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Serving Over 20,000 US Medical Transcriptionists

way underpaid...you might as well be a clerk at 711...sm

Posted By: tulip on 2008-05-02
In Reply to: Anyone paid hourly? - Typer

Sorry to say and no offense to you personally, but any experienced MT accepting these wages is severely impacting this profession. If you owned a business, wouldn't you rather pay someone $8.50 an hour? This is disgraceful and an insult to any experienced MT. I have seen MTs work for this wage, but unfortunately 99% of them produce garbage, and then require someone paid at top wage to edit the report. EXPERIENCED MTs need to refuse these jobs, and let the companies hire someone who feels $8.50 an hour is a fair wage, and watch their clients drop like flies, or have an Editor fix everything. I've always said, there is no replacement for a multi-specialty experienced MT who works for a company and requires very little editing. You either know your stuff or you don't. If you know your stuff, you will make a profit for the company you work for. It's as simple as that. The companies who think that hiring ILPs and new MTs and paying them slave wages, will certainly be one of those companies that will not be in existent a few years down the road. Let's get real people!


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Yes, then. You are way underpaid in my opinion.
If you compare your reports to what you would get paid on a 65-char. line, you are getting less than 6 cpl. This is very low for someone with your experience, especially given that you have been with this company for 5 years. It is most definitely time to ask for a raise!
Help me figure out if I am underpaid!
I am paid by the hour and not by the line and I have no idea how many lines I edit per hour, but I think I may be underpaid for my experience.  I have been a hospital Transcriptionist for 5 years, I edit VR 3/4 of the time and type 1/4 of the time. My paycheck after a full 40 hour week after taxes but before any deductions is $865.  To put things into perspective, I absolutely love my job, I work from home and love my shift, my boss is great, fantastic benefits and a ton of vacation time.  But, I have to pay the bills. When I look for other jobs paid by the line I have no idea how to tell if I will be making more or less money.  For those of you paid by the line...how does this biweekly paycheck match up?
I'm sorely underpaid, just as I suspected.
Grrrr....
an overworked, underpaid, still expected to meet production go to person.

Transcription clerk.....
We don't have a "lead transcriptionist" at the hospital I type for.  There is transcription clerk who handles the reports coming in, getting them filed and such, but our pools are set up either by our supervisor or whatever particular work type needs to be worked on.  As an example, I get Preop H&P's, then H&P's, consults, discharges, ER notes and ops in that order.  Basically, if that pool is empty, it will bring up next report in your next assigned pool.  As I said earlier, you can interrupt a report ( on my C-phone it is 08) and you will get the next report, but then the one you interrupted will come up next.  The person in charge of the dictation would have to assign it out to someone else to keep you from getting it.  With a C-phone and the pools having been set up prior, you won't get a report that you should have to skip over.
A girl who worked as a clerk in our

local hospital heard that I worked at home doing transcription.  She called and asked me a bunch of questions of how I got into this.  Of course, I answered all of her questions and added that if she was interested in doing transcription that she would need to go to our local community college and take some courses.  She said she didn't need to go to school because "all you do is type what the doctors say, right?"  To which I replied, "Yeah, that's all I do, just type what the doctor says," as a wave of disgust swept over me.  She came over to the house and sat down to type.  After about five words, with the deer in the headlights look on her face, she was astonished that "just type what the doctor says" is not all that easy!  It was worth all the time trying to explain what transcription really entails. 


Applied at a hospital for a clerk

20 years later, I'm an MT with three of my own accounts and IC for a company on-line.


I applied at the hospital and told them I had done transcription in high school for my medical secretary certificate, and the recruiter asked me if I'd like to work in Radiology as an MT.  I said I wasn't very good at it and she said it pays $2.00 more an hour, and I said "Well then, let me give it a whirl!"  I passed the typing test and have never looked back.  I built up my knowledge by working for 17 years in a hospital in different departments.  I went from Radiology to the Cath Lab to a diagnostics area. 


