Home     Contact Us    
Main Board Job Seeker's Board Job Wanted Board Resume Bank Company Board Word Help Medquist New MTs Classifieds Offshore Concerns VR/Speech Recognition Tech Help Coding/Medical Billing
Gab Board Politics Comedy Stop Health Issues
ADVERTISEMENT




Serving Over 20,000 US Medical Transcriptionists

Yet the MTSO makes a joke of the profession

Posted By: by offering .03 to Americans?? on 2006-09-12
In Reply to: Probably because the off-shore people will take 2 cents a line. - Misha

  Shame on you, MTSOs. I hope you all get what you pay for.




Complete Discussion Below: marks the location of current message within thread

The messages you are viewing are archived/old.
To view latest messages and participate in discussions, select the boards given in left menu


Other related messages found in our database

it only makes sense that the powers that be who control our profession...
who say it is safe, should prove it by sending their information to who-knows-where...

see how more and more we (the working class) are expected to lower our standards.

we have no security whether it be jobs, homes, health, retirement, social security. and when you question or try to better things, you are made to feel bad about it. very dangerous kind of trend.

anyway, thanks for 'gettin it' and responding (smile!).
This is our profession -- a profession which is dying, I might add. SM

So I should get a hobby so I won't care, like you?  A hobby isn't going to pay the bills.  I can't afford a hobby because in addition to working for a living, I also have to study in a different career field in my spare for fear that eventually transcription will be strictly an offshore operation!


Welcome to the profession. Get used to it.
x
Consider another profession?
To standardize testing you have to have every single company use one lone resource. What if company A is more concerned with ESL skills, company B is more concerned with oncology, and company C would like to know whether you rock at op notes? How do you standardize testing to cover every area that a given employer might want to concentrate on?
Definitely a profession. This is a
you will get a lot of pessimism and negativity.  I definitely have made tons of money in my own business.  Sounds like low self-esteem on the posters below, unhappy, depressed.
This is not just in this profession but
all over. I sat and waited on a call yesterday (my off day) regarding a piece of property I have up for sale. No call at all. I really hate to leave a message on a recording because most of the time you are ignored. Times have changed and not for the good. I think the majority of my family including my mother and my grandmother who are deceased would probably be shocked at today's life as we live it.
which profession
would you let us know what you decided to do? I'm wondering what I want to do next.
re: which profession
Dental Hygiene...usually takes 2 years but have to do it part time so I can still earn a living so is taking me 4 - I'm more than halfway done though, so can't complain...
our profession

This is old, but has anyone read this??  I must research further what the final outcome was.  While I totally agree with what they are doing and why, I totally DISAGREE with their final recommendation for standardizing line counts. VBC is not the way to do it.  


 


 


You ask anybody in any profession
They will say they are worth more than they are being paid. That's the way it is everywhere. I make good money sitting at home. My local hospital pays their transcriptionists 9.40/hr. Big deal! I'll rather stick with a MTSO any day.
Our profession/New job

About three weeks ago I began a position with a local health care company (transcribing for local acute care hospitals but part of a national chain).


We are not really transcribing, at least not by my definition (21 years of experience).  Rather, we are recording medical ShortHand (abbreviations [even in DIAGNOSES section], shortened medication names, slang, contractions, etc.).  On the one hand, they claim they want you to type it verbatim (no expansions, additions, etc.), yet OTOH they say to delete redundancies, repetitions, etc., which is hardly verbatim. We are not allowed to expand, add to, or correct ANYTHING except number and tense dictated by ESL docs, who comprise about 60% of the dictators.  In addition, certain dictated terms are to be abbreviated (e.g., "emergency room" transcribed as "ER").


The supervisor had the gall to look me right in the eye and deliver a harangue about how these are "legal documents, and we have to transcribe EXACTLY what they say."  (Conveniently disregarding the bit about deleting redundancies and the other "allowed" changes.)  So ALL of my previous employers, AAMT, etc. did it wrong, and THEIR crackerjack legal department is smarter than everyone else?!     Don't think so.  Cutting costs is the game they're playing; everyone can see that.


Excerpt from a typical report looks like this:  Wrote scrip for vanco 100, patient also to take aspirin 81 and will return next week. I don't think .... [blah blah blah]


AAMT taught me to create a complete, coherent, grammatically correct document that doesn't look like alphabet soup.  Needless to say, I don't feel good about what I am creating and HATE THIS JOB!!


