Home     Contact Us    
Main Board Job Seeker's Board Job Wanted Board Resume Bank Company Board Word Help Medquist New MTs Classifieds Offshore Concerns VR/Speech Recognition Tech Help Coding/Medical Billing
Gab Board Politics Comedy Stop Health Issues
ADVERTISEMENT




Serving Over 20,000 US Medical Transcriptionists

I was making 14.06/hr with full benefits in Calif. (nm)

Posted By: Not the best income on 2005-07-19
In Reply to: Am going for an interview for in-house RAD MT for association - bb

dd


Complete Discussion Below: marks the location of current message within thread

The messages you are viewing are archived/old.
To view latest messages and participate in discussions, select the boards given in left menu


Other related messages found in our database

That was with full benefits, which are the same benefits as an in-office employee for the QA staff..
However, I hear that their current QA staff are being asked to reach numbers that are out of sight and goals are basically impossible.
IC positions offer no benefits, employee positions off full benefits, so if you do not need
benefits, then IC would be best.
$16/hr with full benefits at home.
nn
I pay .108 cpl, full benefits including PTO. sm
I do not have high turnover but have had accounts stolen out from under me by offshore MTSOs charging 8 to 10 cpl. I can't raise rates because no one will pay them. I am not unhappy, just realistic that the AHDI and their support of offshore companies has made the smaller MTSOs in the USA suffer greatly.

I have employees not ICs and know how to schedule. 4 MTs that were to work did not so I picked up the slack. I was not complaining, just stating facts of why the industry is going downhill.
48K with full benefits, 40 hours per week,
I also have a PT subcontractor position (about 5 to 7 hours a week), made about 7K last year.   
Made $5,500/yr. with full benefits at hospital. Rent 175.00. Car 75.00
I think back then we made more than the average secretary and the cost of living (Morgantown, WV) was low. I just remember that I had raises every year, one for performance and another for cost of living raises. My pay went up a few thousand every year with the raises, that much I recall. This was in 1977. West Virginia University Hospital. We had to be there at 8:15, one hour paid lunch, two 15 minute breaks and went home at 3:15. My supervisor sometimes took naps in the employee lounge. She was kick back. I learned how to speed read by researching Dorland's but terminology was not too out of the ordinary from what I recall. People who were ill back then had the usual problems (gallbladder, kidney stones, etc).


my full retirement age is 67 according to my estimated benefits paper - nm
x
my friend just finished her BSN 2 years ago, working 32 hr/week making $60K with benefits nm
x
In Calif., gas is around $4.11-$4.80, and
*
I get $23.50/hr. in N. Calif, which is still low for cost of living. nm
/
$2.58 for regular in Central Valley, Calif. (NM)
dd
and/or Calif onion dip...happy new year...nm
x
Cross country trip to CALIF and
back. My husband and I took three weeks and drove to California and back through the Southwest. Saw Yellowstone and the Giant Sequoias, Santa Fe, Sedona, etc. We had never been there and it was great just driving with no set plans, stopping along the way whenever and where ever we wanted... such freedom.. My second best was a week and a half to Glacier Falls, Montana, but that's been years and years ago. Heck, any vacation is a great one! My bags are packed and ready anytime!
$256.00 for June electric bill in Calif.

Am curious if anyone's else is outrageously high.  Mine typically is $150-200 for summer months. 


I keep temp at 82 during day, 78 at night.  Temperatures here soar to 95-100 though.  But, I live alone and have gas hot water, gas stove.


Working at home has its pluses and minuses!  Leaving the air off for 8-10 hours a day while I was at the hospital working saved me a lot of cash in this utility bills.


 


 


Full Core means full CPR code.
NM
Sorry...wrong board. I am half asleep here in Calif.
dd
You must live in Calif - finding a good old doctor is nearly impossible here.
It amazes me. But, it is true. The stories I have heard are heartbreaking.

I blame it on the cap they placed on malpractice suits. Doctors here are complacent. In my town, we go to Stanford or UCLA for serious illnesses. It is well worth the drive.
This heat is unbearable in central Calif. Air quality is bad. I have never felt so unhealthy.
Over 100 degrees for 30 out of 35 days, the other days were 98 or 99. The air is so bad here in this pocket of the country that people are told to stay indoors. I sit for hours typing and then feel like a slug. Drinking gatorade for hydration and know it is high in sodium but am evaporating here, taking two showers a day as there is a constant dust cloud (particulates ugh).

