All KS MTs are employees, no ICs anymore. I have Aflac and regular insurance. sm
Posted By: KS Lead on 2007-07-23
In Reply to: Aflac deduction for employee only ? - KS benefits
I chose the $500 deductible for the regular insurance and have Aflac for supplemental accident and disability, which is taken out pre-tax. I had Aflac through the hospital I was at and loved it. I was happy when Keystrokes started with them.
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Aflac is supplemental only. KS has Unicare for health insurance. They have been sm
working on getting different insurance, but nothing yet. One that they were working with gave a quote that was a lot more than Unicare, so they started looking elsewhere again.
After 90 days full time, you are eligible for health insurance, 401k, Aflac, sm
and life insurance. One year for PTO. Direct deposit right away.
I am happy at Keystrokes, and happy with the benefits. The insurance is a little high, but my husband has a union job and it would cost us more to have him carry all of us.
The HappyKeystrokes poster seems to give a lot of misinformation. I have as much work as I can handle, but I do not type 350 lph or whatever amount she/he claims. I average 200 lph, up a little some days, down a little other days, but that depends on the doctors dictating, my motivation for the day, etc. Spring is the worst as I have hayfever and headphones bother my ears right now.
My check is right, is on time and is direct deposited. My taxes withheld are correct and SS has been paid (unlike somewhere else I worked that messed up my SS and did take out for state taxes). My lead is supportive and I think the company cares about their employees. I am happy with Keystrokes and cringe when I see posts like Happy Keystroker writes, which make us all look like Stepford Wives. This is a job, just with a company that I like working for.
I wanted to paint a more realistic picture.
just one more question....do they have regular full-time employees with benefits or......sm
just ICs? Thanks.
Does MQ have STATUTORY EMPLOYEES anymore under new plan
After I have spent money, time, trying to meet MQ's requisites for
the computer to type on their docuscribe, are they even going to have Statutory Employees?
If you are an employee, don't they provide the computer?
Why didn't they tell me this when I made the 20+ phones calls trying to meet their requirements - why couldn't they have said "we won't have statutory status anymore with the new plan"???????????
I'm just guessing there won't be statutory because nothing is mentioned about it in the letter from Barbato.
Because these companies no longer care about their employees anymore. nm
nm
Question for MQ employees that carry insurance. sm
What happens if you don't make your line rate in a pay period?
Does MQ let you go? Or do you work "off the clock" and not report your hours so you can meet your rate?
How is Transcend/MDI's medical insurance plan for employees?
Thanks
Diskriter--Anyone know if they have decent insurance rates for their employees??
Any help is appreciated.
To Keystrokes employees: Has anyone heard anything about when a new, less expensive insurance (sm)
is starting? I was told by a valid source it was to be February 1 but it apparently didn't happen then. Has anyone else heard a different date? TIA.
Are there any companies out there that offer benefits to PT employees, such as health insurance?
I know it's a rarity but I know hospitals do.
Does any company offer insurance to part'time employees? nm
xxx
Unfortunately it is not the AFLAC duck though
nm
Keystrokes has Aflac
and it is a reasonable rate, but they are currently working on getting even better insurance.
About how much does Aflac cost per pay?
nm
Aflac deduction for employee only ?
Do you use the insurance? How much is the annual deductionable also. Thanks for your help.
Was it Aflac? We have a conference call
about it 2/29. You should have received an e-mail about it last week.
Thanks...we just had AFLAC enrollment too so I'm probably too late. (nm)
Thanks..I e-mailed the AFLAC guy but haven't heard back yet (sm)
Meanwhile, I'm going to look for other affordable plans too. My cousin is a dental hygienist and told me about 2 companies to check into..Delta Dental and DenteMax. She said they had reasonable plans but I haven't checked them out yet.
401k funds are protected by govt insurance similar to the insurance
that banks have (FDIC). It is safe even if the company goes under.
The insurance cost is double for Transcend but insurance probably doesn't factor in for her.
I have heard more good things about Axolotl than Transcend, although it seems Axolotl may be less flexible with your schedule and someone told me that QA was pretty strict, which should not matter either if you have worked for a hospital and know what your QA score is.
Oh for sure employees, but not too often for statutory employees. Sorry for confusion.
x
Attn: Any Transcend employees or former employees
I have been offered a job with Transcend, but I am not completely sure about it yet and I need some input from you guys. I have read positives and negatives regarding this company but alot of it was pretty old information. Can anyone give me some recent feedback on them? Thanks very much!!!
The insurance plan in my opinion is excellent insurance. I am not sure if it will change when it'
time to renew or not. I really hope not but I know that a lot of companies change every year in an effort to keep costs down because most insurance companies start raising rates after you have been with them a year. The insurance is Great West and they also have excellent dental and vision plans. I believe the cost is less than $70 a pay period for the employee.
