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Serving Over 20,000 US Medical Transcriptionists

Is it possible to make a living off of 4 cents a line?

Posted By: Newbie trying to pay the rent on 2007-06-27
In Reply to:

If there is anyone out there new and still considered a mentoree and able to work full time and make rent please tell me because I need some encouragement.  I want to quit the day job to be able to do this fulltime but when I do the math it just doesn't add up to the rent:-)


Any words of encouragement would be helpful.




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You can make more than that per line, but at 125 lph, not a good living. Have to do at least 300 lp
x
I make 8.5 cents per line sm
The incentive is 2 cents per line for anything over 300 lines per hour.  That equates to 10.5 cents per line, because I consistently do over 300 lph.  That equals minimum of  $31.50 per hour.  I would never work by the hour.
Don't most make more than 5 cents a line??
I do not agree with you at all!

I make 0.725 cents per line after 5 years with the same company - nm
I make 0.725 cents per line after 5 years with the same company - NM
I couldn't screw this up any more if I tried! I make 7.25 cents per line. There! lol - nm
I couldn't screw this up any more if I tried! I make 7.25 cents per line. There! lol - nm
make $20 an hour plus 4 cents gross line
nm
WHOAH, Nelly!! Make that 0.0725 cents per line! - nm
WHOAH, Nelly!! Make that 0.0725 cents per line! - nm
12 cents. I'd love to make 12 cents. sm
a line as an employee.  17 years acute care experiencing doing all work types and I only make 9 cpl plus incentives. 
$.06 gross line / .70 = approximately $.0857 cents per 65 character line.

A gross line is anything on a line versus 65 gross characters per net line the other way.  You make more money working for the gross line than for the 65 gross character line, as long as the line rate's OK.


New England, 16.50/hr, 8 cents a line after minimum line count..
full benefits available with general contribution by the hospital before you start paying for them, retirement, 403b, all benefits, and working at home as an employee, BUT, you have to live local to the hospital.
You want to make a living don't you?
Then you listen to idiot dictators.  You want to be in the spotlight and be on TV, stay in Aruba.  You want to grieve the loss of your daughter privately, stay at home and appoint a spokesperson.  You ultimately make choices about what you do based on facts and necessities.  It is NOT NECESSARY for Mrs. Twitty to be in Aruba or if she decides she rests more easily in Aruba it is NOT NECESSARY for her to give press conferences acusing people of being criminals or incompetency. 
to make it official, not living in sin, tax
nm
Can't say I make a great living, but...
I support myself, my disabled husband, and also have 2 grown children at home, which the one pays his bills, but the other is having problems. We are buying our home, paying for our car, and still have enough to eat out a couple of times a week. I make more at home than if I go back out into the work place.
If you make a living with your PC, it pays to
x
You can't fault someone for wanting to make a living.

Outsourcing simply means that big corporations show bigger profits and the CEOs get bigger bonuses.  They claim that it's good for the economy because the companies and CEOs have more money to spend, gag me with their trickle down economics theory, but they refuse to see what it does to the working class people.  It's going to be interesting to see what happens in this country down the road as more and more working class people lose their jobs to offshoring.  What, are we all going to sign up for unemployment and welfare?  Will crime go up as we all start stealing just to put food on the table?  I wonder what's going to happen.


It is worth it though. I couldn't make a good living without.
x
Really? I make a good living transcribing tapes.
Just because it's not the way you want to receive your work does not mean it is worthy of contempt. As far as I'm concerned, practitioners who are reluctant to give up their familiar dictation methods are less likely to give in to the blandishments of VR or EMR salespeople.