I want to move but doing it alone at the age I am is a daunting task. What if I end up some place that is just as bad? The expense would make it impossible to relocate again. Wish I were rich...
I worked with a woman in her mid 80s. Did your friend/coworker live in Calif. by chance?
She was great.
sure i was. i'm making fun of the people who are making a case for background checks, etc
to do medical transcription at home as if they may do something AWFUL with the info they receive. So if you want an invasion of privacy let's REALLY invade it and make sure fat chicks don't transcribe because they are so busy eating they can't get the work done, they mess up the keyboard with food and if they are provided health insurance they will raise the rates for the company sky high because their health risks are higher than others. Then there are the psychological issues overweight people bring to the table. After we eliminate fat people, we can go on to eliminate diabetic people who may have low blood sugar while typing and go into a spell and type the wrong thing. I could go on and on through the process of elimination. How about prescribed medications that may cloud your thinking? So you take Ambien to sleep but you have an Ambien groggy hangover when you are transcribing? Should they transcribe. How about your teens are on your last nerves and you take a Xanax? Should you be allowed to transcribe?
Calif is attempting to revoke the "employee shares salary info with another employee" penalty.
dd
Yeah, but full-time lines does not necessarily mean full-time hours, so I would do it if your produc
-
You realize by doing that they're making more money & you're making less? You should reconsid

I work a full time and a part time, but not sure about 2 full-time...
My hubbie is disabled and I am the only one in my family working also, so I fully understand. You will not have a day off at all working 2 full-time as that is going to be the only way you will get in all your hours. I work one job in the mornings from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. and the other from 5 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. and do have off one day a week, but if I had to get in the extra 15 hours to make the other job full-time I am not sure how I would do that other than lose my only day off. Also, make sure you have your account specifics in front of you at all times because you will get yourself confused as to who is what and having notes will help in that area. Good luck to you, as it is possible, but forget about your house being clean, having any social life, etc. Feel free to email me personally if you just need someone to talk to, as I have been where you are and still am.
Right Now, we do get benefits
but MQ is trying to change that, of course. They are trying to get our hospital to outsource everything to them, which would then mean i can work for MQ or leave. I hate MQ. I want to see them exposed for what they really are and I want to see everybody that have hurt, be compensated.
You can do that with benefits too, ya know.
:)

As long as you're happy, it pays your bills, and you can make ends meet at tax time, that's all that counts. :)
Is that with or without benefits

Do they have Editor positions as SE?


 


If you don't need benefits, look into
doing house cleaning for individuals on a weekly basis. Lots of under-the-table money to be made from what I used to see when I worked at a bank (and saw deposits of gals doing housekeeping). Weekly house cleaning is no longer limited to the well off professionals.

I was in QuickLube, or whatever it's called this week, and a 70-something lady was talking about her work as a home aide - light housekeeping and cooking and companionship - no medical stuff. She got her referrals through her church and was charging $10/hour.
Unfortunately, some of us need benefits.

Not even in the salad days did I make anywhere near that.  In fact, most of the services I know don't charge that.


It's all about the benefits
Hospitals don't want to pay the benes. The hospital where I used to work was sold and the new owners threw us all out plus the service we used. My benefits alone costed the hospital roughly $5000 per year x that by 15 transcriptionists. Plus they provided everything for us, equip, desk, computer, etc.

Apparently they contracted a service for X amount of dollars per month/year to do it for them. No messing around with line counts and they always know what it will cost them.
Can you name some benefits for
the American MT to become certified? Please tell me how AAMT has changed the average MT's job security, satisfaction, etc. All I see is that they have given up on us and moved overseas to start programs and gain overseas members.
well, there are some benefits to having your own
was asking you to go away. A blog serves a similar purpose and in fact you may find a wider range of readers, interactions and help than what you may get on this web site. Yes, I have seen others here say they would start their own blog and have seen a couple of them, so it wasn't an only you thing (at least I didn't see it that way).
Benefits can add up to $10,000 though. (nt)

Tax benefits

I guess I just like knowing I own my own business and I made it what it is today. I like getting out and delivering.  Talking to the people in the office making personal contact. Working as much as I want.   I also like the write offs and paying less than $1,000 taxes per year.  To each their own.   To me this is the answer. Most on this board all they do is say that there is no way to make 50K a year and I simply gave an example of how you can do it.  I am not  knocking you, you seem to have done it I just like doing it "my way" as Frank Sinatra would say.   Best of luck to you. 


If you do not need benefits then you would
there is more leg work involved especially when first landing an account.  The other problem is that even when you have a contract with them they can break it any time for someone who charges less.  So you must remain humble with your pricing.  When you have your own accounts, you have cut out the middle man, BUT, you must chase down your money.  In my experience, the Transcriptionist must get paid LAST because most weeks, I have to ask nicely or do without.  Have a safety net, an account to borrow from until you get paid because a lot of the time they pull OOPS, forgot your write your check, or OOPS doc needs to sign it or you just wonder when you'll get it.  Just SOME things to consider, but good luck on whatever you decide. 
IC - No benefits with this doc
I was total IC before. I dropped my other accounts and went the employee route for the bennies and so taxes are taken out. Now I get days and holidays off, too. That's a first. Worked 9 years 7/7, 12-14 hours a day, 3 days off a year for family.

