Do they take out for all taxes or just the Federal and you pay your own local? nm
Posted By: Inquiring Mind on 2006-07-23
In Reply to: I currently work for them on the dictaphone... - Stacy
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They must deduct FEDERAL taxes.. NOT STATE taxes.. if they took out state taxes.. it would be FLORID
which would only have to be refunded to you for you to pay YOUR state what you owe them which is nothing but a pain... be glad they weren't handling your state tax.. and I think in this case.. if someone at the IRS told you they have to deduct YOUR states taxes.. it is that person who is uneducated... they only have to deduce federal income tax
SE doesn't take out federal and state taxes, only
x
Does your MTSO take out all federal/state employee taxes? nm
nm
One more thing to consider: Local taxes
Don't know about you, but I have a local tax I think it's 1.5%, where I live. They don't deduct that from my pay like my state and federal taxes are deducted. I asked them to but they refused. So I'm going to have to come up with that money next year to pay my local tax. I can't afford to save it now. Those of you who have a local tax whrere you live better check your pay stubs and make arrangements.
Uh, are you sure about Federal? sm
This may depend entirely on the MTSO, but as an SE with MQ, they did in fact withhold federal taxes for me, (but not state taxes.)
So, a federal law
for payment of overtime only applies to whatever hours the facility or company defines as overtime; not all based on a 40-hour week?
It is a federal offense
If the federal government checks the time the employee is producing work from the company software instead of the falsified time sheet and finds it is consistent across the board, the company will definitely be in a huge amount of hot water. I don't work for them and never have. I have my own small company with just me and two more employees, but if this is going on, the employees would have a firm case. They should also document the calls or even record them when they are called to work extra. Just my two cents. I hope this helps.
If you are an employee, they have federal
guidelines to follow to ensure you make at least minimum wage and to reference for overtime purposes.
Clocking in/out does not necessarily mean a loss of flexibility. It does mean some accountability, though.
You can go on line and get the Federal
forms from the IRS. I never did state, they were never that much anyway.
Your federal ID is just your SS number.
I am not an IC at Transcend, but I do some IC work in my local area. All I needed for this was to get a business license in my city of residence, for a home-based business. It costs me $26 a year, but I'm sure that will vary widely depending on where you live. (And that fee is tax-deductible.)
That's all it takes to become an 'established company,' to the best of my knowledge. Instead of a W2 at tax time you get a 1099.
Just call your city hall and ask them how to get a license to set up a home-based business.
If you have a home-based business you can write off all your computer equipment and repairs, and if your accountant is savvy enough, you can even take the home office tax deduction. Mine told me that is no longer an audit red flag because so many people are telecommuting now.
Federal Trade Commission ........ nm
ss
WHY NOT MAIL THEM COPY OF FEDERAL....SM
and labor board guidelines regarding employment of independent contractors and the difference between IC and employment status. They cannot have it both ways...have their cake and eat it, too. They don't want to pay taxes, Soc Sec, and benefits for MTs.....but they still want the same control over the MT . Same mentality of most MTSO's....insulting our common sense & intelligence bec. they've soooooooo smart and we're are, collectively, soooooooo dumb!  
Several years ago, they passed a federal law
That law says that companies with over a certain number of employees have to provide advance notice (I thought it was 30 days, but maybe it's 60 days, I dunno)before just closing up shop and doing mass layoffs.
I do NOT think that law would apply to smaller transcription MTSOs with fewer than 50 employees or so.
It would absolutely apply to Medquist, though!
I google federal layoff law. sm
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=federal+layoff+notice+law&aq=f&oq=
Can click open articles.
Companys should at least be reported to the Federal labor department so those coming up from behind. Sadly people need to be MADE to be decent to their fellow humans
Heartlanders-find a Federal resource to help
Although my job has not been displaced, I can emphasize with your predicament. I have seen the decline in pay and benefits as a direct result of offshoring and only being able to find a job with a MTSO who stands against offshoring by sacrificing about 30% of what I had just 3 years ago. Now I have custody of a 2 yo and because I make just barely above the 200% poverty level, I do not qualify for goverment benefits that I have been paying into for the past 30 years; however, because of certain federal funds being administered differently at the discretion of different states, I could move to a different state and the 200% limit would not apply to me!
