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Serving Over 20,000 US Medical Transcriptionists

Try an inhouse position for more intensive mentoring

Posted By: just one of the MTs on 2007-12-27
In Reply to: Disillusioned new MT - To the MTSOs out there

I typed my first 3 years as an MT at a hospital and I found the mentoring I received from seasoned MTs, and being able to talk to the doctors and other staff, a really big plus.  I also found it better when you're at the beginning of the learning curve to have an hourly position vs a production position. 


You might want to consider inhouse as well to help you see the big picture as to why the doctors won't dictate more clearly, why nobody has the manpower to scruitinze every report, how sometimes the mistakes found in reports have been edited and put in there BY the doctors, and the low respect in general MTs get compared to the rest of the health professionals out there.  This might help you gain some perspective as to some of the "whys". 


You might ponder that MTSO's are not going to scold their clients to learn better dictation habits in order to make the MT's job easier - that would just alienate the client.  Inhouse, should you personally want to scold the offending dictator, they will often laugh in your face and tell you to deal with it.  In general, doctors do as they please and our jobs exist for their convenience, not the other way around. 




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I did go through that with my last inhouse position ...
and after I quit and went home to work for my present employers, I realized what the most significant factor was for my burnout: Working with the absolutely rancid attitude of unhappy coworkers. True, I should not have allowed them to get to me but they were unhappy over ANYTHING. Nothing could make them happy and all they did was gripe and b****.

I eventually quit going to lunch and breaks with them because I just didn't want to hear anymore negative spin on whatever was going on. Of course, then I was Miss Goody-Two-Shoes because I wouldn't fraternize with them. There was already tension enough over production. I got to where I would drive around and around the block before parking...then I would be late a lot because I could hardly bring myself to drive to work. I felt sick at my stomach as I got up, knowing I was going to walk in that office where such emotional poison was.

On their own, I liked these women - they could be funny, were intelligent, had a lot on their plates. But as coworkers, they were unhappy about anything that happened and just could not leave any topic alone. At lunch and breaks, they so horribly bad-mouthed the superv, the QA person, the management, the hospital policies, the equipment, the software, the incentive plan, anyone who wasn't sitting there's production, other people's dress and how they handled their family life, etc. I mean it was HORRIBLE. When I started back to college, they were mad as h*** because I got "special treatment" in their eyes. They worked whatever schedules THEY set, but apparently I wasn't allowed to do the same. I see now that they were angry because I was doing something different and progressive in my life.

Then, when I announced I was leaving I thought they would cheer because, after all, I was the outsider. Instead, they got angry. They were angry because I was leaving and they were left behind. They emailed and left voice messages a few times after I had left, asking how I was, and talking trash still about that hospital. I never called any of them back.

I'm done with that attitude. I literally cannot take it. The same issues were happening to me but I chose to look at it differently.

Making a radical change of quitting and going home into a completely different setting and controlling my own environment, pay, etc., was the key to recovery for me.

I also know that I won't be doing this much longer...THAT HELPS A LOT...LOL.

I appreciate the advice.

OFF TO WORK...
pay for inhouse position??
I have an interview in the morning for a part-time inhouse position.  What is the pay looking like working by the hour with no incentives?  I don't know what a fair offer would be and don't want to sell myself short.
I don't. It is just as labor-intensive and-
you end up fixing things like changing "were" to "are", "a" to "an", that kind of thing.  Easier in my opinion to type from scratch, not to mention that you are usually making half what a normal line rate is to do VR.
But labor intensive. They never weigh the
operating costs either against what they are saving. And of course they do not realize that there will always be upgrades down the road to pay for.
It's a knowledge-intensive field which doesn't pay anywhere near enough..

High pay for labor-intensive work is not always better

I would make more money, taking less money, doing work that I really loved and could do in my sleep (figuratively) than taking more money to do work that really was not my preference and was very labor intensive (crazy hard dictators, a field that I might not be as proficient in - so spend a lot of time looking up things - VA or teaching hospitals for instance - with so many dictators and different "ills" that come into there - high pay is a must because its going to take a good bit of time to  get your chops down) then I would rather take the lower pay and work I looked forward to.