I'm just curious if this is happening elsewhere.  With all of the emphasis on "cutting costs,"  I have to think that it is.


Thanks for listening to my splenic venting.


Is this a joke?

You are a joke!
I would bet the farm that you are in management or just someone playing on this board, because I know the facts, my dear, and MQ DOES NOT PAY FOR SPACES and lots of other quirks are out there that we do not YET know about.
If you don't think the joke is
Why don't you just head to Walmart now and go buy yourself a new sense of humor - LOL LOL LOL
what a joke
or go to Walmart. The field is now paying close to minimum wage for newbies,really! At 6 cents per line and 100 to 150 lines per hour,it only equals 6 to 9 dollars an hour. That is great pay.......in India!
Joke of the Day

It's a beautiful day in the neighbor.  Sun shining, have been outside with my short sleeved scubs, sat on the porch drinking coffee.  TAT is 15 minutes, life's good.  Check e-mail and my lead thinks so too.  She sent this joke and I had to share it...


THE SHORTEST FAIRY TALE EVER TOLD


 


 


Once upon a time, a girl asked a guy "Will you marry me?"


 


The guy said, "NO!"


 


And the girl lived happily ever after and went shopping, dancing, drank cocktails, always had a clean house, never had to cook, had sex with whomever she pleased and farted whenever she wanted.


 


THE END


 


IT WAS A JOKE!!!
No sore loser here. I could care less.
BOS ... what a joke!
What is most comical to me is that the BOS in one edition says "abc" is correct and in another changes its mind and says "xyz" is correct. My view is they need to keep "making up" stuff in order to keep publushing something to make money!! Now don't get me wrong, some of their information is good information, but, IMO, some is definitely not.
is this a joke or serious??? i can't tell! (nm)
///
it most certainly was not a joke...sm

and did you even open up that post of mine and go to the link I provided with an explanation and a diagram of exactly how to do the Lion Hatha Yoga exercise for TMJ?


Sheesh............incomplete are ye?  *rofl*


It has to be a joke. Please tell me it is
nm
What a joke . . .
Got an offer for a job -- specialty that I just love, but only 5 cents a line?  Come on now!  I have over 2 years just in this one field of transcription.  Plus they expect me to pay for malpractice insurance?  Okay 5 cents a line at 100 lines an hour for example -- less than the state minimum wage plus I am supposed to pay for malpractice insurance.  Hey -- I'm not the doctor!  Doctors are leaving my state because they cannot afford malpractice insurance.  Get real.
What a joke
Wow! Liability insurance via AAMT is $700.00 a year! No, this was not a VR editing job. It was typing reports in word as an IC. No way am I even considering it. I do not have 20 years under my belt but I do have a few years of experience and I am worth more than 5 cents a line.
Me neither, must be a joke (sm)
someone is playing, and they probably haven't posted anything yet.
Obviously someone who can't take a joke
Lighten up.
What a joke.................
Only a couple of companies I worked for EVER mentioned BOS. The companies I work for now couldn't care less about the BOS....they think it's a joke. I think so too. Who knighted them the know-all of the transcription world? None of that junk was around when I started, the doctors don't even know what you're talking about if you mention BOS......nuf said!
And I QA their QA - it's a joke! - nm
x
they are a joke
33 years ago they contacted transcriptionists through the mail at their place of employment, preaching their primary goal was to get us recognized by all and confirmed through pay as professionals; after all, your average gum-popping secretary/receptionist could not do this work without the education adhesed to this field. Compensation was to reflect this.

33 years ago. 3 decades.

The only thing that made my pay reflect any degree of profssionalism was the start-up of production programs (NOT, I might add, created by the AAMT) when I was making 60 - 70k, until the supply and demand changed.

AAMT, however, took in a ton of money in memberships, and changing to ADHI has not shed one ioda of their diligence towards deliquency. Now mighty advocates of outsourcing and soliciting membership outside our borders, you'd think common sense would jump in to keep us from going global - now THERE'S a goal! Oh, but wait...there's no money in that, is there?