In researching what benefits ARE available to me, I found the website I have linked below. There are benefits available to persons who have lost their jobs to offshoring but I would like to point out one thing:
ONE of the programs requires that at least 3 OR MORE persons having been affected apply for the benefit. So please for the sake of each of you that are going through your own crises, band together so each of you can find a solution that works for your own needs. Please leave the ability to email each other in your posts so you can network. You need each other's support now more than ever! Find out what you CAN do for yourselves and for each other. What have you been paying taxes for all this time? You deserve whatever benefits you can obtain...you have already PAID for them!
Here's The Federal Law on Mass Layoff Notice
http://www.doleta.gov/programs/factsht/warn.htm
This only pertains to federal health programs
Like VA. It says if the MTSO is paid with federal money, then they are subject to all these things.
ANY federal money - included Medicare and almost
I could be wrong, but I read it to mean ANY federal money which includes Medicare/Medicaid, and there are probably not too many hospitals, clinics, or private doctor's offices that do not have at least 1 Medicare/Medicaid patient. Seems to me they would not be too worried about all the listed countries for off-shoring if it was only VA, since there was already a big stink about off-shoring VA records. But then, as I said, I could be reading it wrong. I guess only time will tell.
Overtime is calculated in Elabor, in compliance with federal law....
We enter our hours into Elabor each day, and OT is calculated. Right now, with a slow workload, I doubt overtime is approved. As a matter of fact, it is not approved.
MTSOs have a unique loophole in the FMLA Federal
MTSOs have a unique loophole. I got caught up in it a couple of years ago when trying to use medical leave for my personal medical illness.
Here are the Federal Requirements:
EMPLOYEE ELIGIBILITY
To be eligible for FMLA benefits, an employee must:
• work for a covered employer;
• have worked for the employer for a total of 12 months;
• have worked at least 1,250 hours over the previous 12 months; and
• work at a location in the United States or in any territory or possession of the United States where at least 50 employees are employed by the employer within 75 miles.
The loophole for MTSOs is the last one …”50 employees… within 75 miles.” MTSOs can interpret that to mean “50 employees who WORK FOR SPHERIS” within 75 miles of EACH OTHER. So, if you live in the middle of Wyoming, there may not be 50 employees within a 75 mile radius of your home. Thus, the loophole, which some MTSOs actually do use.
HOWEVER, some employees do have a counter-loophole. States also have FMLA requirements, and the State that you live in supersedes Federal requirements. In my case my Sate does not have the “75 mile radius” requirement, so after I contacted my MTSO and informed them of that, they backed down and approved all the leave I wanted.
Check out your State requirements to see if they are different. If they are not, if you can survive with 6 weeks and want to keep your job, I would not rock-the-boat any further. Personally, I would use those 6 weeks to find another employer who is more employee friendly, if there are any left out there.
Good Luck and Congratulations on the new Baby.
To be independent at Transcend, have to have own company established and federal ID number?
I guess that about tells it all, does it not? In other words not just the required 8 hour weekend but also you have to have established company. I wonder how many fit under that category?
Go Local
I would not consider editing unless the pay reflected my experience as an MT. Editors spend a lot of time cleaning up the garbage.
I think you have to go local for that.
I don't know of any that pay hourly for MT work. Many do for QA work, but not for MT.
I know around here many of the local hospitals do that, but it's usually MTs that have been with their hospital for a certain period of time. They don't hire from outside to work at home.
Also look at local
While most local comapanies have an onsite group they will sometimes hire people who have worked out of their homes for years. If you are moving from Transcend submit your resume to local recruiters and find out if there is a temp agency in your area that does transcription based companies. A local physician group still uses me per diem and while they have onsite if I need to they also support offsite - it saves them some money because they don't have to support your equipment!
