Definitely harder and I've given it a lot of time. I'm thinking about
Posted By: going back to my old MTSO. nm on 2007-10-24
In Reply to: Anyone else going from DQS to ExText and noticing lines are harder to get? (sm) - Just comparing
nm
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That's what I've been thinking - people must be off.
nm
I've been thinking the same thing.
I stayed with the Q too long into the downslide. You are so right, it has a familiar smell. I cannot see myself doing that again. Just don't know if there are any more decent companies out there.
I've been there quite a while, pay on time, growth spurt right now, so good time to get on board,
new accounts and lots of work, and before someone says it, I'm not management, just an employee.
Thinking of going part-time myself - sm
What kind of schedule will you be on as part-time?
I'm thinking............Time to change careers.
Why do people struggle so hard until they are so miserable that they live, sleep, and breath misery. You are right though about struggling, it's never going to change so I am taking classes to get my coding degree. I am choosing NOT to be miserable anymore.
Is Keystrokes a big company or small? I am thinking of applying. Time to leave the Q. nm
The sad thing is that I do not even think they would notice if I left. I am a high producer but not very vocal and they seem to have forgotten about me :(
This is the first time I've seen a co SM
have to communicate with their own employees on someone else's FREE message board. Big turnoff.
I'm the OP..again, I've always been paid on time
I'm wondering about these several accounts going with speech recognition (many accounts that I have worked on), and what that will mean for us in the long-term.
I've been with them a short time.....sm
and am very happy. Nice folks, good accounts and good pay.
Then they've wasted their time
There are a lot of things that could be going on, both innocent, stupid, and sneaky. They could be mining resumes to pad their employee list and make it appear as if they do have US employees. They could be stupid enough to waste time posting on a US board for a position in Pakistan. Or they could have innocently somehow missed putting in a location for a US transcriptionist.
Ignore it or wait and see if they clarify the position in the future.
I've worked for MDI-MD very part time for many yrs
No, I've never gotten a Christmas bonus. But they still are hands down the best company I have ever worked for and their gift to me is being a company that pays well every day. I'd rather have that than a company that pays me 8 cpl and sends me a $50 Christmas gift. The only reason I work for them very part time is that I have my own accounts in addition to working for MDI. Someday when I'm older and more tired, I will give up my own accounts and work for MDI alone.
The only time I've seen this, it was a brand new account sm
The whole team had to go on QA and be released one by one. It was time-consuming but I guess the client had demanded it.
I've even run different platforms at the same time with no problems.
You shouldn't have any problems at all!
Once you've peeved QA, is it time to quit?
I started a new job and, as something of a side note, it turned out to be a bait and switch where after the first week, they don't actually have the work I was hired for, and instead put me on a different secondary account. QA, being QA, was having their little version of fun and I was getting contradictory corrections on various reports, which I just let slide, let them play..put in their semicolons, split their infinitives, have unmatched noun/verb number. However, I got a couple back where they changed what I typed in a big way that actually made it a critical medical difference, and those I took to the supervisor (pt came was given dopamine and pressor support in the ICU to maintain BP because of her HYPOtension, but QA changed it to HYPERtension several places in the ICU course....duh!).
Anyway, since then, there's something of a vendetta against me in QA. I dropped the word on (the patient was put the operating table) and they tagged it a critical error and docked it 2 percentage points. If I take a sentence 4 lines long and split it up, they dock me. If I number a list (meds, dxs, etc) without the dictator specifically saying it, I'm docked. If I don't number the list, I'm docked. If I put the diagnoses in a list, I'm docked. If I leave the diagnoses in a paragraph, I'm docked.
I've asked the QA supervisor for specific guidelines as to how they assign error scores (sorry, my dropping 'on', while a mistake, I don't think falls into the critical error as it does not change the medical integrity of the report). I still have not heard back from the QA supe as to how they qualify the errors.
Since I'm pretty sure that this place, like any other place, is going to circle the wagons when a new interloper dares question their methods, is it time to throw in the towel? The work is okay...it's not the easy breezy stuff that I signed up for, but it's not really hard. Would you just say scrooge this, I can be abused anywhere or would you stick around just to avoid the job-hopping?
PS: This is a second job....almost amusingly, I'm part of QA at my other one.
I've no experience of a time clock either.
I think perhaps they mean the requirement to be assigned a set shift and stick to it.
But there's nothing remotely resembling a time clock... we just sign onto our platform and dive right in.
