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Serving Over 20,000 US Medical Transcriptionists

Report them to the Department of Labor and Industry and the BBB, too.

Posted By: stick it to 'em on 2005-10-15
In Reply to: A MESSAGE TO MTSO WHO DO NOT PAY TIMELY - LISTEN UP

I can't stand it when pay is not received in a timely manner. It shows a complete lack of professionalism and inability to manage a business.


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Try the Department of Labor and Industry.
You can turn them into the State Attorney General's office, BBB, FTC, as well.  And small claims court.  I would send a certified letter demanding payment first with the threat that if they do not pay by XX date, you will pursue further legal action against them.
Department of Labor
Were you awarded a judgment in your favor and how long it takes?
Turn them in to the BBB and the Department of Labor.
They're scamming people.  Somebody needs to stop them before they hose over any other new MTs.  Parents magazine even had an article about TranScam.
Turn them in immediately to the Department of Labor and
Industry, the BBB, the FTC, small claims court and anybody else that will listen. Contract or no contract, they CANNOT withhold pay due to giving no notice. ICs do not have to give notice. It was even on Judge Judy that you can't stiff somebody their pay for walking off the job.
Or maybe check with your state's labor department?
?
Department of Labor worked for me in my state
Also contact the Attorney General in your state; but the final result for some was to file a complaint with the magistrate in that company's district.  Good luck
Well what is slave labor? Unpaid? Do these people willing report to work unpaid?
Sounds like they may work for a certain national MT company with a private board on MT Stars. Now that's slave labor. Walmart is a walk in the park compared to the national MT company with the private board.
Labor Stats from Dept of Labor for MT inside

This is quite interesting...it is too long to post here but I was wondering if anyone had any thoughts on the statistics.  Thanks!


 


tp://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:eGxrU1X5lOEJ:www.bls.gov/oco/ocos271.htm+how+much+to+become+certified+Medical+Transcription&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us


You do not need the 1099. You just need to report the income. Report the company/person ...sm
to the IRS for not sending out the 1099. 
I charge the same amount for a "normal" report as for any other report.
You still have to listen to the dictation and change anything that's different.  I had one woman try to pull this on me.  She'd dictate, "Just pull up my normal, but change this, change that, switch that around, move that, add this, delete that, and change the other."  Then she'd only want to pay me what equated to $.03 per line.  She wanted 1:1 on her dictation to transcription ratios.  I told her to take her cheap account down the road because I'm worth more than that.
How big is the rad department?
I wonder if that makes a difference. My rad account is going to beta test VR and I am wondering if I should get out now.
You could try the Department
of Labor. There are many of us on this board who at one time or another have gotten the shaft by being an IC. Just wait.. you will get many suggestions. My case- there are at least nine of us owed close to $25,000.
Can you go over both of their heads to the department
supervisor? Tell her that you're getting conflicting reports on your job performance. Do you have emails saying that you're doing great? Keep them, print them. Explain to the department head that you simply can't afford to pay for gas or daycare to work in-house. (Yeah, I've told my supervisors this before and their reply was that my daycare and gas expenses weren't their problem. I told them it was their problem and quit.) What is your production level? Eleven minutes or 130 lines per hour are about the average for direct hospital work. It's usually less than that in-house with all the interruptions and other tasks.

As far as the online company, can you work part-time or as-needed for them for a while? Is there any way you could do both jobs until after you get the bonus? You applied Friday and got called back Monday. That tells me that they're interested and you're a decent MT. How much research have you done into this company? Are you sure it's the best company for you? Honestly, if you're good, you'll get more offers. Sometimes it's nice to have the security net of a hospital job and a regular paycheck, especially with Christmas and bonuses coming up. Your production will probably drop by starting a new account, and it's not the best time of year to be taking a pay cut.
police department right behind us
Funny thing is the police department is right behind us--they probably hear her--just kidding. Her ex-husband workes on the volunteer fire department housed in the same building as police. He has probably already told them all she is crazy!
Can your company's IT department not
I bet they have all the information necessary and even suggestions.

