We don't have to approach hospitals we work for;
Posted By: Topaz -(sm) on 2009-06-05
In Reply to: going to the hospital won't work sm - MT32`
there are plenty of others out there, and we didn't sign any contracts not to contact them.
We wouldn't need to be talking about specific MTSO's in general, either, but the industry as a whole. And more importantly, about AHDI and all its underhanded little shennanigans.
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If I work for a co. that mainly has VA hospitals, can you tell me what kind of work to expect. sm
Has been a long time since I have been an IC,so I forget what to expect from VA accounts. Will you enlighten me?
contract work for hospitals
I have talked to quite a few people, and I have found that subcontracting work from a hospital pays way better than even having your own accounts.. do any of you do contract work for a hospital? I work at home for a hospital as an employee, get paid by the hour, plus incentive on line count. But, I am wondering if I would be better off to try to do all the work as contract and make more. Sure, I would lose benefits, but would it be worth it in the end? Any thoughts?
Contract work for hospitals
Hi Sammy,
I envy you. I am looking for a home-based Pathology job, and would not mind your setup at all. I need the benefits, so that is why I am currently working at our local hospital, but plan to retire soon. Does your hospital need anyone else? Please e-mail me.
Hospitals should be paying us extra to NOT go to work
It would be so so so easy to show how to win malpractice cases with what I know about the medical transcription system as it is operating now.
hospitals will allow you benefits if you work part time sm
They will cost you a little but still a HUGE savings on paying all on your own.
Business plans don't work either...been there done that with SBC & ATT...MTSOs/hospitals need to.
 either offer 1-800 numbers or internet transcription if they want to keep hiring us all over the US....that's it!! Maybe we could all share the cost of a 1-800 number or something, and for goodness sake, with all the technology out there, everything needs to go to digital dictation anyway. Bottom line is MT is NOT allowed for ULD. I even asked about some sort of special ULD transcription package through SBC & ATT and they wouldn't even consider it. So, MTSOs, please listen up...the ULD is going to be a thing of the past real soon. It's a wonderful option to you and it broadens the MT's working capabilities, but without ULD, nobody can rake out that kind of money! We should all put our heads together (MTSOs and MTs) and try to get something going here. We can no longer overlook this situation.
Good luck everyone...I will be holding my breath for us all!
Yeah, but hospitals are already largely using VR in hospitals. (nm)
(nm)
I like your approach sm
I think your service adds the "personal touch" which definitely makes you different from other services. You shouldn't want to be the same as everyone else.
I have studied marketing for years and have learned that the personal touch is often more effective to not only getting an account but keeping an account.
You're proof that it works!
Your brother took the right approach...sm
too many docs write a prescription without testing to make sure that a person has the diagnosis to support it. A good doctor will do the testing like you indicated to make sure a patient truly is ADD or ADHD prior to handing out medicine.
Question to the original poster: Are you under extra stress lately? If so, that's probably what is causing you to be scatter brained and learning how to handle stress will be more effective long-term than taking medications.
Good luck to you!
Let me tell you how I approach the visit
If going to a new physician, I have my history and physical and all other information typed out for them. If a return visit, I type out a small list noting the reason for the visit. Mine are short and sweet, first of all because if not written down, hard for me to remember and just makes it easier for perhaps a person who is on their treadmill trying to see all the patients they can and me as I don’t want to spend a lot of time there either. I heard somewhere that after about the first 4 or 5 minutes you are tuned out anyway. Why not simplify for the visit??
While I like this approach, the fact that you
motherly. I think sometimes MTs feel like it's their parents correcting them. Would you agree? Also, I think a lot of us are home MTs nurturing our children, and cannot separate when we are speaking to an adult. I would prefer no baby talk, but then again this is my interpretation. You sound very nice, and keep up the positive attitude; however, we're not children being scolded. We are adults that need guidance once in a while and as you put it a second set of ears. 
Get your own accts. When approach Dr with
x
Any ideas about how to approach this...
In these tough economic times, any ideas on how to bring up the subject of a salary increase to management without it turning on me in some way? Is it even worth asking in our industry? Working for major MTSO for a few years, still making same salary since the beginning, below 10 c/l. Any little bit would help. Love my job but getting desperate.
That is how I approach my position as QA as well...
not my problem to find missing commas, et cetera...it is my job to listen to the blank, plain and simple...
Ever approach client of national you used to...
work for to offer your IC services for their account...or is that asking for some kind of a lawsuit and headache that you don't want?