Just be aware, VR is the wave of the future. My guess is that in 10-20 years everything will be run through VR and nothing will be transcribed from scratch...of course if we all stand together and demand more money than they are currently offering the market will eventually succumb :)
I know...it's sad..I used to love it at MQ when we had a local
office but everything has changed so and I just HAVE to make more money! Good luck to all MQers looking elsewhere!
Local hospital - sm
I loved Medware until they started sending so much of their work to Medware India. I spent my days editing the offshore work. Its incredibly frustrating. It doesn't matter how much feedback you give, the same errors are made. A person cannot go day after day after day doing that without getting down. I made the decision to leave and have been so much happier. I only have to worry about my own quality now. 
local offices
what is the best way in getting starting for working for local doctors? Get business cards made up, show them a resume? I have often thought about this and afraid to take the leap. is this reliable work? I'm sure they can let you go whenever they want but I guess that's the case anywhere. please, any info would help.
I agree - go local. (nm)
.
Local Hosptials in GA
Greetings
I reside in ATL and wondering if by chance if anyone knew who handles the transcription for Atlanta Medical Center, Grady Hospital, St. Josephs Hospital and any other local hospital here. I seem to can't get anywhere by calling. I am a newbie and is not having the best of luck with MTSOs right now. Any help would be very much so appreciated. Thank you.
I had a local MTSO try to do that to me...
...I was ready to sign the contracts after meeting with them in person, until I heard I'd have to pay a one-time nonrefundable charge due lump sum for $600.00 for the FTP software. To add further insult to injury, they also advised me they didn't pay for spaces and required me to transcribe a minimum of 1200 lpd.
I couldn't run out of there fast enough.
What would I do with their FTP software if I quit? It would be useless to me, and I'd have paid for it.
I steer clear of companies asking me to pay for use of their software, I'd suggest you do the same.
Call your local DOL
You are entitled to minimum wage if you are an employee. So make sure you are punching a time clock or otherwise keeping track of your hours and your pay.
You can also file for partial unemployment.
That s/b local OR 800#. no text
gourdie - do you have a local - sm
news station that exposes these type of injustices? they love the david vs goliath type of stories...
Our two local hospitals do just that.
Management is at the hospital. MTs have a choice to work at their medical records departments or work remotely from home. Benefits are excellent. Health insurance rates are very reasonable. Pay is hourly - guess what, always on time. They are always offering CPR classes free, movie tickets and group travel plans at discounts. ACTUALLY GIVE RAISES.
I would love to see all hospitals go back to this. More personal employment, keep it local, smaller group of docs that we actually might know, not as much BS as working for an MTSO. I think this gives the MT back their feeling of being a professional and the hospitals treat us fairly, like an employee and no BS about OT and line rates. Enough already with the greedy MTSOs who can't seem to get their act together with their overhiring, then low work, no work, then begging for help if you stay and most everyone else leaves.
Our local hospital...
has closed the entire top floor, and the nursing students from the local college are lucky to get 1 patient for their clinicals. They are asking the older seniority nurses and other personnel to retire early. Another hospital has the healthcare workers down to 32 hours per week. I am in OH, and my area is really bad economy-wise.
Do you work for local doctors?
If you do, how many do you work for to make that kind of money? Do you charge $.15/line? Thanks.
Look through the yellow pages of your local
phone book and call agents that offer health insurance. Make several calls. I did this when we needed private insurance and each call I made I got a lower premium, although every company had the very same insurance. Celtic is what we found to be the lowest. We no longer have this insurance as we have insurance through DH job, but we had no existing conditions, no regular meds, nonsmokers, so I'm not sure if these were covered. I'd keep calling about COBRA. The company has to offer it. If you go 45 days without insurance and have a pre-existing condition you are in trouble, unless things have changed since we got insurance. There is a temporary insurance through Fortis that is very cheap, but the deductible is very high and it doesn't cover pre-existing conditions.
I'd stay away from the association for the self-employed or whatever it is called. When I called them their rates were double what I could get a private policy for and it was the same insurance.
A local cc (NC) costs about $1200. The
local state supported 4-year university now offers an on-line MT program too and I think it is about $1800.00. The cc arranges internships and helps with job placement, don't know about the 4-year school as it is a relatively new program and I am not familiar with it.