You are free to work your way, and I am free to work as I see fit. If that makes you cringe, well, I guess that's just your problem. It doesn't bother me at all. Cringe away.
Agreed! I couldn't stand to make my living (sm)
facilitating the state of California's biggest growth industry. Not to mention the doctors' callous attitudes towards their patients and the things you would have to transcribe would make you ill. You do know our country has the greatest percentage of our population in jail of any country in the world?
The result of MTs' efforts to make a living wage are (sm)
And of COURSE we don't want less - we DO want more. That goes without saying. But you see - the type of verbal attack that you and other "Debbie Downers" like you launch every time an MT says, "Wait a minute... maybe there IS something we can do is so typical of the type of thinking that holds not just MTs, but women in general back. I have already checked and made sure my doc's MTSO doesn't offshore. If that changes, my ins. (which is just your average, run-of-the-mill HMO) STILL allows me to go to other providers. If you "don't have many options", have you ever wondered WHY? Could it be that you keep SETTLING for less and less? And could it be that other MTs, when they read the gloom and doom in your post, will think THEY have to settle, too?

As for pulling other endeavors out of other nations, hey - there are quite a few that I think others would LOVE to see pulled out. Such as tech help for just about everything from your PC to your cellphone being sent to places where they can't understand what you're trying to tell them, and vice versa. I have a friend with a Masters degree in software engineering who is working menial jobs right now in order to pay the rent, while he looks for a job in his field that is a full-time, benefitted position, rather than as a part-time IC with no benefits. He says even the part-time jobs are getting hard to find because so many employers are sending EVERYTHING out, including part time.



The old, "Go ahead and try! Why don't you quit MT? Oh, boy - more work for ME!" song and dance may fly for a while, but why sit back and seemingly enjoy watching your profession go extinct, when eventually it WILL affect you, too? Do you really want to sit there all day as an "editor" and stare at work typed by other entities? How boring is that? Where is any ounce of creatitivity? At least when you transcribe, you are producing something of value, and can take pride in it. And at a lousy 3-to-6 cents a line, where is the pride in speech-rec or editing work?




8 cents a line. Should be 10 cents for over 10 yrs exp but
b
BFA in Jewelry/Metals, did craft shows here and there but did not make a living -sm
goal though for this Fall or soon that is, is to get my work done by noon, then spend 3 hours at least 2 x a week in my studio which I have not touched in about 6 years.....see if maybe I can get the ball rolling again with that via local shops, studios, etc. Used to have reps that sold my jewelry in Philly which was quite nice.
I will stay in Podunk and make a living wage if you will take it to a blog. sm
Is that concept so hard to understand?  I you cannot understand that simple idea, maybe that is why the lot of you don't have the sense to do something about your situation other than just whine.  Take it to a blog, where maybe between you will be able to help yourselves.  Or better yet, think of it this way,,,  take it to a blog and then you won't have to navigate around the other posts to whine to each other.
I would go with the line rate. At less than 9.5 cents per line sm
I make $30 an hour.  I would never transcribe for $15 an hour, for anyone.
I'd take it and I make 9 cents
I'd take the $2.50 per page.
So you can get enough experience to make 8 cents?
Get the 8 cents now, you lose enough money by being slow.  JMO!
And it's not just 0.06 cents a line.
By the way, OT when it's offered and working on holidays when you can amounts to really big money.
They pay 7 cents a line...
The people are excellent to work for. The accounts are huge and abundant. I love working for them.

The pay is every two weeks and on time. There have been pay issues in the past, but that is now in the past. The 4 cents per line mentioned in another post is not accurate on any count. The apprentice program paid 2 cents per line for work below 98% and 3 cents per line for work above 98%. I was on this program for about a month part time. I was then given an increase to 7 cents per line. The company has said they will make their pay very competitive in the future. They keep all employees informed of what's going on with the company, and they haven't lied to us yet.