One of my accounts is a PT department...
they invite me to their Christmas party every year. One year they had a huge bouquet delivered to me at home on Medical Transcription week!  That was a nice surprise.
Our QA department is much too busy
to give us feedback like that. They are very complimentary of my work ... probably because I do take the time to look up other reports to make sure I fill in all the tough spots I possibly can. I've done acute care before, but got away from it for a few years. I only had one ESL at my last job. I sure got good at Korean though! With this job it's pretty typical, with many different dictators and accents, but it's just heavy on certain "Asian" (happy now?) dictators instead of Indian. At least there aren't many of the certain Spanish ones I have trouble with. What the ones I have trouble with have in common is that their language uses more percussive sounds and fewer vowel tones. It doesn't matter if the vowel tones are different; I can adapt. But when it records as whispery percussive sounds, I struggle.
Department outsourced
After going through this 2 years ago I feel your pain. Though there are some positives to working at home it is a whole different ballgame. Personally I miss my coworkers and just the general atmosphere of the hospital. I keep hoping more hospitals will realize they still need some in-house staff, at the very least to do QA on what a lot of the services are turning out. It seems to me it has become nothing more than churn and burn with the emphasize on turn-around time, not quality. When I look up old reports in our system I am appalled at some of the stuff that goes out, and I am on accounts that require American MTs. It is really sad what this "profession" has become.

Department of health
According to my doctor, Hillary Clinton was the main one involved in the HIPPA. Don't know if it is true or not, just what he said.
Call the MR department at the hospital and ask sm
simply "who does your transcription". May not work every time, but they gave me the name of the service, and the phone number. I called the service and asked if they were hiring. She said, "we are always hiring", and I was working for them 3 days later.
With our QA department, blanks count against us..sm
If we have more than 1 blank per report, other than for dictation that is cut off or something like that, it counts against our percentage, which isn't very high given the difficulty factor associated with a lot of the dictators. Once the percentage reaches a certain point (and again it don't take much to reach that point) we start losing bonuses that we would otherwise be entitled to and even getting deductions from our pay. So, to say the MT doesn't get blamed is not true for everyone. We shouldn't get blamed, but a lot of us do.
I wonder why when a department is outsourced/offshored sm
the physicians never have a say in it even though most of them don't like it?  They are the ones who bring in the revenue, after all, so why shouldn't they have a say in what goes on as regards patient care? 
If it were me I'd do some house cleaning in the friendship department.

Make some new friends.  It's time. 


Health department here said straight mayo. SM
Slathered it on, put on a shower cap and left it for hours.  Not only were the lice gone, but our hair was so soft and shiny and conditioned!
Frederick Police Department - 580-335-7503 (sm)
Tell them Kristen is at it again - they know all about her.
It took the fire department to get her out of the house! My GAWD!!!!

Oh, a report just came in. A report actually just slid in, can you believe it. Hip Hip Hooray. I

had better get that sucker typed before it gets out of ONE MINUTE TAT.


I hear they the Education Department Needs 2M teachers by 2015
I think thats a great idea. English teacher... Hmmm.. What are the requirements?
you need to contact the police Department in Frederick, Oklahoma sm

If you call them and make a complaint against her, they will help you take care of it.  She's afraid to go to jail, if she's not there already


Our department does 1200+ reports a day. They average 11 lines. nm
This is for 2-3 line normal chests to MRIs. They look longer, but if you take 65 characters with spaces, you will be surpised. Here's an example:

CHEST:

INDICATION: Chest pain.

FINDINGS: Heart size within normal limits. Lungs are clear.

IMPRESSION: Normal chest.

This is 116 characters with spaces, which is 3 lines (if you round up - actually 2.55 lines). If by the line, you would make $0.30.