Then a small co or a local hospital SM
would be better. You are not going to find an MT service of any size that doesn't have a bunch of ESL dictators. That's just the way it is.
Is there really an advantage to staying local? Most
It doesn't seem there's any more guarantee of stable work from local MTSOs than the national ones.
If you do want to stay local but work at home, also try Southern Transcription Services, located in Taylorsville, I think. They have a good reputation. Google them for their web site.
A local nephrology office - NM
NM
I know of two huge accounts local to me
One is a huge hospital system and the other is an ortho practice that I used to contract for and left due to the physician retiring, but they have 10 physicians. They are very unhappy with the quality of reports from C-Bay. Not surprising that they are not needing as many MTs these days since their reputation is very poor.
JLG did work for our local hospital when I was there.
They charged us $3.50 a line. I saw the contract. I was shocked. We paid ICs $1.50 a line. And the work was horrible. Everytime they uploaded reports, 2 of us spent most of the day correcting them. After about 6 months, we fired them.
Go to the library in your local town. I do.
nm
My local area rates seem to run 9-12 CPL sm
If you want benefits as mentioned in your first posting, you'd need to become an employee. Some of the bigger companies offer a good competitive rate for ICs, 10-12 cpl (without benefits of course).
how does one find out what local rates are?
Also, how do you figure what rate you should charge if you land an account not in your area? Do you go by THEIR local rates? How do you know what those would be?
Once, while working for a local hospital
I was also working PT for the service that the hospital used. The only conditions made for that were that I could not work on my hospital's account as that could be considered a conflict, i.e., less work for the hospital so more was available for the PT job. I have yet to have a problem working for 2 companies. Currently I work for a national company FT and a local company PT. They do not have the same accounts, so therefore no conflict.
In our town, we have a little local pharmacy or many
I tried to stick with my little local pharmacy, but started having problem with insurance issues, which miraculously didn't happen at CVS. Something about CareMark is my insurer for meds. So, I switched to CVS primarily due to these glitchy insurance problems with my scrips. All went well for a month or two, though I felt bad ditching the little local guy. Well, then I started having all sorts of medication errors from CVS - wrong med being given in my bag, wrong dosing, etc. When I started complaining, I realized that CVS and CareMark are basically one and the same - another mass merger thing. So, I believe that CareMark deliberately gave me problems when I used anyone but CVS, and it turns out it was true. I have gone back to my local pharmacy, and he confirmed what I thought had been happening. Its like conspiracy theories everywhere these days. He said he couldn't say a word, though, as he had been threatened by lawyers not to make the connection for people - we had to figure it out on our own. Well, me with my big mouth, I'm telling everyone I know!! LOL. So, no, not impressed with CVS either, and no, they don't care about their mistakes - locally or corporate. We're all humans, after all, though some have jobs that could kill fellow humans. LOL.
I work for local clinic 17 cpl
But it's only two doctors and another MT and I split the work.
Only when hired by a local hospital - sm
It is a little surprising to hear they want you to do this. I was hired by a local hospital (an hour away) and had to come in for training there - up to 3 months, unless I got the hang of it earlier. Some folks who worked there lived a little farther away (one was 3 hours) but all were within driving distance. So I have been asked - however, I've not been asked for a place as far away as what you described. 
Offered a new local job and trying to decide. sm
The new job is MT but it is not straight typing. It is basically putting reports together from a check list with occasional regular transcription. Will also be building reports from handwritten documentation. The doctors are all available and do not mind you asking if you cannot read something. I met all 11 of them today. There is 1 week vacation time the first year, 2 years after that. Med insurace is $30 per pay check is very good. Family is around 120 per check. They have retirement as well. It is also 8-5 M-F. All holidays off and paid. Now, here is the drawback. They only start at 13.50 per hour. They do give annual raises of a minimum of 5%. Travel is not a big issue as it is only 10 minutes or less from my house. The low pay I am a bit worried about. What is your opinions? All are appreciated. Also one last thing, this is a specialty clinic and I have always done acute care but know the specialty well.
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