As an ex-TRS employee I still have the instant messenger, and I do sign into that when I'm working, but it's not a requirement; it's more of a courtesy to our co-workers, so we know who's around, especially if we need to ask a question.
My first day on the job at TRS I instant-messaged my supervisor and said do I have to sign in or let somebody know I'm here, and she said no, just log onto the platform and start working.
Of course, if they really want to track our logged-in time, the platform can keep track of all that.
But again... no, there's no time clock per se, nothing even close.
I'm surprised he is still around. I've heard he's had a rough time
could just be rumors. I heard someone was trying to buy/force him out.
i've worked for MQ for a long time and never got a raise
nm
Um, I specifcally said I've been there long time so wasn't sure about sm
the starting PTO; wasn't trying to pretty anything up. As for BCBS and dental - personally where I live, it is a great plan. I'll stick to my guns on that. As for the lower deductible last year, did you not join the BCBS health calls to discuss WHY that happened?
At first I was thinking that you were being unrealistic, not thinking about taxes, benefits, etc. bu
surprised to find that you are not asking the moon. Let me clarify a few things: Rates charged are not as high as 0.25 per line, but no one that has U.S. employees goes as low as 0.115 or they would not be able to pay their bills. A more realistic range is 0.125-0.165, and that top end is hard to find, most falling at 0.14-0.15 per line.
The rates of pay you propose are very reasonable IF the following is true: These are seasoned MTs who do not need a lot of hand-holding, QA or blanks filled in, unless a very difficult/impossible doctor.
How about a scale based on experience and accuracy of 0.09 - 0.105 per line (acute care), and $1.15-$1.30 per report (radiology)?
The VR one is tough as everyone, MTs and MTSOs and facilities are still feeling their way on this. As an MTSO who was an MT, I feel that VR editing is as difficult to do as regular transcription. I don't think that it should be substantially less pay or charged less as the end product is still the same.
Funny thing here? My company already follows that scale. We should work together, not at odds, to reinforce this industry and bring it back to where it should be, right here in the U.S.A. with a decent paycheck.
Pay always on time, platform is easy, they've always been nice to me, do have several accounts to
avoid running out of work. I do MT and QA.
It's harder to get your own accounts
Most guys don't have a choice but to work for nationals in this business or own their own business. Would like some input into how guys work at making that much money in MT. Thanks.
I was doing VR, too. For me, the work is just harder to come by.
I work second shift, and it used to be early evening the OPs would start coming in. I could really roll on those, but they have all but disappeared. I now only get handful per shift and mostly EGDs or I&Ds. I also worked Fridays and Saturdays, which were great for work, but even those days are depleted now.
I think now I just am bummed out thinking I worked my butt off to get to the 5 to 6-year mark where I could apply with the better companies, and there just is no work. My daughter is almost done with her transcription course, and it is scary to me that she has to work for 3 cpl but even scarier that I might have to pretty soon :(
Seems like they are just making their job harder.
They should be taking the time to do the job correct the first time. How is rushing through going to help them in the long run? The reports are just going to come back for corrections, which is then going to take them longer to fix in the end then just editing them properly the first time through. I understand not wanting to get pay docked, but it seems they are only making things worse for themselves in the end.
Working harder for less pay.........
to achieve the same figure on one's paycheck is circular reasoning.
As has been stated before here, it is a pretty sure bet that the clients are being charged the same for their reports whether an MT physically transcribes it or whether a speech engine translates it and an MT cleans it up. That being the case, with the MT being paid even less for speech recognition, the middle man (management) is making way more money off the MTs back and will continue to make more as the MT is pushed to turn out more production.
As for adapting to more coming technilogical changes, you'd better prepare to adapt yourself to another line of work because the MT field will become obsolete as we know it even today. There will be fewer MT positions needed as speech recognition becomes more and more proficient at creating a medical document that is within acceptable limits.
Nope...MDI-MD for a long time as well and I have a schedule I have to follow! You've got it made
They've all said Woburn, Mass when I asked...same time zone as me grrrr! nm
n
Work Smarter, Not Harder...
Exactly! Go to work for a company that pays for ALL of your work, not just what is reflected in your typed reports. What about time spent looking up physicians out of a data base of 50,000! Trying to figure out what in God's name the doc is saying when pronouncing some foreigner's name, and wasting 10 minutes doing so...with no pay! ALL of my expertise is worth compensation, not just what they see on the final report. How many times do you type an entire report, just to hear at the end, Erase this, I'll redictate! No credit! What a waste of time and I deserve to be paid for the work I did, even though the DOCTOR screwed up and screwed me out of earning my pay for those lines! What a bunch of BS!!!