Approach homeschooling with knowledge. sm
I have family in California that homeschool their children, and it is wonderful. The mother has an education, sets up great courses, and the support network there is absolutely fantastic. Sports, music, field trips, clubs, they are all available. They couldn't get a better education anywhere, and the socialization is absolutely great.
However, I had to homeschool my son last year for health reasons, and there can be real problems. He is an only child and was left out of all the school social activities. Unfortunately, there is no homeschooling network in my area, the nearest one is 150 miles away, so there were no field trips, sports activities, etc. We live in a small town, and not much is available outside school. It took him 2-3 months to get back into the social swing in high school. Fortunately he is very well adjusted, and turned out fine. Be sure the pieces are in place before you homeschool. Otherwise, you will be the only support your child has, and it can be almost a full-time job, especially if you have to start your own organization. I highly recommend homeschooling if you are in an area to do so. It can be a great experience and children can learn so much faster than in the public school. Good luck.
cost effective approach???
Okay, I am ready to start out with my own "company". I don't want the inconvenience of tapes yet the equipment to setup my own dial-up service is prohibitively expensive. Does anyone provide cost effective services where I can offer a 800 dial up service? OR, any rental options? Is anyone using this kind of service? What does it cost? Thanks.
How about this.......wait until the time comes and approach your sup then..
Why cause "drama" when there is none..
I like your approach, straightforward and observant (NM)
Valid question, I agree.
Jay Vance tried that approach and it died. You have to charge
reasonable membership dues for people to see the seriousness of the action. Jay Vance charged something like a dollar or something like that and no one took him seriously. Of course, that was the old days, now he's an AAMT suckup.
The fine-toothed comb approach!
Being right there in the same room is wonderful. How wonderful you were able to be of assistance to a relative too! I will keep everyone posted. I would like some other contractors to post in about what they think should be paid out of 8 cents/line for an OJT. Looking forward to more input!
Having waitress' say "you guys" every time they approach each and every table.
I still want to know how they really want me to answer when then ask "Are you guys doing okay?" or "How are you guys making out?" ???? Well my relationship with food is personal I guess!
Most hospitals have ......
contracted their work out to the national service, a practice I hope comes full circle eventually and hospitals reopen their own departments in the name of confidentiality and quality control. I only know of 2 hospitals out of about 8 in my area that have their own department (I work for one of them). It is by far the best MT job there is, or that I have ever had. I am at home, but a regular employee. The hospital is only 20 min from my house (we have to live local). I have worked for the big nationals and saw nothing but a decline in pay. Now I get regular raises, good hourly pay, production incentive pay, benefits, and vacation time. I wish more MTs could find my situation. I have hopes for the future once the industry figures out that they are cutting off their nose in spite of their face.
Do All Hospitals
In Tennessee pay that well? I have been considering moving to Tennessee to try to get away from the hurricanes.
VA Hospitals
I did the VA Hospital dictation here in Portland and it was all contracted out to companies, no employees. But you might contact your local VA Hospital but if it is as an employee 95% chance you will have to go into work and not do it at home, if it is at home it will be as an IC and no benefits. Just what I know about it. If you think your ESL's are bad at a regular hospital, this is worse as there is a lot of ESL's there on their rotation and they could care less how they dictate as they are only there for 6 to 8 weeks. Changes that often.
The hospitals are not going to get
dial into. They'd be better off hiring MTs and paying benefits than doing that. And if you dial directly into the hospital, instead of into the MTSO's dictation system, then the MTSO has no say in 800 lines. The truth is, hospitals usually do not want to just turn all of their dictation over to a service and they certainly aren't going to pay for long distance incoming calls in addition to what they pay the service.
just sometimes it is the hospitals...
they are actually told to hold back dictation at times, due to costs. sometimes the hospitals sneak around and try other services, or voice recognition.
in the future, there will not even be any voice dictation...just templates where information is added, like data entry...
Not that many hospitals.......
still have their own dept. That's how Medquist and Spheris and all those huge nationals exist... They have whole hospital accounts. Out of the 3 large hospitals in my vicinity, only 1 still has their own department. I trolled their website for months before I found an opening, but I eventually got in. Some hospitals don't have their MTs at home, mine does. It all depends. Most hospitals have a website, so fine the one you're interested in and check out their job opportunities, and then check it almost every day and if they do have a dept, they'll eventually have an opening.
Well - believe it. Hospitals pay that. I can tell you
at least hospitals in the Philadelphia area pay up to 24 cpl. MQ charges 23 cpl. I have one small department of a hospital at 17 cpl. It is out there - pull your head out of the sand and go looking.