Also its true - if they do not outsource the work - *and the client does not care who they use - just that its at X cpl* then it might be the only way the company can employ stateside help and still be profitable. 


*shrug*  I dunno - transcription is what it is.  The whole thing has gone downhill *I know, dead horse beating* and I am not sure what is going to pull it out of the dumps. 


But I do know I would rather do work I REALLY liked and get paid less and therefore make more money, than more money to do work I had to talk myself into wanting to do every day.


I mean - if you have your druthers.  Often you do not and the work you get is the work you need to do, but its nice to have a choice, if you can.


Mentoring, etc.
I would like to have someone check my knowledge base on medical transcribing. I have been a medical Transcriptionist years ago in a small hospital with only 12 physicians on board and one transcriptionist -- me. I'd like to retire from my job as administrative assistant to the hospital president and become an at-home transcriptionist. But, I, too took the PCDI course three to four years ago and made 96. I also took a medical terminology course at the local junior college and made a 4.0 GPA. I'd sure like to know where my strengths and weaknesses are in this field.

Please email me at delgerri@yadtel.net.

Thanks.
Not sure what you mean by mentoring
as I have been doing this type work now for 20+ years. They offered 13$ an hour but just sounds a little strange when I read other posts here, like hitting the road running when a hire-on.
pay for mentoring

If they give you and promise you a job, 99 dollars small price to pay, but how long is mentoring and what is starting rate after initial period of time.  Ask questions and get answers up front.


We have all had to pay dues in this business, some more than others.  I can speak with conviction after 17+ years


MENTORING
Contact AAMT (or whatever we're calling it these days). At a meeting last year I heard a national representative talk about the mentoring programs they were setting up. In my state, Maine, there is one at a hospital in Portland. Also, Focus Infomatics seems legit. I've recommended it to my students.
Rosie, MT teacher
OSI has mentoring
OSi has mentoring, as well as Amphion just started one.
mentoring program
Worked for free for months
OSI Mentoring Dissolved
I applied for a position with them and was informed that their mentoring program has been dissolved and I was given a link to www.mt2b.com about the possibility of an externship program affiliated with OSi later this year.
Focus mentoring program
Focus has a great mentoring program---they gave me a start fresh out of school. They were very patient and taught me the ropes. Started out on a clinic account, but now doing a huge variety of work types. There is a large volume of ESL docs, so you will get an education on the accents. Be prepared for low earnings at first, until you pick up speed. May even be best to start part-time and have another job on the side until you are making money as an MT. It was a rude awakening for me when I gave up my well paying full-time job.

I was very lucky to find them right out of school, and I now work for them and another company. I have almost 2 years under my belt and still learning, but I am amazed at the progress I have made so far. I will always be grateful to Focus for giving me a chance.
MT mentoring email network

Hello, I was curious if anyone out in MT land would be interested in starting a new MT mentoring program with me. I'm not advertising or anything like that, I just have an idea that I would like to have a sort of email network that new MTs (or experienced ones too) might be able to email me their question and I would have a group of MTs I could email the question out to who could respond if they knew the answer. Does that make sense? This would be a free service just to help fellow MTs out.


I think this is something that would be invaluable to new (or old) MTs because I remember being a newbie at home and being sort of lost in space as it were.  If you are interested you can email me.