Something to think about.

Do the same with an MRI of the knee. Copy and paste it into word and count it. A very long one I had was only 15 lines.
simply ask HR if it's common practice to hire for a department -
nm
Are you kidding? After reading the health department's annual review, I NEVER eat out.
Especially at a fast food place. They always have long lists of violations, plus, after a look at the fingernails and hair on some of those people, I wouldn't feed my dog there.

They do list restaurants that maintain high standards of cleanliness with no violations, so if I'm in the mood for a long drive, I'll go to one of those.

I do miss eating out.


Here is part of the email my husband received from his IT department at work..sm
It has been widely reported that a newly discovered Windows flaw will result in several new computer viruses over the next few days.

This new virus is launched by visiting web sites that are infected with this virus or by receiving infected e-mails. You will not be able to know if the web site is infected.

The anti-virus software vendors are working on a system update to fix this issue, but as of now, it has not been provided. Also, Microsoft is working on a patch that will fix the root cause of this problem.

Makes me very nervous also!
I live in Washington state and the health department posted it on the internet.
Here is the link to the information for this state, but every state probably has the same thing.

http://www.doh.wa.gov/ehp/sf/food/restaurant-inspections.htm
Started in-house at a hospital, medical records department, on a typewriter in
1983, earning $6.00/hour, eventually moving up after 7 years to $10.00/hour. All hospital work was then outsourced to a national service in 1986 (beginning of our downfall), went to work for the service and made $2.10/page. Service was bought out by another service, rate changed to $1.90/page. Rates changed again to $0.08/cpl. After many years of experience in all services, found my first account in 1992, charged $.09/cpl/gross lines but blank lines not counted. Business has grown steadily through the years through word of mouth. Now charging $.16/cpl or $25.00/hour or $6.00/page, and having to turn down work at this point. If you have the experience and are detail-oriented, you can find your own accounts eventually like I did. But you have to pay your dues first and be able to transcribe all ESLs accurately. If you learn how to transcribe ESLs well, those doctors are the ones to target for work. I do work an ungodly number of hours, only because I am trying to save at a faster pace for retirement because of all the uncertainty in this line of work.
If you are careful with putting the correct report in the correct report shell and patient, you will
not have any problems. I only take away this option when someone is careless. There can be NO room for error on this. One mistake can be very serious. Many do it well though, so just double check and you will be fine.

not only the MT industry
making changes with insurance.  DH works for one of the large telephone companies.  We now have to pay for a larger portion of our Rxs when previously they cost us nothing, plus office visit copays also increased.  It's still better than not having insurance at all.  But, the rich keep getting richer and the poor keep getting poorer!
What does this mean for the MT industry? sm

I saw this *** and wanted to share this with other MTs. What is your interpretation of this? Are we going to be out of work for good because I'm thinking electronic medical records are going to replace us, or am I misinterpreting this statement?   What is your take on this?


"...President Obama has also talked about the need to computerize all medical records in five years, creating a huge opportunity for information technology jobs and data entry jobs."


It's the same as any industry...
You have the bottom, the top, and the in between.  I happen to be closer to the top, but there are so many others who are not at the bottom.  And if you knew me, you would know that I do not have the 'screw everybody else' mentality... and it's not really fair to accuse me of that based on my post, which did not mention anything even close to that mentality.  I just do not believe that we have it so bad in this industry, that's all.  I think we should spend some time looking at the positives versus the negatives.  There are so many people out there who have it way worse than majority of the MTs here.
State of the MT industry

Obviously, you work some place that pays very well and you might even have secure employment. If so, that's great.  Some of us worked for companies that were sold or sent all their work offshore and we had to take jobs where we could get them.  Don't be so quick to judge other peoples' choices.  It's true that in some companies, wages are lousy, but do you really think you'd be a fry cook at the clown's over working from a home office?  If you are earning great wages and have a good job, I sure hope you're able to help other MTs find something as good as what you've got.