I wonder if hospitals know
There are American transcription companies opening up here in the US that actually work for companies in India? I had a job offer from an American company and they let it slip that they were actually getting paid by Focus Infomatics. I thought about this and what an idea! You open up a company in the states, the facilities think they are getting American work, then you actually have the work done overseas.....hmmmmm
hospitals
do hospitals now go by minutes instead of lines in regards to productivity? if so, what is the usual they are asking for an 8 hour day?
thanx!
All hospitals are different. Concerning
your "past," if it has been exspunged from your record, then basically it never happened. This happened to my BFs son and his attorney told him that since his record was exspunged, nothing ever took place, so he does not have to mention it on any job application. You might want to call your local court house or your attorney on that particular question.
I would say go ahead and apply. Good luck.
All hospitals are different. when I sm
first started, ERs did their own stuff too. But as the years went on, ER combined with the MR departments and was considered part of acute care. It is not as detailed but you get some of the same language in an abbreviated from by doing ERs, even some OP reports. I don't like ERs either though simply because the docs are usually in a hurry and they are motor mouths. I do think though that MTs now should consider ERs as part of acute care especially if they don't like ERs.
Some MT companies do split them up though and hire folks for just ERs.
SM hospitals
It's been years since I have heard of any hospital that has ANYbody working in-house.
What hospitals?? I'm soooo there
No, even the hospitals don't want to hire new MTs.
Doctors don't want to hire newbies. In office, at home, it doesn't matter. It's not about being a stay at home mommy, as you are so assuming and generalizing yourself. Everyone wants to hire experienced workers, but nobody is willing to train them. As I said, every other industry in the country trains their workers. MT seems to be the only one where people are expected to walk into it knowing everything. It's not an assumption; it's an observation. Just because my experience and observations are different than yours does not make me wrong. You're not the know all, end all to the MT world. I do have business management experience and education, so don't dismiss my observation as lacking just because it doesn't match yours.
Hospitals being sued
Seems to me the hospitals must not be very worried about being sued or they would require fluency in the English language as a pre-requisite for staff privileges. Secondly, any doctor who doesn't read what he signs pretty much deserves what he gets. Transcriptionists make mistakes....so do doctors. Thirdly, maybe hospitals should re-think how their work is contracted out. Far fewer problems when transcription was done in house.
i am sure you are aware that there are still hospitals out there
that have not yet adopted these rules. I type for one major hospital that still wants the patient's name typed in the report. Another still wants cc instead of mL. Had this person tested and changed it to the "correct" form, who is to say that she wouldn't have gotten marked off for changed verbatim. Nervous MT2, hang in there, and if you test again make sure you ask up front whether they want you to follow BOS or type it verbatim that way you know ahead of time.
but what percentage of hospitals allow that?
From what I've been reading ... the home-based service MT is averaging 8 cpl, for those dictators which make you run screaming from the room. And, I don't forsee things improving. Then again, some are lucky enough to make a line rate worthy of their skills, without worry about the dictators from Hades.
This is a bit out of date: http://www.bls.gov/oco/pdf/ocos271.pdf
My nearby hospitals pay around $10 as well (sm)
I make 22-25$/hr at home. I live in an area where average pay is low, but likewise cost of living is reasonable.
I miss the hospitals too.
But things are so different there now that the online companies exist. It changed the way transcription is handled in most places. When I went back to working for a hospital last year, the supervisor wanted a certain amount of lines per day versus minutes per day like the old days. It was an outrageous number and with no Expander or medical speller or anything.
Hospitals oursourcing
HIPPA is all about smoke and mirrors, designed to keep the masses feeling "secure." If the powers that be were concerned about privacy and the state of the world, they would have built that provision right in there from the beginning, but powerful special interest groups designed HIPPA and left out this all important factor. I personally know hospitals that directly outsource overseas, and maybe, just maybe it may have to do with the fact that the owners (doctors) are foreigners living in this country and have colleagues in India. Wheh I questioned an administration about HIPPA and what they were doing, I was told, "Not to worry, they take the same precautions and follow protocols we do here for HIPPA." I say, yeah, but who can see from here what potential dangers lurk overseas, especially with so much concern of volatility in those areas of the world. Terrorists live in India, Pakistan, the Phillipines, etc. and all it would take is a nasty vendetta against our nation and POFF!!! There goes our medical records! Now we have to be concerned that the United Nations may take over the supervision of the internet!!