I must agree with you. Seems harder the older you get.sm
When I was in my 20s, sure I could do 1800+ a day, but it's a different story now that I'm in my 40s. Sore wrist and fingers. Forearms tight and painful.
IT SUCKS!!
PS: Chinamom, sorry, I didn't mean to reply by email. Clicked the wrong thing by mistake. I must be getting old!!
Yes, for some reason Bayscribe does seem harder (sm)
Harder to make your lines, that is. The only time that Bayscribe will not add demographics (or autopopulated info) to your character count is if you mark the report as a No Report. Otherwise, on all reports, including the ones marked Incomplete Report, it will count all the demographic info too.
They say that Bayscribe is Word-based, but personally, I haven't seen much simularity at all between Word and Bayscribe. I do know that when I switched from using Word to using the Bayscribe platform, my average lines-per-hour production dropped somewhere around 25%.
So yes, with Bayscribe, I do find myself working longer hours in order to make the same line counts that I used to make. I'm not really sure what the answer is, but I don't think that it's the accounts.
Sometimes the bigger they are, the harder they fall.
Lots of these big MTSO co's are in bed with AHDI, and I have a hunch the whole kit-n-kaboodle of 'em are ridin' for a fall. Or a public hangin'.
Even if some of them aren't harder to manipulate,
it's just assumed that they are. I've found that the few guys I worked with on-site in the past WERE fairly woman-like in their willingness to be manipulated and taken advantage of. Which is probably why they got into, and stuck with, MT in the first place. Those guys who won't stand for that sort of thing never got into MT at all. Which is probably about 99.999% of them.
The benefits to the MTSO for having at-home MTs is not only the savings of NOT having to run, maintain, insure, heat, cool, and clean a brick-and-mortar building for their workers, but more importantly, the physical and social ISOLATION of those workers by basically chaining them to their desks at home. The isolation makes it far easier for us to be lied to, intimidated, cheated and overworked because NO ONE ELSE SEES IT HAPPENING.
The internet, and forums like this one, have broken us out of that isolation to some degree, but obviously not enough of a degree for change to happen. It's likely that for every MT that knows of this, or other MT forums, there are 10 who don't.
Further compounding the trouble those of us who DO use online forums to communicate with each other have, is the fact that we all know the MTSO suits cruise these boards, and we have to be careful about what we say, and to not reveal our identities, or else we'd most likely find our little selves fired.
So to date, medical transcription, and the sweatshop conditions it's done under, is the healthcare industry's best-kept 'dirty little secret'.
Is it getting harder for anyone to get jobs now with all the people applying for them. How does
this seem to be going for most MTs looking for jobs. What seems to be the one factor that gets MTs a job before all the other 100 or so looking for the same job and what are the most desired qualities today that companies are looking for.
Anyone else going from DQS to ExText and noticing lines are harder to get? (sm)
Both accounts are about the same difficulty, just find ExText more cumbersome and where I used to do 1200 lines in 6 hours on DQS I now take every bit of 8 hours and sometimes that doesn't do it. Am i just getting slow to learn new things or has anyone else noticed this same thing?
You have it all wrong. I work SMARTER, not harder.
I will take on any acct. After months of getting used to it, I see what I am making an hour. If it is worth the work required to do that acct, great. If it isnt, I ask to be taken off acct and so far, have never been refused. Sometimes takes little while for them to get another MT for acct but have never been refused. Company is not working for the prestige, loyalty to an acct, or ME for that matter, or for the good of mankind. Why should I? I am in this for the money, just like the company. I am very much a pro, which is probably why companies would rather have me on another acct, than to quit giving me work all together. They know many companies are always looking for a good MT. Like other posters, I dont understand why someone would work below their worth. There are too many companies out there to try. I have tried several, staying with the ones where I could make good money.
Acute care is quite a bit harder than clinic.
Definitely. Never a good idea to lie. You won't find anyone at most big companies to ask beginner questions to, on ops or otherwise.
I've been very happy at DSG -- pay always on time, decent incentive package, sound quality probab
depends on account, mine has been fine most of the time.
I've been there for years, work on the DSG1 side of things, pay on time, direct deposit, more
feedback lately. I have always found the staff and MTs helpful and friendly. Work does fluctuate, but if you have a few accounts, should keep you busy, also sound quality can be an issue but mostly okay.
I, too, went from MQ to TT, and line counts are much harder to get at TT with Dictaphone ExText.
