I was making 6.5 cpl in 1975 at a service -- 30 years later most jobs

• Not outsourcing - Sue E
  • Offshoring may not be the problem - RLA
  • I'm against outsourcing, too. It's helped to ruin a lot of - professions in this country besides MT! - nm
  • I have an idea...we can picket those facilities who use companies that offshore. sm - One with Ideas
  • I'm wondering about this... - MT
    • USA has safeguards that 3rd World Countries DO NOT! - MeMe
      • Did you read the posts below... - MT
    • I think if MT went back to each individual hosp, and NOT MT co's, - this profession could be respectable, again. - nm
      • Agree 100%. In-house is where we belong. Services have been our downfall. - On-site would bring us better pay!
        • I have to disagree. I make more money from home - and refuse to go inhouse again.
          • Hospital pay was 7.5 cpl when I was in-house sm - HappyMT
          • I was making 6.5 cpl in 1975 at a service -- 30 years later most jobs - start @ 7 cpl. (1/2 cent increase in 30 years).
          • I agree w/you... - FLaMT
          • You are in the - minority!
    • US MTs can be prosecuted ... - mtgrrl
      • Right...is it possible that - MT
        • It's possible - mtgrrl
          • Interesting points... - MT
            • No similar laws that I know of - mtgrrl
              • Sure... - MT
                • Insurance companies - Kyrie
                • It is about money - mtgrrl
                  • I agree... - MT
                • Adding some info to this post... - MT
                  • child-labor laws.....sm - maud
                    • That's a good question.... - MT
                      • We could learn to sew and make our own clothes. - The quality would certainly be better! - nm
                        • I do already... - MT
                  • That's a good start - mtgrrl
                    • Yes, I think that is true.... - MT
                      • rate... - EvaEv
                        • Yes, that's true... - MT

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in high school, trained on the job.  I have no idea what radiology pays, but with your experience, you should be able to get at least 9 cpl as an employee doing acute care, more as an IC.  There are still companies that pay semi-decent wages, but they are getting harder to find.  Sad to say, I made 10 cpl GROSS line back in 1986 -- cannot say that today.

Good luck!

Hi all, I am wondering if any of us work as an MT for any government agencies, V.A. hospitals,  military bases, etc.  And if so, how is the pay rate.  Is the hiring process difficulty.  THANKS!

I am going broke, looking for a more lucrative 2008.

If you do office work for a temp service you can pick/choose which jobs you like and if you don't want to work for a 20-something it won't be a problem.  Most of the temp services also offer software classes and you can upgrade your skills or learn something new and then after you've mastered it, ask for more money!  I got back into the workforce about 2 years ago after MT burnout.  Most of my assignments were pretty good.  I had one really BAD one and I quit after a day.  The woman was absolutely impossible to work for.  I later learned I was the 4th temp in a week and the temp service owner finally said they were "firing" that client - LOL.

I asked her why she sent me if she knew the woman was that difficult.  She said she figured I could handle it.  Gee, thanks!

I worked in the computer industry as a temp for large giants, Intel and Oracle, before deciding on a job in the regulatory affairs division of a medical device manufacturer.  It was fun working at the big companies and I became badly spoiled with all the latest/greatest technology and on-site cafes.  I learned a LOT!

Unfortunately, big companies are doing more temp help now and its all but impossible to get a perm job.  Don't sell yourself short & think you can only be a Wal-Mart greeter.  You do have valuable skills from MT and could utilize them in a higher paid position than a greeter.  Leave that job to the poor senior citizens who are now having to go back to work.

I feel like I can't get out of this rut of making enough money to just pay my bills and nothing left over.  What would you say the average annual salary should be after 2 years of acute care work?

Thanks

We got one hour of PTO (paid time off) for every 10 hours worked, so that's just a little less than 3 weeks a year. We had a 401K that was pretty decent, good health insurance, life insurance equal to two years' pay, and they offered AFLAC and disability insurance as well.