Now you have the truth.
6 or 8 cents a line
Are you making 6 or 8 cents a line. If it's 8 cents a line, that's not bad wages at ALL, trust me. I am also the one that sent you an email about the name of the company you work for. Why aren't you happy with the service? Maybe I can help you on that issue.
6 cents per line
What about transcribing/editing where a lot of the typing is already done...is 6 cents still too low?
You only pay 8 cents a line?
nm
8 cents a line for Rad-Please!!!
I cannot believe that Jester's Touch is paying 8 cents/line for Radiology.  Check the Job Seeker's board.  I would like to see a clinic Transcriptionist type radiology reports.  What a blow to Radiology transcriptionists!!! The wordage for typing Radiology is a lot different than clinic dictation and even clinic notes at 8 cents does not make if for me.  Where in the heck do they come up with that kind of a figure.  Blows me away.
Well what are you going to eat on 0 cents per line

I still say some cents per line is better than no cents per line. You know yourself how hard it is to break into this field. If, after posting on all the sites and getting no response because you do not have the magic two years experience, I would work on getting the two years experience, even if it was at 3 cpl. Better than staying at home every day and keep on posting resumes...


**insanity is defined as doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results **


12 cents/line
for the clinic that I do in Colorado. I think that is the going rate now for office type of work. You should feel blessed you are getting 12 cents as there are lot of MTs out there with lots of experience working for 8.5 to 9 cents/line for companies. I think it is a fair rate. JMHO
12 cents a line
12 cents a line!! Oh my god - I have worked in this field for 25 years and have NEVER been paid that much.  You're lucky, but then again, I can empathize with how you must feel about not getting a raise in 5 years.  Everything you spend your money on has gone up, hasn't it?  I was refused a raise from Medquist several times. Never got it over 6 years, and  finally quit.
12 cents/line
Is what I get for my office work!!!! If you're getting up to 20 cents/line, I'd like to know where you are so I can get a piece of that pie! I haven't been paid 20 cents/line since the 80s!
16 cents a line
I agree, it sounds more than fair to me I used to do what you do only I delivered every other day and got paid 10.5 cents. Of course I dropped the account after three years of torture.
I would think 12 cents per line

That is the median rate.  This would probably also make it worth your while.


5 cents a line
The problem is as a newbie making 5 cents a line is not even going to be minimum wage.  When you take that job, you may think that it is better than nothing but this is lowering industry wages as a whole.  I started transcribing 7-1/2 years ago.  At that time, I made a little over 7 cents a line.  Now I am IC making a bit more but when taxes are taken out, it is probably close to the same.  Yes, I produce more in less time now so my paycheck is bigger, but I hate the thought of looking for a job when I see that people with 10 and 15 years experience being offered 5 cents a line, and those employers are finding people to take those jobs. 
6 cents a line?!
I have been looking for a part-time job.  I have 10 years of experience.  after submitting my resume and testing, the lady offered me 6 cents a line! She also informed me that she tries to pay her MTs close to the beginning of the month, but she has to wait until she gets paid by the client...............
6 cents a line?!
I didn't accept the position.  I was just amazed that she only offered me 6 cents a line for my experience!
9 cents per line - NOT
The 65 characters include the spaces... it is what it is... 65 keystrokes. She is lying to you.
It is 3 cents a line, whether you do
fix errors on a particular line or if the line is there already and needs nothing fixed. At least, that is how ours works and if yours did not would not make much sense to even work there. Having said that, I am paid 4 cent a line and with my straight thrown in some I get around $20.00 an hour for my work.
Is that 0.65 cpl really 65 cents per line? ..nm
nm
12 cents per line here...
I am fortunate then because I get 12 cents per line! I worked for 8 cents a line 9 years ago.
How much is 6 cents per gross line? nm
nm
This is all of MQ and that amounts to about 2 cents less per line for ASR.
:
they offered me 1.5 cents per line
thanks but no thanks.
13 cents per line / TASP --nm
x
Webmedx 10 cents a line for IC.
.
Anyone making 9 cents a line or more at MDI-FL?

Anybody who works there - have any inside info?  Thanks!


sorry...$28 per hour at 8 cents per line
nm