***E-mail address removed by Moderator. 


OSI and their mentoring program, maybe? Can anyone comment on how successful it is? nm
s
I need to find a legitimate mentoring program! pls. help?
Can anyone recommend one?
What's your line rate offer for mentoring/subcontracting?
x
I know of a company who is restarting up their mentoring program for newly-graduated MTs. A GREAT
company to work for - I think they are independent contractor status, though not sure about their mentoring program status. At any rate, they are willing to take new grads and help them transition into actually working! The women who owns the company is truly wonderful.  I have been blessed to have had the opportunity to work with her, though I don't at the moment.  The company is Accu-Stat in Wisconsin! Keep that name somewhere on a sticky or something! Really great people, and she did mention that she really wants to restart this program she used to have for newbies!  Blessings to you and good luck! Have fun! Cause it sure can be fun, while having to work, which, of course, is not fun in and of itself, huh?? Oh, to be independently wealthy.  Congrats on your new baby, by the way!!  And that's SO great that your Mom is there for you! You have a good example to follow!
I think an inhouse job would be the way to so
as you usually get paid hourly. Working at home is not that great. I found that out the hard way. I am just doing it until I can find an inhouse job, they are so rare. Going inhouse is better in every way. YOu do not have to deal with "Do it this way this day and do it another way the next" as is Amphion's practice, along with many others. Also, the inhouse job would give you valuable experience. You can always go back to working at home. You would only gain in experience by working inhouse. Good luck!
Inhouse
she probably wouldn't be making $41 an hour.
And Inhouse
Inhouse you will type for 2 hours, then get a 15 minute break, then type for 2 hours, get a 30 minute lunch and then type for 2 hours then another 15 minute break, then type for 2 hours and go home.  According to my friend who works inhouse they rarely get their 15 minute breaks more than once a day, so even working inhouse they only usually get about 45 minutes and they only make $16 an hour.  Being at home on production you can decide how much to make if you use your Expanders and actually type instead of surfing the net, etc.
I had one when I was inhouse and loved it! sm

I just wish I could afford to get my own right now. It takes a little getting used to, but not too bad and it's soooooo comfortable. 


 


inhouse work

I am thinking about going inhouse to work for a family practice group.  What is the going rate per hour or per line?  I have 10+ years experience.  It would be working for 2 family practice physicians 25 or so hours per week.  Because I have only done IC the last few years, I don't know what to charge when taxes are taken out. 


Please advise what a reasonable hourly/line rate is .  I am not sure at this point.


Thanks


 


i used to be a coder inhouse. sm
my schooling was actually a combination of MT/coding so i had the option of either. i started out coding at a local doc office. i didn't have much of a problem with it. the cons i would say was dealing with people b*tching about the bills and medicaid pain in the *ss, but other than that was fine. i slowly picked up MT work on the side to do in the evenings part time, realized how much money i was making and eventually quit the inhouse job to go full time at home as an MT and tripled my money. not sure about coding at home so i can't help you there.
You actually WANT to go back inhouse and having to
?
I have worked inhouse at
made anywhere from the $11.00 range up to $26.00 (counting production bonuses). There is a wide range. The benefits are usually much better than working at home, but I much prefer working at home and will never return to inhouse again.
I think I would stay with the inhouse job, have the
baby and take your maternity leave. While on leave, you can be looking for an at-home job, and maybe even start with them while on leave. Then, after your paid leave turn in your resignation.
Going to work inhouse again
Well, you would have someone to talk to besides your dogs and you might just enjoy the comaradie of other MTs. On the opposite side of the coin, it may just end up being a very competitive, cold and unfriendly place. You could try it and and prove yourself to to be a valuable MT and perhaps they would send you home to work like a lot of hospitals do now if in fact you would rather do that. If you find your home to be a comfort zone and enjoy your dogs, you may just not like working inhouse. It's your call and good luck
I am going to work inhouse again -
I just took a part time inhouse position to supplement my at home income because I am so short... and this is not the first pay period so I am in trouble.

The inhouse position is only part time, but at least I know it is enough to pay my house payment. It is also a lot less per hour, but I want some guarantees so I can stop worrying so much.
Sorry but I am not going back inhouse.
I do well at this work. I always have. Though my income has varied a bit over the last couple of years, I am still doing very well and I don't plan to join a union or go back inhouse.

It costs hospitals more money to payroll you inhouse because of the capital expense. More and more hospitals will contract their work out as the economy squeezes on them, too.