 


 


If this industry has become amoral it's because:

MTs for the most part have always been treated poorly, no respect and low pay.  We have to stand up for ourselves and not back down from our line rates because no one is going to look out for us but us.  No, not even the docs and/or the OMs, surprise, surprise!  I say she should go for the full monty.  They get to see more patients and therefore have a higher income.  Why should she have to settle for a lower income because they're smart and use time-saving macros?? 


Men make more than we do in any industry.
Sucks, but that's the way it is.
What is the industry standard...sm
Tried to post this on Wednesday, will try again...I need to know what is the industry standard conversion for minutes dictated to minutes typed?  Not how much do you do - but what is average for one hour dictation - how many hours typed.  Bosses think we're taking too long but we do not get automatic demographics and need to look on log sheets (if they arrive and if they're correct) for everything from patient name to referring doctors, addresses, patient #'s, etc. So I need to give him an "average" number of hours dictated equal "X" amount of hours typed taking into consideration the lack of information, the searching we must do and the various typing speeds.  I'm not going to "judge" anyone's advice  - just need some input from those that have been there.  Thanks for sharing.
I agree - as with almost any industry (sm)
you have to find your niche and the place you can call home.  IMO and experience, you can make $60,000-$120,000/year in MT if you find the right hospital, your own accounts, MTSO and/or area of transcription and increase your skills constantly.  After say 4-8 different gigs and nothing works out, then MT work is probably not for you.  Same for any job, whether it is tech support rep (my former career), mortgage broker, service tech.
Industry Standard for VR Pay?
What is the industry standard for VR pay? Specifically for someone just starting out.
Industry pay is sinking.
With 9 years experience, I was offered 5cpl for straight typing.  Nuts if you ask me.  Yet the company filled the positions with that pay. 
The going industry rates are....sm
Around 14 cpl, 65 character line for transcription, 6-7 cpl for editing.

You can "thank" overseas competition for these pricing because they actually will quote around 8-10 cpl for transcription and 3-4 cpl for editing.

Stinks, doesn't it?

I remember when we used to be able to get 18-20 cpl, gross line and could pay the MT 10-12 cpl and all were happy. Gone are those days - I wish they were back!
You could mention where the industry is going
at all because it may offend someone.  The funny thing is that some of the course outlines on line may give you some great material to go by as it explains it pretty well on some of those sites. I think it is a great career, so I may be biased.  
Please do this industry a favor sm
CHARGE WHAT YOU ARE WORTH AND NOT A PENNY LESS!

I mean it. The last person I talked to about this has her own company. Clinics she charges 14 to 18 cents a line, depending on the difficulty and the logistics of the office. Nope, does not include printing or tapes, they have to call in, period.

For hospitals, she charges 22 to 26 cents a line and she gets it. She usually types as many of the OP notes as she has time for and doesn't sub them out because she likes that. Any lines she does herself goes into the corporation at 100% and she pays herself a salary for all her work, not by the line for MTing she does. She has 20 yrs of experience, all of it in acute care.

She says, DO NOT sell your skills short. Don't try to undercut someone to get the job. Remind these people that they get what they pay for and deliver on every promise, but don't make promises you can't deliver on 99.5% of the time. Incorporating is good, better than not and I know all of the reasons behind that too.

I wish you every luck.
yea but it is industry standard!
and also as i put in my email to my doc... the templates and macros BENEFIT YOU!
What is the future of IC in this industry?
Wide-spread IC, I mean, such as we've had in the past? Sorry for your situation, Blondie. The reason I ask is that the company I'm working for is making it a real priority to make employee MTs work their agreed-upon hours so the work can be kept in TAT and the clients will be happy and not break off blocks of work to send elsewhere. I'm wondering how you think the end of the work-whenever-and-as-much-as-you-feel-like era would affect the large numbers of IT workers. ??