What they could and should have done differently was left us alone.
It's a joke
It's a joke.  It truly is.  I have been editing for many years and my cpl has gone from 9 to 4.  I am struggling to pay my bills and they think because you do twice as much you make more. what they DON'T tell you is that there are all these little glitches they use to "ADJUST" your pay and if you don't make production.. yes, production as that is the key word now for what they want you to REALLY do, then you lose more and they have to pay you minimum wage versus what you actually make.. which is 4 cpl now in Escription. 
No, it's not a joke...
It's called common sense.  Supply and demand.  There are only so many OPs to spread among a million MTs.  We've already suffered from the over-supply of new MTs in the last 120 years or so due to all of the MT courses available (instead of learning on the job), which has resulted in lower pay.  So now you want to do the same with OPs?  Call me selfish if you want. But that's the way it is.
It was a joke. Do you REALLY

have no sense of humor?  How sad.


A - No future in this profession.
Get a 4-year degree and open up your options.
Is our profession drying up?

I'm an independent contractor and have just lost an orthopaedic clinic account to EMR.  Also, I've been sending out hundreds of letters for new accounts, and I'm hearing nothing back! 


Is our profession (clinic work) drying up?  This is getting very scary!


Could someone either (1) comfort me with "it's not true" news and there's more than enough clinic work out there to go around, or if you find that it is, indeed, drying up, write back and tell me of your experience.


Thank you `` Nancy in Alpharetta, Georgia


 


Good for you... and for our profession.
x
Find a new profession!
You never told us you had another job as a fortune teller! PUHLEEZ - your crystal ball is nothing more than an average bowling ball!
Stop trying to stir up trouble!
MT Dying profession

I don't agree with you.  I'm betting that MT is good for MAYBE 5 more years.  Maybe.  Thinking they won't perfect VR is only fooling ourselves....they will.  I wouldn't recommend MT to anyone looking to enter the field.  Money better spent on something with a better future but what that would be, I don't know.  Seems everything that can possibly be offshored is being offshored.  Maybe we should move to China   Then we can be sure to have jobs seeing nearly everything in the U.S. comes from there anyway.  Or maybe, the way things are going we had all better learn to like rice, cuz that's probably all we'll be eating before long.


Regarding MT being a dying profession...
I have actually read in numerous places that MT is a job with future opportunity, in light of the baby boomers beginning to get old and sick.  That's going to supply us with a lot of medical reports for a very long time.  As for voice recognition taking over...I'll believe it when I see it.  I know an MR who does VR and I've seen the gobbledegook that it comes up with.  Eventually all these companies will realize that they were sold a bill of goods by these VR vendors, but because they've invested so much in this technology, they're going to stick with it until the bitter end.  Just my opinion of course.    Finally, outsourcing.  I'm  pretty confident that  something will happen that will put the kybosh on sending private medical records off to Calcutta for transcription.   I think that practice will also stop eventually.   I could be totally wrong and maybe I'll have to put away my rose colored glasses, but for now, that's my prediction.
MT Dying Profession
Sad when you work for a company that you thought was great and all of a sudden the work is yanked away and you sit with nothing yet you see the company advertising multiple times. When you look at what many posters say, that seems to be one major problem with this profession. The companies have no loyalty to transcriptionists. The best places to work are small local services, if you can find them. I don't recommend to anyone who asks me that they get into this profession. I used to, but not any more.
MT dying profession
I totally agree, Dano. They have absolutely no loyalty to MTs OR QA for that matter - we are nothing to them. I don't feel like a respected professional who is rewarded for her expertise and hard work anymore; I feel like a factory worker in an assembly line (no disrespect to those who work in factories, BTW)who just has to pump out the work as soon as possible - it's all about numbers to them. That's why in addition to working in this field, which I have been doing for 10 years (and would have quit by now if I could!), I am going back to college to get my degree in dental hygiene. I can't wait to get out of here. Used to make good money - no more. Used to be respected -no more. They only want cheap labor. Anyone looking to get into this profession - don't be fooled by the lies - do something else!
definitely NOT a profession...criteria are...sm

criteria for a profession are extensive college required, also person's work autonomous. Separate body of knowledge required for work. Think of lawyers. Extensive college, they work independently, i.e. they don't have supervisors, editors, etc., and law has its own body of knowledge. Even nursing is on the edge as far as being a profession, not quite autonomous enough. MT certainly doesn't fit the definition of profession.