Same here, about 40-50 regular drs on my acct, with
probably 10 of them being so awful, I can hardly attempt them. I'm happy to say that some I hated at first are now ones I enjoy, so hopefully I will keep finding that to be the case. Others though, UGH!
If you have a regular phone that has a
foot pedal control connected to it, you can use that for transcribing rather than a c-phone. And there are quite a few generic telephone transcribe units that are compatible and cost a whole lot less than the c-phone. Also, DVI compatable.
Do you keep regular phone?
Thanks everyone. I do use a c-phone and I wondered with Vonage if you have to give up your regular phone. Sorry, I am technically challenged. LOL I appreciate all the input. Also, I live in Nevada.......anyone from this state use vonage....everyone is giving mixed reviews and I will check out that other site also. Man......what a dilema....cannot believe some wise person has not come up with something for this type of business to have ULD. Thanks to all you wonderful people giving me a response so quickly. I will keep watching for more suggestions.
They can pay you on regular pay day if you quit. nm
nm
Same here in MT, always last check on a regular pay day. nm
s
Yes, just regular rate
They have never paid for any OT. When I first started and they asked for OT, I asked them if it was line and a half rate or how they calculated it, and she said what do you mean, you get paid the lines you type. Thinking she didn't understand me, I repeated the question and asked what we got paid extra for the OT pay, and she said nothing, you get paid for what you type. I thought it was illegal too, but obviously they are getting away with it. I know I refuse to work OT...never have and never will. When they cry about being out of TAT, I politely tell them that when I get paid extra for doing extra that I'll be more than happy to help.
I also work 2nd shift, and I'll have to check to see if I've been getting my differential due to what the above poster said. I'm going to be even more mad if I didn't, but it wouldn't surprise me none.
This company is going down hill fast since SPi took over. I think they forgot we are Americans and have a different way of doing things here. They want to pay us like they do over in their neck of the woods, and it's just not happening. It's getting to be quite insulting actually. I know I'm definitely looking for something else!
No just put your regular shift
Just put your regular schedule unless you work approved OT. That is all that is necessary for the payroll people because they go by line count anyway.
ASR sound seems to be better than regular. Even if
help you figure it out. It seems like it's the same dictators with the worst sound quality no matter whether it's ASR or regular. Try it, you can always tell them you don't like it.
You sound like me! I went from ASR to regular MT
this week and loving it! I'm still part-time with the ASR company but I sure enjoy getting back to the typing I love to do. I know that sounds crazy, but I love MT-ing some much more than editing (and of course it will ultimately pay more since this BIG company's ASR/voice recognition SUCKS).
:)
my regular rate is 10 cpl
tr
They did not *cut our pay* for regular transcription sm
We were told how we would be paid for VR editing straight up. Yes, it pays less but at least it pays a lot more than the 2-3 cpl straight pay that most MTSOs pay; at least you get 70% of your regular line rate for editing.
As for *not telling their clients* - How do YOU KNOW what they tell their clients? Unless you are management (and obviously you aren't), how would you know what the clients are or are not told about VR?? How do you know they don't offer a line rate cut to those to use it?
You don't. I'm sick of the bashing. There are plenty of jobs out there with other companies (where you won't be treated nearly as well as Webmedx). If you don't like the company, go somewhere else.
Where does it leave regular MTs?
It leaves a lot of them complaining on these forums about always getting lousy jobs or not enough work, etc.
I do both regular transcription and VR
My biggest complaint, like everyone's is the ridiculous pay scale. Because of the low rate for VR, I am still not making the money I used to, but I don't think it is because Cornerstone is slowing me down so that I can't do as many lines as I need for the same pay I used to make. I would have to do 3000 lines of VR a day to make my former income, which I've been able to do once or twice on a day when the volume of work was there. I have way too many people that end up as secondaries in my account which is very frustrating in the mornings when the work is low in all the accounts.
I work mostly in my primary account, but do have 2 secondary accounts. I could have more but choose not to ask for any, because my primary account generally has enough work most of the time.
I don't even remember when I started on VR, but I think it's been about 9 months.
Because most of the better dictators are on VR, that does leave the crappier ones on regular transcription, which, in my opinion, now makes the pay rate for regular transcription too low because you are now only dealing with the harder dictators. I used to be able to use macros for many of the easier doctors that were more accurate than Speech, so now I am getting paid half as much and having to do more work on those easier doctors also.