Oklahoma's cost of living is among the lowest in the nation....I don't know how people living in California can make it on $8-$12/hr.

Now it seems, I'm just scraping by, juggling the utility bills and paying whichever one has sent me the 24-hour disconnect notice this month; it's become a grim miserable job compared to what it was.  I'm nearing retirement age, but I doubt retirement is going to be in my future for a very long time.

The single worst thing that ever happened to us was going from the gross line count to the character count, and not adjusting the line rate upward to parity -- not to mention the adjustments that should have been made to accommodate all the extra time spent struggling to make sense of huge increase in ESL dictations that has occurred over the last 15 years, and of course there should have been COLAs as well, which we all know has not happened.

In the 1980s, with the advent of powerful and affordable PCs, free lance transcription became much more common.  So if you were experienced, disciplined and organized, you could be much better off economically by working for yourself -- although there were definitely advantages to working in-hospital.  There were great benefits and the salary was indeed enough to support a small family (albeit very modestly.) 

For a number of years during that time, many of us worked part time in the hospital for benefits, but made our real money at home.

But in my case, the time came when it just made no economic sense to work in-housel, I was better buying off buying private insurance for major medical care, tax-deferred annuities, and self-insuring the little stuff. 

I would just pick up tapes from the hospital every morning, and drop off the work (which I printed out) from the day before.

I usually had 24 hours to transcribe tapes which I did during school hours, when things were peaceful and quiet. 

I transcribed a couple thousand GROSS lines day.  Every single character line counted, so by taking advantage of headers/footers, creative macros, word expansions, etc., I really boosted my productivity far beyond to what I could do in-house on the self-correcting Selectric, Wang or Mag Card, or whatever 10-years behind technology was currently being used, plus all the office distractions and politics, and I definitely did not to have to work 24/7 to earn a good living. (Oh how I loved WP5.1!)

In fact, 2000 gross lines a day, 5 days a week at 10 cents a line (courier 10-pitch font, one-inch margins) was very very do-able for an experienced productive acute-care MT, provided she had good equipment, good reference books, and stayed focused.  It would take about 5-6 hours a day to get that amount of work done.  So figure the math out for yourselves, that's just a tad under $50,000 a year, certainly not a high standard of living in those days but adequate when it meant you could stay home and be actually be a full time parent when your children were home from school, and very comfortable, if you were married with a working spouse, or had rerliable child support, or social security for your children (if you were widowed.)

If you chose to work some weekends and evenings, it was not that all that difficult to hit that $75,000 a year mark, which I did for a couple of years so I was able to pay the tuition at a good boarding school -- and cruelly thwarted my teen-aged son's only ambition in life, which was to become a high school drop-out.

Things have gotten bad, no doubt about that, and the worst part of it is, is that most of the big MTSOs are still charging the hospitals as much as we used to earn, and sometimes even more, but the MT is no longer earning it, and often can't get enough work to meet the line counts required by the MTSOs for benefits (although the cost of those benefits are reflected in the cost charged to the hospital.) 

I don't know what the answer is, as the electronic immigrant is such a huge threat.

It's pretty darn awful, and I feel very very bad for those of you starting out in this field, and I do hope things change for you (and that someday soon I can retire.)

And the point that the person made is that that she was worth $75,000 a year, not necessarily that she was getting it or could get it, and I absolutely agree with her.  This is a hard tough job if it's done right -- it's mentally tiring, it's hard on your back, your hands, your neck (and your behind.)

It requires a lot of time -- it requires focus, you must stay alert, and must give 100% of your attention to what you are doing 100% of the time, it takes education and brains -- and now a word of truth which my 35+ years experience gives me the right to say aloud -- it's not fulfilling, wonderful, lovable and enjoyable, it's often as repetitious and tedious as an assembly line but infinitely more frustrating.