I agree that those who are new should try to work 1-2 years inhouse first. But to say that going back inhouse is going to "save" this work? No. Completely disagree. It won't even be an option soon for the greatest majority of facility MTs.


do you have 6 years of inhouse sm
doing acute care or doctors office MTing? If you have gone from strictly office stuff to hospital acute care, that is a big transition and one that you are not gonna make a ton of money at starting out. Experience as an IC is not the thing, do you have the 6 years experience doing the same thing inhouse that you are now trying to do at home?
Try Piedmont - they have inhouse staff nm
x
Around here, it's $9.99 per hour with inhouse for the first 6-12 months.
I'd still take it, but I'm not sure how the cost of living is where you are.
i used to but quit it to go inhouse and now am home again without it. sm
i got 2 weeks PTO a year and got paid equivalent to my production for the hourly rate, which at that time was $15.75/hr for my vacation time. had insurance too but can't recall the details. boy, i regret that now as i feel like i am working 24/7 as IC and can't afford to take time off. take off = lose money and get behind. i'm stuck, lol. gotta look for large nationals, acute care, and about 75% ESLs to get it nowadays is what i am seeing. hard choice between clinics/gravy work or PTO/insurance/ESLs/busting tail, lol.
My inhouse incentive experience
When I worked inhouse, our incentive was calculated quarterly. Our incentive was based on minutes of dictation transcribed, not lines.

We had a minimum number of minutes to average daily. Depending on how much we passed that minimum (on the quarterly average), we were assigned an hourly incentive to be paid for all regular hours worked for the next quarter.

Example: If my 1st quarter average production put me at 180 minutes of dictaiton, then I would receive an extra $8.50 an hour (in addition to my regular hourly wage) for all regular hours worked for the 2nd quarter. If I took paid time off, had a holiday off, or had overtime, it was not paid for those hours. Only for regular hours. So, if I worked my regular 40 hours weekly, I received an extra $340 a week in incentive.

Now, incentive started low, at $1.00 an hour and worked up to $10 an hour.

Last time I worked inhouse with per-line incentives, we literally got a daily line count and had a tiered set up with lines/hour average daily.
My inhouse experience was almost identical! (nm)
.
I would love to work inhouse, but...
those jobs are getting scarce. I would like to know how all us newbies are supposed to start in-house when those jobs have all been outsourced.
WORKING INHOUSE NOT ALWAYS SO WONDERFUL, EITHER.

I worked in house for the only hospital corporation available in my rural area.  I expected to learn a lot.  I actually learned very little with regards to transcription.  I learned a lot about hospital politics.  They had some of the worst dictators there, and the HIM director did not like confrontation.  Also, the main task given to me was to accomplish a line rate equal to 1200 per day with spaces, at which time they would set me up to work at home.  Unfortunately, I only had 6 months in which to accomplish this.  I was flatly told that if I did not accomplish this production rate, I would be fired.  Before that happened, I found a job online, and will never return inhouse again.  I also have to say that I don't miss driving 300+ miles per week in order to do that inhouse job.  Also, I wasn't thrilled with the prospect of the hospital's tech person visiting me ad lib at home.


Now, I can't say that I'm thrilled with this profession.  I have the same concerns/complaints as the original poster of this thread.  However, comparing inhouse, with inhome, I do believe that I've learned more and gained more valuable experience through the inhome process.  Yes, I have worked many hours and more than 1 job at a time.  When I research previous jobs by a doctor, I also notice that previous jobs have been submitted with lots of errors in them.  I have shared my concerns with my manager and believe that nothing was done.  I have also complained about poor dictators and why, oh why, are these doctors still allowed to conduct themselves so poorly?  When I worked in the hospital, I noticed that the HIM director let the doctors do whatever they wished because she was afraid to confront them, like they were Gods or something.  It is my opinion that this is a major problem in our industry with regards to the people who are the liaison between the MT and the doctor.  Somewhere, a doctor has a supervisor, office manager, director, hospital administrator, etc.  If a doctor is in private practice, he may care more about the quality of his product.  But, if a doctor is affiliated with a hospital or other facility, he might just be doing a job and as long as he/she can get away with it, he/she will be as sloppy as he/she wants to be.