Nothing about the pay scale is fair, and their little pilot program to figure out why was a complete joke. We all know the outcome of that should be that they are simply not paying us enough and they overestimated what VR could really do. The slightly better ramp-up pay was not good enough to compensate. I was way beyond the ramp-up lines so I got a measly $89.00 extra on one check to make up what I would have made on the new ramp-up pay. My income has dropped by several hundred a month and that 89 dollars was a joke. The only thing that would truly be fair would be to raise the rates overall, but we all know that isn't going to happen. That being said, Spheris does pay a higher rate than a lot of the companies for VR, so switching companies doesn't seem to be the answer either. They are all ripping us off.
And as far as the new blanks procedure, that one has me pretty angry. The whole thing is ridiculous, the training was ridiculous, and in the survey at the end, I answered their question about it making me more efficient with a big NO!, and I put in the comments that they need to pay us more to make up for the time it will take for such nonsense.
As I said, I can complain about pretty much everything else at Spheris, but I don't find Cornerstone to be the problem that so many others seem to think it is.
I make very good use of Instant Text, and use the mouse more than they recommend, but I find the mouse faster for me then some of their shortcuts.
If they would simply pay us fairly, it would be easier to put up up with the rest of the crap this company has to offer.
Vonage, but also have regular ULD as a backup
I spent about $45 a month for the 2 combined, both residential plans. If I use my ULD (through Qwest) I'm careful how much I'm using so I don't red flag their system. I haven't had any problem with Vonage for the 2 months I've been there and using it heavy. I talked to a couple of other people who have used Vonage really heavy for 1-2 years and haven't had a problem, so I decided to go with that. I only picked up the Qwest ULD recently because my Vonage box malfunctioned and I didn't have any long distance for 3 days until I got a new one, so like I said, the Qwest ULD is now a backup.
not my regular account - just helping out
nm
Yes, honest I do. I have my regular account (sm)
and a backup. It is probably to your advantage to do the same. Learn one, and then ask for a backup. That way if one gets low you will have work. I don't know why people on here are saying there is never any work. I can honestly say, when I had only one account, it got slow right around New Year's and lasted for a day or two. But never actually ran out. Don't know what these people are talking about. Believe me, if I found out they were offshoring,I would be mighty upset, but I do not believe it. Good luck.
I'm doing regular MT now, but in the past I have gotten 0.05 V/R with .10 transcription sm
but never had enough work, so went back to regular transcription. I had thought about applying, but did not want to waste my time with the whole process if the rates stink! You know what I mean? I hate going throug the entire process only to find the rate absolutely stinks!
Actually your ASR rate drops to 70% of your regular sm
rate, not 35%. If you do not like ASR, ask your STM to be removed. You have a choice whether or not to use it.
I'd say that would depend on what your regular line
is what I've seen posted on here. If you read fast you'll do fine, if you type faster than you read, well, it's iffy. If you have lots of formatting, i.e., ROS/PE flush left margin and ASR doesn't do it, screw it; use macros/shortcuts because you should have ROS/PE in macros/shortcuts for most dictators. I ignore the company's advice on how to do Keystrokes with it, turned off that hideous hiliter, and never waste time on tab plus whatever the other key combination is, it's too far away from home position and I'm a lefty and it's totally inconvenient for me to use it. I use the ctl/arrow keys to move forward or backward and ctl/shift/arrow to both navigate and hilite, then all ya gotta do is hit delete. All that also depends on how the ASR is set up. I hated it at first and I'm still not fond of it, but it's better than sitting with nothing.
Well, that's you're getting 45% of your regular line
try to work your way around it like I did. Do what's easiest for you, sometimes their way of doing things is bass-ackwards.
I just use a regular debit card......sm
I think bank is out of texas.
Mine came regular mail
But was included with my new-hire paperwork. Give it time, mail is really slow this week (at least in Central New York!)
Absolutely not, just a regular peon... NM
NM
Are regular and VR lines separated on your pay
check stubs? 35% sounds about like the difference between regular and VR lines. Ours are called pretty much the same thing and you have to know which one is VR and which regular because they're not added up on the email summary we get but they are added up on the actual pay stub itself that comes in the mail.
I wouldn't wait that long. If I cannot be on a regular
What are they paying, once a month? So, for the whole month of May, you draw pay on June 13th?
Not for me.
We dumped regular landline and got Vonage
HUMUNGUS savings! You can get unlimited long distance for $25.00, and if you call other people who have Vonage, no charge at all.
Man, are you wrong! I'm just one of the regular "Joes" here, not mgmt at all. nm
s
If you work it you get extra cpl. You CAN ask for it off if it is on your regular days also. sm
Personally I don't think it is a bad deal at all. Better than nothing, which is what my other job paid for holidays.
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