PS: I recall one of my colleagues from those early years of my career, now gone from this earth, telling me that the 1960s were really the "fat" years, that things actually began to decline salary-wise, in real dollars, in the 1970s. 

with them because I got a job with a hospital that paid better and had better benefits.  I gave my notice and the office manager made my life heck for my remaining two weeks.  He gave away my desk, my chair, my transcriber (we were still transcribing cassettes back then).  I spent the next two weeks shuffled between workstations and using the crappiest equipment they had.  He also refused to give me any help on my account.  It was a huge family practice from which I would get at least seven 90 minute tapes a day from them.  Before I gave my notice, I was the lead on the account and had three other people helping.  When I gave my notice, he couldn't spare anyone to help me and I got several tapes behind.  I kept telling him I was behind and he would just say do what you can.

Long story short, he tried to stiff me on my last paycheck because he said my account was way out of turnaround time and I had cost them money.  He had told the owner of the service that I had never asked for help and that I purposefully held tapes back to screw them.  I ended up taking them to small claims court to get my money.

Some people are just ugly people that take EVERYTHING personally.  You can't win with people like that.  They are unprofessional.  I wouldn't worry about your boss' attitude.  In a couple of weeks, he'll just be a memory.

and with a really good incentive plan.  I live in the Kansas City area.  $10 seems like a low starting point even with only two years experience which is the usual benchmark for hospital MT jobs. 

It's been my experience that the low end of the pay scale for hospital employed MTs was around $12 an hour.  Also, it's been my experience that the pay offered is usually based on years of experience and how well you perform on the transcription test.

I would say if their pay is that low, they should at least be making it up with incentive and it doesn't sound like they are.

JMO

Is it the typing that's getting you or the subject matter?  Maybe try general or insurance transcription?  I did secretarial work at home for a while, bookkeeping, typing, resumes, insurance typing, databases, mail merges.  I did mystery shopping, but couldn't make any money at it.

I sold on eBay by going to yard sales in the hot afternoon and offering people $1 a box to haul off their leftovers.  Or go early in the morning so you can snap up the collectibles.  Run an ad in the paper that you're buying certain collectibles.  Estate sales and auctions are good sources of stuff, too.  I once paid $12 for several boxes of junk that I sold for $800.  eBay does get tiring quite often between finding packing materials; finding inventory to sell; answering people's emails because they can't bother to read the auction instructions; nonpaying bidders; blatant liars; driving to the post office every day, etc.

I've done some other WAHM jobs but, again, eBay and transcription make the most money for me from my home.

keep track of and will just be a different department. 

It looks like we will work out details over the next 6 months, talking with community college program directors as well as a few of the distance-learning course leaders to work on the recruiting end.

We will train current staff to mentor if they would like to do so and want to work in the office.

We are still working on production requirements, goals to set, pay, benefits and other fine details but we have 6 months to get it all in place with three months to pull it together after that with a tentative start date of 09/01/06.  We need to build the building as well, although that is already at the blueprint stage in a spot next to our current office. 

We did not want to cause flames and bashing by listing the company name as there are always so many negative people on this site, but we are national with over 200 transcriptionists, located outside of Chicago (40 miles west) and have the best team of transcriptionists around!

We will have an "official" announcement after the first of the new year. 

Thank you for all of your feedback and suggestions!

I don't mind doing legal and will do it now from time to time, but be prepared to be totally bored out of your mind.

At least that's the way I feel.  I love to transcribe, learned legal in college, went on to get my paralegal degree, etc., etc., but I did temp work when the kids were younger, which was about 90% medical and I would never go back to legal except for once in a while.

Booooooring.

Comcast here in the next couple weeks.  Verizon is offering a 30-day free trial.  In the meantime I will keep my cable internet just in case I'm not happy with Verizon.  My cable internet service has been very frustrating for me, as far as not being available at least once a week for a couple of hours, always during my normal working hours.  So, I guess it's worth a try.