I have always been called *firey fingers*, so know it is not me, as I am very fast and accurate on the keyboard. Line count continually gets harder to achieve. I know it depends on how the company has Dictaphone set the line count parameters -- whether to pay headers, footers, spaces, demos, normals, expanders, etc.
Also speech recognition using ExSpeech at TT is so cumbersome and awful. Really made good money and line count with DQS speech editing. Just must my opinion. Other comments would be interesting.
The requirement is 50% participation. It is actually harder for a larger company sm
than a small company if they are national to get good rates. Once in, they will have it easy after that. I dealt with it personally for another company and it was a nightmare. Insurance is crazy and once national, it is harder to get the insurance. They should have gone with BC/BS when smaller but chose Unicare for some reason. Now they are regretting it.
Burnout...wanted to work smarter, not harder.
It seemed like I was sitting at my desk for 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, just trying to pull the bare minimum. I had to hop around from one hospitals operating system to another and to another constantly...and if you've ever had the pleasure of doing that, you know that lines don't come easy that way because you spend all your time waiting for things to load and what not. There just wasn't enough work to stay on one account all the time, the way I think it should be, so instead of becoming an angry and bitter employee, I left.
They really did try to make me happy, but all they could offer were more hours, or more accounts, and like I told them, I simply wanted to work my 8 hours and make a decent living. Had a really hard time doing that over the winter. I think they overhired but I never asked that question head on. It was a great company when they first started out, but then got really big really fast. Great benefits though, if you can make the lines.
If I needed to get my foot in the door, I'd work for them, get the experience, and move on. It's that kind of place. But during a moonlighting gig I tasted freedom, more money due to a more efficient way to work, and better overall work environment, surrounded by people who truly loved their jobs, and when I was happy to log on for THAT job, and got sick to my stomach when I had to log on at DVHP, well that's when I knew it was time to be on my way.
Sometimes you get spelling and abbrvns over the phone, typing later on. Bone up on your harder
s
It is much harder on the wrist to constanly use the mouse to jump around the report to edit, rather
x
I agree that it is an easy platform, but compared to other platforms I have used, lines are harder
to get, probably counted or weighted differently.
Great company. I've been recommending this company for a long time.
x
Easy tests versus harder tests...
Having passed both and offered jobs at both, which company would you likely go for? They both have the same basic benefits and line rates. Would I be assuming that the harder testing will mean that the dictation is more difficult? Any opinions on this would be greatly appreciated!
You work longer AND harder and the work is
??
What good does it do? They've lied, they've betrayed us.
They've taken all they are going to take from me. I am not going to waste any more time being angry. I hate the way things ended, but I refuse to accept the blame for any part of it because I know that was a lie too, even though they did try to blame the MTs. I know part of the problem was quality issues, but QA wasn't to blame for that either, although they have been.
It is time to pick up and move on. I think mgmt will reap what they sow. For those who worked on the main account Webmedx is still hiring, though the best time slots have already been taken.
What the heck? I've never heard that in the 8 yrs I've worked here. sm
Go back to your STM or over his or her head.
Since you've brought it up, I've stopped SM
giving the negative info because every time I have in the past I am called a disgruntled ex-employee or told that my experience has no relation to what the company is like today.
I won't repeat the information I've given in the past, anyone can find it on searches. I've decided to just let the people have their experience with the company and that experience will validate everything I've ever said about those people.
The same people own and run that company--they may have new names doing the management, but it still runs the same way.
You've got it ~ you've hit the nail on the head....
I can Google until dawn and still not find John Smith in NY - you know the neurologist... Cut me a break! I've now learned to ask my online company for a list of referring physicians (since none of the accounts are in my state) and also ask for websites for the hospitals, but I still don't take more than 5 min of my own time to find referring physicians. I send it right through with a verify cc:...
As far as making an educated guess, I would only do that if it was my own account and I know the dictator well. For the online company, it is their responsibility to make that educated guess as it is their client, not mine. I leave that up to the company to make assumptions; this way it is on their back, not mine when it comes to the legality of the report. Ultimately, the physician is responsible when signing that report or there should be clause on those reports that state dictated but not read. If that clause is not there, then it is the physician's responsibility to know the content, not the MT. An MT can only transcribe what they hear and really should not be making educated guesses on anyone since we live in a world of sue-happy patients and their malpractice insurance is so high. If there is a question, it needs to go the dictator to resolve.
JMO - been doing this for over 20 years. 
I've been a QA 15 years and I've never heard
of any company only paying for the actual Keystrokes of the blank. You would literally make less than minimum wage that way. Waaay less.
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