Nationals: Sometimes the hospitals have their own MTs sm
and pull the MTSO off the account when work is low to keep the hospital employees busy. This probably happens more often than one might think these days. IMHO
You have 911. There are local hospitals
with free nurse referral lines. That's just for starters.
You just take the cake for stupidity with your original question and now your silly offended replies.
Hospitals Using Outsourcing
Really not so unusual for all hospitals in one city to contract out transcription. Little Rock, AR for example where I used to live, did just that, save for one hospital (Baptist), so I moved east to Memphis, because I could not stand working out of my home to land a hospital job to work in. Cost-cutting measures you know.
that would be because MDs/hospitals adore.nm
.
in hospitals it seems always ASAP - SM
I work rad (employee) in a hospital, and they are always ALWAYS working to improve TAT. From the time the exam is done to complete dictation, they want 3-4 hours. That means if your doc delays the dictation, they want transcription NOW because the doc took so long.
However, in the situation you describe, checking back in 1-2 hours should not matter that much. You should just let them know the deal - they probably know how that radiologist is as much (or better) than you. Maybe they/he could call or email when he is done?
My hospital has a contract with a sister hospital to do their radiology - they have radiologists that do this exact same thing. We told them when our staffing is available. If they do not dictate during that time, then their reports are delayed -- no question. they have to deal with it.
Doing it yourself, your situation is different, of course, but hopefully they would work with you to let you know when the work is available so that you don't have to be "on call" for them.
As far as line rates, I can't say an average. I have another rad account that I do at $.15/line, but this is 3 days a week for a mobile service (TAT is 1-3 DAYS here...) I would charge more if they needed it "now", especially if they wouldn't work with me as to when "now" might be!
Long answer - hope it helps.
Feel free to email with any more questions if you want.
Hospitals in town
I hear sometimes that there are still hospitals doing their dictations with their own transcriptionists, and I'm lucky that I found one through their website... but wondering, just how do you find out who does the hospitals in your city? No one ever advertises in the newspapers anymore and most hospital websites have nothing about transcription. I live in a pretty big city with lots of hospitals and clinics and outpatient surgeries. Surely they're not all outsourced to the Big Greedies.
rural hospitals
If this is an extra job I would certainly make it worth my while. I worked at small hosp. for 5 yrs that did not want to work us from home. Kept saying they could not but I knew better. Eventually I went off on my own and have been home since. We had 3 FT. They hired 2 in my place and 1 PT for wknds. I type at night now to catch them up. They still had 1 PT and 4 FT, but I charge them 15 cpl. I clear in 5-8 hours what they all 4 do in 1 day, literally. Still did not want to put me or others at home. Want me to drive 45 miles 1 way to type, after I've pulled my reg. 8. Now what I do, whether they know it or not, I dial up on my C-phone into thier system and type at home, save it to disc (they monitor email + HIPPA) drive over for about an hour and transfer work into thier system. So if they have a phone in line you might check with them about on call stuff being typed at home, especially if this is stat work. It will certainly get back to them quicker. This is just fear of the unknown. This same hosp. has now, instead of firing those not doing work and hiring a good worker or paying them OT will pay me double the amount. They have also moved the weekend girl to FT and are letting a file clerk/PT IC do the weekend x-rays and still want me to help. That's 5 full time typist and 2 PT for a 43 bed hosp. Thier may reason was not to put thier network on home computers, which they all ready do. Won't give me network access but have given it to the weekend girl. Plus they are paying a consultant out the wazoo to tell them why this is not working!
If you are going to be on call, make sure you have set days or hours that you will be on call and that you are compensated. Don't let them just pay you for the work you do. Your time is worth money also. In other words don't sit home all day 3 nights a week waiting for a phone call and get paid for 1 hours. I have done this in the past where I worked and was on call on weekends for x-rays. There might be 1 or 21 or none. I got paid by the hour. If there were none I got paid for 1 hour for showing up. Ask an x-ray tech or someone who gets on call pay. They get a flat rate for being on call and then they get paid for the individual call.
Try hospitals and/or clinics-
I don't know about other places but in at least 3 of the major hospitals in my area they have people work both in house and at home. Everyone works in house to begin with and has to prove themselves before going home. Some people (like me) just prefer working in house, so it works out.
Why would hospitals have a list of
transcription companies, doesn't make sense. If you want your own clients you should come up with a brochure to send to local doctors/clinics. A doctor may ask in medical records who does their medical transcription, but it isn't the roll of the hospital to provide them with a list of providers.
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