that would be 75K lines a week for each
insane
1,500 lines per week is not much.

There are some companies out there that will let you work at will from a pool, which is really what IC status should be, but so many are taken advantage of by being asked to commit to a schedule.  STay away from those companies; they are crooks.


In saying that, you may want to do ask which companies allow you 24 hour TAT as opposed to a set schedule unless you'd like to be an employee, and then you could accept the shift work. 


Cardioscribes offers 24 hour TAT.  I cannot think of any others off hand, but the other thing you could do is contact an IC position that is advertised and ask if they would be flexible.  I think Zylomed also offers IC status and some flexibility, but I'm not sure.


Good luck to you...  Best wishes to find what you are looking for!


So you do 15,000 lines per week at $.10+ per line?
That's $1,500 per week, or $78,000 per year.  How many hours do you put in per week?  Do you have a life outside of work?  Kids, S/O, hobbies, family, friends?  Not being snotty, I just find it hard to believe that anyone can do that many lines without other aspects of their life suffering.
are u sure that's 1000 lines per WEEK for them? NM
n
goal is 10,000 lines a week!... :) nm
x
How many lines per week do you transcribe?
Do you think shooting for 9000 lines a week is way over the top?  I need to work as much as I can and I am thinking I may commit to 9000 lines a week (can do that over 5, 6 or 7 days or however I want) - but I'm afraid of burnout.  I have been an MT many years and in my younger days I did that much on a consistent basis; just not so sure I can keep up that pace anymore.  Just wondering how much others are doing.
12,000 lines per week for me - consistently. nm
x
how many lines per hour/day/week do you do?? NM
???
OTI. So many lines per week. No schedule. No benefits, either. nm
x
Depends -- usually 2500-3000 lines per week - sm
though where I work does not have a minimum, but they are considering changing that shortly. Still won't be a firm # as they go by minutes, but the min. will be 60 minutes a day which will be approx 500-600 lines a day.
2-1/2 hours a day, 1300 lines/day, $150 a day, 7 days a week, IC status
a
Hand pain - needing to cut back lines per week. Anyone else done this?
I have so much hand and wrist pain from all this typing.  I only do 5000-6000 lines per week and that is torture.  By the end of the week I have slowed down so badly it is ridiculous.  I think I am going to have to cut way back before I trash my hands and wrists for good.  Has anyone else had this problem and cut back on MT work?  I'm trying to think of other jobs I could do for a few hours a day to make up the difference ($$)that don't involve typing. 
I type around 2300-2600 lines a day, 5 days a week.
Yeah, it does come out to $6,000 a year.

Yeah, many of us do it on a regular basis.

Yeah, it is worth it to me.

No, there is no magical single tip that can give you that kind of production.

No, I'm not interested in talking about production with anyone because all I ever get back is all the reasons you can't do it. So, if that's your mindset, you're exactly right - you can't do it.

My experience pays off for me and having the CMT gives me an extra income boost (which I save and makes a tidy nest egg padding) and the CEUs are very, very educational and worthwhile.


Oh yeah, I did 2800 lines last Thurs and I had 10,500 for week to my usual 8K sheesh I'm a
nm
What is the minimum lines per week required by employers for part-time for transcription?
nm
Is there engineer week? Astronaut week? Veterinarian week?
x
Typically this week is a slow week in lots of places

because it is a big vacation week.  Typically things slow dow a bit in the summer too because people are putting off elective surgery, but at the same time lots of people going on vacation so it should balance out.   


 


 


Lowest runs $900 week, highest $1400 week (sm)
Get paid 12 CPL. Been doing transcription for about 12 years.
I work 6 days a week every other week

Due to my company's payroll (it runs Sun-Sat), I'm able to work a rotating schedule with every other weekend off. Week 1 I work Sunday through Thursday with Fri, Sat, Sun off.  Week 2 I work Monday through Friday with Saturday only off.  Then I'm back to week 1 and get that following weekend off.


I've found that I'm more productive with shorter shifts and I have kids in school anyway, so I work a lot of split shifts during the week.  If possible, you might want to consider cutting back your hours to 30 hours and just work five 6-hour days in split shifts, 3 in the morning and 3 in the evening. 