There's a difference between a profession and a job.
Dictionary.com states that a PROFESSION is, "An occupation, such as law, medicine, or engineering, that requires considerable training and specialized study."

That means MT, being that most MT's have no post-secondary education, or at most bare minimum "MT school" training. O-net on-line (occupation information network) states that 14% of MT's have a bachelor's degree or higher.

This is a joe-job, plain and simple.
here's some dict def's, i think it IS a profession.

noun: an occupation requiring special education (especially in the liberal arts or sciences)

noun: the body of people in a learned occupation
Word origin info is available.

Wow, maybe you are in the WRONG profession then, you think? nm

New MTs entering this profession
I don't think it is so much about MTs being all for themselves.

Virtually every newbie needs a great deal of QA support. It is costly. The first urgency of this field is turn-around-time. Slowing down TAT because all of your reports have to be QA'd costs. Having to stop and give you feedback so you don't continue in the same path slows QA down ... again, TAT suffers and this costs. Newbie work needs the QA because quality is the 2nd urgency of this business.

So, it's not your coworkers fault. Not really the MT service companies' fault either. This is the nature of this very competitive business.

It's always better for newbies to go to work inhouse in a hospital and get their experience before working from home. You have to be really self-sufficient to work from home and make it profitable for both yourself and your employer.

Defined by profession
I have never met so many people quick to judge and I realized that these folks must be defined by their profession which is really sad. Really sad. What's even worse, is like you said, they obviously need respect from others to feel satisfied by what they do. I made no assumptions in my initial post. Sure, I can type, would it have been better had I said I can't type for a darn but want to do MT??? Sheesh. I thought it was more important that I stated my computer skills in general are top notch.

I am not looking for something to make a living at. I already have a career that I love and am passionate about. Was just looking to find out what kind of training I should do, or if I should even do training, so I can do something involving computers from home.

Every job, like you said, has those that think they are better because of this skill or that skill that you don't have. I may be an engineer, but I'm a young female in an all male industry. Talk about fun earning respect with that! But I'm not defined by my choice of profession. I love what I do and that's all that matters to me.
Gee...isn't that the profession YOU signed up for as well?
Constantly correcting mistakes?
I would like to retire in this profession too
but fear for my job's safety. I unfortunately think the bottom line for a lot of these hospitals and doctors is the $$ and nothing more. They want to save money and don't care about the quality of the reports any more. I hope I'm wrong but I don't think so.
Not just in the medical profession
I've seen the same thing with executives and non-execs in many fields. I've had to listen to dead space, too, and yes, it's a waste of my time. Unfortunately, there are lots of time wasters for everybody, and after the post on turnabout is fair play, I can't seem to have such animosity about it. I can speed the dead space up and chat on the board or do some of my correspondence, etc while I'm listening to the dead space.
This is why MT profession is in bad shape

For some reason, some MTs think since they work from home they can do the job "their way."  This in turn, has caused the MTSO to impose such strict requirements regarding TAT, daily line counts, etc.  Remember - they DO have to meet the obligations of their clients. 


There are truly some great MTs that really require a flexible schedule, etc, but these "no-show, no-brain" MTs are ruining  a good profession for the rest of us.  I admit, it is hard to test for MT companies especially when the tests are long, but I can't blame them a bit - at least it weeds out some of the airheads. 


I am not a MTSO and never have been.  But, because of this situation it is hard for me to find a decent job because of the need for a flexible schedule and because I am not a fast/high line producer. 


 


 


This godforsaken profession has no
nm
Wrong profession?

I know there was a post about this yesterday, but I did not want to taker hers over.  I am just wondering if I can really do this.  I have been doing this 3 years and have been at the same company.  I just got back 5 reports this morning that just have me almost in tears.  Granted, some of my mistakes were stupid and should not have been made.  But, others that were sent back to me I really have issues with.  Some of the "mistakes" were not typing "Jane Doe" in the report instead of typing "the patient," which directly goes against my account instructions.  Also, was told not to expand an abbreviation in the diagnosis section because my account is verbatim.  I just do not agree with this!!!!  Plus, had different instructions on the same thing.  The QA is totally inconsistent, and let the QA manager know what I thought of some of their changes. 


I do think that I am a good MT.  I have a new position starting with a great company soon, and I just want to know that I really can do this!!!  Any advice??