It is also really frustrating to be told that you have to do 150 lines/hour or more, or lose benefits or be fired or whatever.  At the same time, it takes time to really produce a good report, given the deficiencies in the dictations.  I panicked about this in the beginning, as I was doing about 50 lines per hour.  I'm happy to report that it does get better.  I also quit the job with the production quota.


Okay, I'll shut up now.


Wahh Don't give up your inhouse job! sm
They are so few and far between these days... it makes me sad :(
Trained inhouse 25 years ago. LOL :)
Never been without a great work situation. Job changes to meet new circumstances in my life.


When working inhouse I had a supv
that one time told me in a French term (had to ask for explanation) that meant I did not join in with the others there. Hmm, transcription seems to be like a 1 person job and how can you socalize and still make your incentive. Always got terrible evaluations and on ongoing eval after 10 years there she gave me an acceptable for attendance. I brought to her attention I had not missed 1 day during the entire year and I wanted an excellent for that if nothing else. She said she had not noticed. Yeh, right! The next job so much different. Very good evals but by this time I was very shy of ever getting them again.
I worked for over a year inhouse
and my boss corrected all my work, every day from the time I started until I had less than 3 errors on a page and then I was ready to be doing transcribing. It was a good learning experience.
Input wanted re inhouse clinic job

I responded to an ad in my local paper for a PT poss. FT Transcriptionist for GI group.  I've been MTing for about 4 mos now with a smaller national (not one of the better ones).  My accuracy is good but I find it hard to get any decent lines with the crap dictation I always get, not to mention the crappy newbie cpl I make.  Have also been hired by a big national but have been in limbo in their onboarding process for way too long.  While I don't need big money to survive, I'm going broke pretty fast between low cpl and crap work.  Forget about benefits.


I do need benefits (was hoping to get them with the big national).  While I love working at home, it seems like it's always going to be the chasing lines game and also having your benefits contingent on making lines.  This may all be moot once I call the GI practice back and see what the deal is, but does anyone have anyone have any pointers as to what to look out for in a practice?  I'm just wondering if there would be too much work for 1 person or if the job would seque into some kind of secretarial thing, which I really don't want.


On the other hand, I'm also thinking if I took an inhouse job now, that would ruin me for future acute care work for nationals, if I really needed to work at home again.


Comments and advice appreciated.  Thanks.


We not only got the "hate-mail", but as inhouse employees, (sm)
we got hateful face-to-face confrontations, reviews, and meetings. Pay was good, but the horrid atmosphere is killing all the great people that worked there. I left in order to save my sanity. No worker deserves to be treated that way. If a job is worth paying a person to do, it is worth treating them with respect for doing, as well.
$18 an hour but I work inhouse in a hospital.
nm
I now work for an MTSO, but when I was inhouse we did tend
to send the difficult dictators out (our supervisor did this). That is just part of working for an outside service. We do not get to pick and choose we get what they choose to send.
You're right. Unfortunately, in some areas inhouse work is
I keep hoping some sort of changes in U.S. laws may come to the rescue before it's too late, and the whole industry becomes offshore and automated. Because if that happens, there will be less and less reason to want to entrust one's care to an HMO.
Inhouse only lasts sooo long...

I bet if you asked around, the outsourcing rate is moving faster than we think.


There is always the nationals to go back to in case the inhouse job sends ya' packin'.... 


I always got up every now and then when I worked inhouse. When the manager complained, I just told
nm
Anyone CURRENTLY working inhouse in the Atlanta area that can tell me the going rate of pay? SM

I'm really just interested in people who are actually working NOW and what they're making NOW - not speculation from service managers as to what they think they might be making. 


I am considering going back in house for the benefits but if there is just absolutely no comparison to what I make now as far as pay, I don't even want to start wasting my time.  Thanks to those who can help!!