What no one seems to realize that in my area, money is tight and so I can't charge the same as someone in a city or heavily populated area can charge. Jobs just aren't here.
Benefits
They cannot give you benefits if you are an IC. If they did they would have to turn you into employees. This is not just my opinion they are IRS rules.
My pay is okay - just no more benefits

It has become a matter of taking a higher cpl w/o benefits or lower cpl with benefits in this industry...as well as those employers who want (example) 7 years of experience for 5-6 cpl.  Anyone accepting that should be ashamed to call themselves an MT.  I make only slightly less than I did 5 years ago.  Now I make 11 cpl on a 65 line count versus 11-12 cpl on a gross line - the difference though, is that I had paid benefits then which I don't have now.  The other difference is that when I could work in DOS and create all reports into one file to send at the end of the day, I could routinely produced over 350 lph (and never, ever work more than 6 hours a day, 5 days a week!).  Now that I have to work on a platform that requires individual reports being submitted, I've really taken a hit in how many lph I can produce.  I still work less than 40 hr/wk, though.


I truly believe in working smarter than harder.  If a company offers a platform or dictators that prevent me from making a minimum of 200 lph or more, then I don't work for them.  If I can't use my abbreviations that I've built over the past 10 years, then I won't work for that company.  If I can't have benefits paid by the company AND the cpl I want, then yes, I will be an independent contractor and take all the tax benefits I can.  Last year, I only paid $268 in federal taxes for the entire year.


I have to work around my child as well (I am single) and I am fortunate that my training days are well behind me.  I still have a good life and good income, but I am choosy about the company I will work for.  When I am older and things change significantly that I make less than $40k/yr, then I will go back into coding and have a job with good pay and benefits.  I can't see staying in a profession if it doesn't benefit me the way I need it to.


About benefits

After I wrote my last post I was just thinking about the benefits.  I was with Keystrokes for a while and you can be an employee with them and still get the flexibility of 24 hour TAT and therefore you can get the benefits.  So it's not impossible to get benefits and flexibility.  I know the Keystrokes ortho accounts offer 24 hour TAT, not sure if it's all of the ortho accounts, but I know some of them do.  I'm not sure if they have other specialties that have the 24 hour TAT.  Good luck.


Benefits
The only "benefits" an IC gets is being able to make their own schedule.  We do not get any medical, dental, retirement.  We furnish our own equipment, do our own taxes, and do not get paid vacation or holidays. 
benefits?
I know people who would change bedpans, just to get a hospital job because of the great benefits package. No judgement on types of jobs some of us would or wouldn't actually consider doing, but bottom line for some people is a steady paycheck and health insurance.
benefits
They do have good benefits and I did look into the kitchen job a bit more.  I have not called HR yet.  I guess my main point is I am surprised that the HR person did not follow through and let me know there is not an MT job.  She did not indicate that when I met with her.  I am also surprised that the application went to another department but if that is the way it is done, ok, fine.  I do not feel I am a prima dona.  I would have understood them passing the application on to perhaps the business office or something else in the medical record department.  The job asked for an experienced MT so I was just responding to that particular job.
No Benefits

I'm an independent contractor and so I don't receive any benefits.  The reason I stay as an IC is because it allowed me to obtain one degree, and now I'm going back to obtain my nursing degree, and so I like the fact that as an IC, I can set my own hours and that kind of thing...so unfortunately, the penalty for that is not having insurance, paid time off, etc., but I hope it will all be worth it in the end when I'm a nurse!  And, I don't mind answering any questions at all...so feel free to ask.


Have a good day!


CMT benefits
Company I work for pays 1 cent per line more for CMT, also provides gift certificates for several webinars a year so does not cost me much.
Benefits
Just found out benefit premiums are going up over $100 more a month.  I am hardly getting by as is, let alone when benefits go up.  I have to carry the insurance for my entire family (husband is self employed).  If someone works for a company that offers good coverage (deductible $1000 or less and copays $30 or less) and cheap premiums (i.e. less than $500/mo for family coverage), could you please let me know.  I would greatly appreciate it.  Thank you. 
Benefits (sm)
115V AC
3-prong grounded plugs
dust cover provided
I have benefits.
I am an employee though, so make less per line than an IC, and don't get to choose my schedule. Worth it to get benefits though. You just have to find a company willing to hire you as an employee.
do we get benefits?
What's a benefit????
No more benefits, either
I didn't either think about benefits when I posted.  I got two weeks paid vacation a year plus paid health insurance and matching taxes deducted through paycheck.  Now as an IC, I don't get any of those things.  The one thing I have now that I did not have even in 2002 was cable internet, but didn't really need it as much then.
Have you added in the other benefits

The company has great benefits that can add up to several thousand a year. Paid downtime. Paid holidays. Vacation/PTO starting the first year. No equipment rental fee. Big discount on word books. Rental library for medical education. Reimbursement for continuing education. Decent insurance. Might make a difference.


ICs don't have benefits, so you'll have to get
outside insurance.  I don't know of any insurance that will cover pre-existing conditions or if they do your premium will triple.  Go to e-insurance.com and you get rate quotes there.  You can also call insurance companies in your yellow pages that write health insurance policies.  BC/BS is one of the cheaper ones.  You might want to look into just a major medical policy, very high deductible, lower premiums, basically only good in the even of a catastrophic event.  You can also look into a medical savings account to see if you qualify.