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.
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
Just typed in an HP

Under the ROS the heading "Special Senses: Unremarkable"


I once typed for a doc who had
now that was funny!
Maybe that ad was typed by VR... or by an
It irks me no end that our country has shipped off a job to India/Pakistan, etc., that used to be considered important to the medical field, and which fed and housed many of our country's middle-class citizens. So now these foreigners are living the comfy middle-class life, and here I am, trying to rent an apartment and finding that my MT monthly gross pay doesn't qualify me for ANYthing that even distantly resembles a decent middle-class apartment. The only ones I can afford all have "Se habla espanol" in the ads, and of course you know who lives THERE! It's all the non-English-speaking illegals that we've pretty much given carte blanche to come ruin our country, after having done a real number on their own. I hope Uncle Sam enjoys paying for food stamps, welfare, and subsidized housing, 'cause that's where I'm headed unless this profession turns around.
Never typed an ESL??...sm
Now that is strange. As many ESLs as there are. And using the q.d. and h.s. they must have worked somewhere that they didn't use BOS.
--I think she has already typed them.
x
I have always typed mg/dl and I've been
transcribing early 20 years and have never heard anything about KCl.  I currently work for a service that has a very rigid account and we have had to change several things to avoid confusion, though they have never mentioned this one.   I would think it would be a personal preference.  We use BOS as a rule of thumb, but on Tuesdays and the holiday following the third Saturday of the monh between 8 and 10 we do it this way, and then doctor X wants it done this way, which is totally different from standards, not a coherent dictation but he wants it his way. 
Only typed verbatim twice
once for a Russian infectious disease MD. After one week of strict verbatim reports, evidently she got a talking to by the senior partner and her style became acceptable.

The hospital is one of the larget and most respected hospitals in the US. All residents much pass a week-long course dedicated strictly to how to chart, how to document, how to dictate. Each resident must personally sign his/her own name daily on a log in sheet and anyone who misses a day does not get to start with the rest of peers. One day is devoted SOLEY to HOW TO DICTATE and accepting full legal responsibility for the dictation. They have to sign an agreement that the hospital will not provide legal support if their documentation falls short of their standards and the resident has to provide his/her own funding against any lawsuit. If they dictate a reversal of pulse rate/respiratory rate, I could switch them, but I had to send it to QA who attached a note to the dictator covering the MTSO from any repercution.

Best dictators I EVER had!
I typed in my sleep once...sm
it was a late shift, about midnight (which is late for me) and I got up to go downstairs, move around, stay awake, came back and found I had typed something about a TV in a box...? So it can be done!
Proofing as you go...as in looking at what you typed?
Doesn't everyone? Or do some MTs watch TV or look up in the air while typing? LOL! That is not proofreading - proofreading is double-checking a finished document.
No, it was a report I typed. Now will you tell me off
a
I typed ENT for 6 years and
charged 14-16 cpl but that was about 4 years ago when you could charge that. I printed everything and picked up, delivered. I eventually had to drop the rate down to 10-12 cpl to keep the docs and then they found someone who would do their work for 8 cpl.

I think you are in the ballpark as well. Good luck.
I have to agree -- not only have I typed ERs for sm

people with cold symptoms, flu, snotty nose, etc., and wondered "why in the heck are they in the ER?," I have also witnessed it firsthand while waiting in the ER with my mom.  She had congestive heart failure and towards the end we made frequent trips to the ER when she ended up unable to breathe and no doctor's office open.  They always ended up admitting her anyway.  But I watched the same thing that the poster below mentioned -- nonemergent cases clogging up the works because they treat the ER like a doctor's office. 


And yes, there are "special circumstances" and such, but that was not the situation you were addressing.  Sorry for the attacks you received.  You just put in writing the thing that many of us have been thinking for quite awhile.


I HEAR ya, but only because you typed it.
I am with you. They really are clueless, aren't they!
Oh, okay, like not something we have never TYPED in a report before then...


 


Gotcha!


dictated / typed
Doctor says "jiddo, jiddo, jiddo" - what does this mean"  Why.... 0-0-0 - OMG. The things we put up with for no money.
If they know they've been typed.

Why can't you skip over those patients since obviously they know other girl typed them. 


Do not transcribe for free!  Ever wonder why the other girl left? 


 


"Qualified MT" just typed ...
Arthrosclerotic heart disease. This is an MT claiming to have 5+ years experience and wants to be paid .10 per line.
Any test I have taken I have typed
verbatim exactly because you do not know what they actually want. Also, need to follow BOS guidelines on tests as most MTSOs use these.
Sorry, typed the above without glasses
x
I recently typed an EGD....sm.
The patient had choked on a piece of meat and had it lodged in his throat. The whole report for some reason by hands did not want to type food...always foot. I felt pretty confident that I did a good job correcting all of them and sent the report on.

Two days later the doctor sends it back and asks me to change it. No big deal, must have made a different mistake....NO I was so mad at myself that I sent this report that stated "foot was removed from the esophagus". It was embarassing then but now it is pretty funny to me.
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.