Blanks
Posted By: HappyMT on 2007-12-30
In Reply to: I was hired w/o testing, but I have 20+ years of - stroker
I've left blanks before in tests if I was not 100% sure, and it has never counted against me. They may have included difficult areas in the tests intentionally to see how you wound handle it. Good luck. I found KS to be too disorganized for my taste.
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blanks are fine, just don't guess. hopefully others left the same blanks.
nm
If I see blanks like that...
I provide the website I found it from and tell him/her to do the research...if I can find it easily, so can they...
Just a guess here but perhaps her blanks indicates she was willing to ask for help and
?
QA is more than filling in blanks and
3.5 cpl is ridiculous. People who take these jobs do not deserve any more than they wind up earning and they make these companies think they can get away with it. The only way to get paid to QA is to get paid by the hour, and I do not mean $10 an hour either! Shame on these companies. They will use the excuse that they cannot afford to pay higher. Don't buy it. It is not true. It is greed and nothing less.
Blanks on test
No, the dictator was pretty clear, but he said a few things that I just was not able to make out.
Question on blanks
I am a fairly green MT, but I do my best not to leave any unnecessary blanks.
I am wondering what types of blanks you run across that you feel are ridiculous and just out of laziness.
Can you give some examples?
Blanks do not count against you
They would rather you leave a blank than to guess. As with any company, there are ESLs. There are good ones and bad ones.
QA can be strict. We transcribe verbatim unless of course it is a gross medical error and then a blank is left and the report is sent to QA. If you type the wrong wrong word and it affects the meaning, it is a higher deduction but there is also a deduction for errors made not affecting the meaning.
I have worked for Axolotl for a long time and I have never worked for a better employer. If you have any questions you can e-mail me or post on here and I will try to answer you.
Blanks can be a good thing!
They prove you know what you don't know! Very important in this work. Just be sure that all else you transcribe is right on.
My goal was always for 100% (thanks Scrapper), but really no more than two blanks in say 3-6 reports, and that has landed me lots of offers.
My first test, btw, was with MedQuist. I asked before transcribing the test how the scoring system worked in order to judge when to say when if it got impossible. No harm in asking!
oh wait, let me fill in the blanks:
you must be a bitter person to hate your job so much
there's no way VR will be able to do all the accents
once they go to India, they will be back for American quality
our jobs will never go away...
there. I already put them in there so no one has to run their long posts saying the same thing that is always said...
You aren't docked for blanks unless maybe
How does Axolotl define a line? Do they pay for spaces, headers, footers, & expansions? Are you docked for blanks or sending things to QA? If so, how much. you keep leaving the same blank after receiving corrections. They would rather you leave a blank than to guess. Line is 65 characters, pay for spacers. There are acute care and clinic accounts and I don't know if they pay differently for them as far as headers/footers. I have no footers, only have to fill in date in headers so not sure how they pay. I don't know why wouldn't get paid for expansions, I get paid for normals and I have some normals as expansions so I guess they do pay for them.
Figure out as much as you can and leave blanks.
Sometimes they give you a mumbler to see how you respond. Never guess... Just do the best you can and send it back. Good luck!
Mercy, of course filling in blanks is ok BUT
not 30, 40, 50 or 60 blanks in EVERY report from the SAME LAZY/UNTRAINED MTs. Don't criticize QAs who have a problem doing this baloney. One company I used to work for NEVER did audits and what they got was swiss cheese reports from people who didn't care, and I was simply wondering who the companies are who don't put up with that now since I've been away a few years. Thank you.
banning blanks in reports
How do you ban blanks in reports? I've been in the MT business, from the ground up, for years and sometimes even I can't hear what the heck the doc is saying. Are you saying that you put an asterisk in there instead of a blank or are you banning blanks altogether? That would make for a not-so-good end result I would think......once again, another tactic to give up quality which the entire MT world used to strive for. I was once very proud to be an MT, and now I don't even like to mention it, especially if I'm visiting the doctor's office. I always get an earful.
He probably means you have to send any blanks to QA.
Not so unusual. I have had accounts like that for years..first at YOG, then the evil Q, now at Webmedx. I suppose it gets resolved with the facility's QA/med recs.
In any event, I share your shame about this profession.
Do you give it back with the blanks filled in?
I send things to QA and never hear back until I prod and prod. This is a waste of my time as well only to hear from QA don't know, we sent through with the blank. If you are filling in the blanks, then you should be giving it back to the MT with the mistakes filled in and also a way for the MT to relisten. JMO. Is this MT doing the same doc or is she being thrown new ones to learn each day? As far as the timeframe for when will she learn, there are a lot of variables to that question in my opinion. Sorry to sound sort of like huh?, but you seem like you are sort of complaining about the job you chose. If you do not like QA, why not try going back to being an MT. JMO. Good luck with the MT though.. 
How do you cite sources but not fill in blanks?!
NM
Not true. You are not dinged for anything coming through QA, blanks, etc. nm
.
You get paid for 15 lines no matter how many blanks
/
You get paid 15 lines for reports with any # of blanks
If you do a full listen you get paid for all the lines. They discourage this unless the MT is on 100% proofing because they have a massive backlog. My pay was roughly half of my pay as an MT and I was one who got fired a few months ago because they were doing away with QA's in the US. Can't imagine why they are hiring for US QA's again.
Well, if she meant she doesn't want to fill in ANY blanks...
then she's gonna have trouble finding what she considers a decent QA job!
I agree that QA is there to listen to blanks that the MT cannot understand...
However, there are times I see so many reports where people do not even try to find the blanks and think someone else is going to do that for them...I wouldn't spend hours finding a blank either but you made it sound as if you didn't even try to find the blank...obviously you are the type of MT who are not talking about so you shouldn't get offended...I don't think doing QA means your above anyone...you are there for an extra set of ears to see if you can hear a blank but some MTs take advantage of QA as a backup to not finishing the report...
I QA'd a 4-minute report yesterday with over 100 blanks
..
It they are 20-minute dictations with lots of blanks,
nm
So all three you just filled in the blanks and didn't need special equipment?
The MT I work with and I might test with them this week.
One with overwhelming ESLs that you have to keep leaving blanks for, thus losing
s
Thank you Jennifer - in turn - I think you get better quality work - less blanks! nm
nm
First of all, I think she means filling in an inordinate number of blanks. Secondly...
QA's job should be solely filling in blanks. It should be to perform routine and random quality checks, it should be researching and educating MTs on new terminology, new procedures, new drugs, it should be maintaining and updating account specs, and it should be assisting newly hired MTs in their transition from training to productive employee.
Far too many MTs see QA as a safety net and big gigantic kitchen sink where they can toss in their crap and out comes something shiny and clean, an excuse to never research a new word or look up the correct spelling of a doctor's name because QA will do the work for you and you'll still get paid for your lines.
And QA used to let MTs get away with it back in the day when they were paid hourly, but the majority of QA people are paid on production now too and so when MTs don't try hard at their jobs, that means QA picks of the slack and loses money. QA gets reports that look like swiss cheese and we have to practically transcribe the entire report to fill in the holes because of lazy MTs with the looking out of numero uno mentality.
okay so she wasted her time looking for blanks on a report that you obviously could have found yours
Now how is that her job again? The point is be responsible for your own reports and take pride in them...and being an MT is more than just knowing terminology..I am sorry you had a bad experience with QA but not all of us are like that...
If this company begins with D, your pay goes back to new-hire rate if there are ANY blanks in it
s
How is editing for them? 100% listen, fill in blanks, lots of feedback
p
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