I loved the challenge.  The medical terms and stories interested me so much that I even wanted to be on the procedures so I could learn more.  So, yes I wore lead and went in as an observer.  If you ever want to gain experience, that is the best way!  Be right there for the show!  LOL


Update: I did not get that file clerk job
at the hospital.  They just called and said they choose another applicant.  They said they would like to keep my name on file in case they have another opening though.  Oh well, guess it wasn't meant to be.   It probably would not have paid much anyway. 
desk clerk at a low-budget hotel -
I called in sick with the flu, and that night the place was robbed at gunpoint.  I had never been so happy to be sick!
Try a search on Clerk of Courts website.
You might try searching on your Clerk of Courts website (if they have one). If he has been sued, it should be on there. If called as a witness probably not. Seems like if you are sued, though, or served to be a witness, they actually have a deputy come out and serve you in person. Could even be something like a parking ticket he didn't know he got. Let us know (if not real personal). Got me curious.
Often it is the clerk who types up and sends emails. nm
x
Was nurses aid, then aide in ICU, then ward clerk, then
MORE medical terms cuz halo the docs were professors, and they let me play PA under their supervision, then w/comp supervisor, then pregnant, then had to find a PMs job and landed in transcription dept as trainee. If I could meet their requirements, I stuck. If not, I was fired. I stuck.
Hospital Unit Coordinator/Clerk
Anyone know what this kind of job would be like? One of the local hospitals has a few of these positions open in various departments. I'm wondering if it's a high pressure/low pay kind of thing, if only because they seem to be hiring from the outside. When I worked for a bank many years ago, they hired "outsiders" only for the crap jobs. I'm tired of MT and want to explore my options.
The clerk in the clearing area keyed the amount
and they can correct the mistake.  Banks use large clearing houses.  A clerk looks at the check and keys in the amount (it shows on the far right lower side on your check). They are human and they do make mistakes.  I had one key in a check for $40 as $400 years ago.  Bank was very apologetic and corrected and refunded everything.
I decided I did not want to be a file clerk for the rest of my life.....
I was hired in a 5 doc urology practice as a file clerk. And we all know that the file room is a toxic waste dump from people who have no idea what to do with whatever piece of paper they have. After working in the file room, the docs asked me if I would help out the other transcriptionist. (She was the only one at the time). Since I KNEW I wasn't cut out to be a file clerk, I said sure. So I filed part time, helped with transcription overload. We got a new peds urologist fresh from a Fellowship at Mayo Clinic so he was a really wordy type.

Long story short, he was so busy I was out of the file room for good, typing just for him as he saw lots of kids, and loving every minute of it. He moved to Arizona in the early 2000's, called me in 2006, and the rest, as they say, is history. He is still a peds urologist and I am still working for him. Everything is done over the Internet. No paper anywhere except what his office prints out.

He is one of the reasons I LOVE MY JOB.
In 1990, when I started as a MR clerk, SMOKING was allowed in Med Records...
can you imagine, and with all the charts laying around...it is so comical now to think of it...

That lasted until about 1992 I think...

That is not all that long ago really, to go from electric typewriters to smoking being practically outlawed...

they say MT will change more in the next few years, than it has in the last 100>>>>!
When the kids started school I wanted a job in my home town. A hospital clerk position (sm)
came open. You started compiling charts, making copies, etc. Then I was promoted after a few months and began learning transcription and did that part of the day. Then a few months later they taught me coding and abstracting and I did that part of the day. It was a great learning experience to learn things from the bottom up. Needless to say, I am an old dog here who has been doing this more than 25 years now.
When the kids started school I wanted a job in my home town. A hospital clerk position (sm)
came open. You started compiling charts, making copies, etc. Then I was promoted after a few months and began learning transcription and did that part of the day. Then a few months later they taught me coding and abstracting and I did that part of the day. It was a great learning experience to learn things from the bottom up. Needless to say, I am an old dog here who has been doing this more than 25 years now.