Good post MissIndigo....I make 6.5 cents for VR sm

• VR... no coffee for me... bleeding fingers - Linda
  • Linda, don't worry about the VR. - no-newbie
    • thanks for all the encouragement - Linda
  • VR - sa
    • Are you paid for your time to look up names, etc? nm - mte
      • No - sa
    • I work on Dictaphone Editor...sm - jj
      • Linda got the "coffee" notion from me. - MissIndigo
        • Hey coffee lady MssIndigo! - Linda
        • Good post MissIndigo....I make 6.5 cents for VR sm - jj
          • Is that 6.5 as an employee or an IC? - curious
            • I am IC. I make 8.75 transcription and 6.5 VR. - jj
              • You emailed me to tell my pay stinks? sm - jj
                • Um, I asked the question if it was - sm

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on an account with VR.   Regarding the platform, there are several.  Do you have one in particular?

Am I missing something??

Just thought I would add my 2 cents worth.  It would be great to be paid 10-11-12-13 cents per line (as an employee not IC), but that is not a reality in this job market.  Yes, MTs will take jobs that pay 7 cents per line, but that MTSO is not necessarily underpaying or demeaning the MTs that work for them. 

Bottom line is that you have to do your homework because, yes, there are people who can make a living on 7 cents a line and will take those jobs.   It really depends on your skills and how dedicated you are to making your maximum possible lines per hour.  The MTSO that is offering only 7 cents a line but has easy dictators can actually pay you more per check if you type more lines per hour than an MTSO that is offering 10 cents a line but has horrible quality, ESL dictators, nasty QA, etc and you can barely type 100 lines an hour because of it. 

MY TIP:  When you interview, ask what the approximate minimum and maximum lines per hour that the other MTs that are doing EXACTLY the same accounts that you are going to be doing are achieving per hour/day/pay period.  If the recruiter/MTSO will not tell you that information, you probably don’t want to work there anyway so just terminate the interview before wasting any more of your time.  The slowest MTs are probably new and the ones achieving 200-250-300 lines per hour have been there a long time and know the account(s) forwards and backwards.  If you plan to make that MTSO a long-term employer, you will have a pretty good idea of what you can potentially achieve if you stay there long enough.  Don’t let them tell you the “average” of all the MTs that work for the company or what their perfect employee Suzie Q types.   We all know every account is different, so Suzie Q who just started last week and is already doing 150 lines per hour may have easier accounts than the one you are going to be working on, so that is not very representative of what your account(s) is really going to be like.  Ask specifically about the accounts you will be assigned to and don’t let them distract you.  Again, if they don’t want to tell you, terminate the interview. 

According to the US Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook, in 2004 !!!, the MEDIAN hourly earnings for a Medical Transcriptionist (probably  mostly hospital and office based) in May of 2004, was $13.64 an hour. 

Just for reference, it seems like most MTSOs have a 6000 lines per week minimum production standard which is about 150 line per hour (40 hour week) on average for full-time MTs.   

·        If you are being paid 7 cents per line, you are making a minimum of (150 x 0.07) = $10.50 per hour.

·        If you are being paid 8 cents per line, you are making a minimum of (150 x 0.08) = $12.00 per hour. 

·        If you are being paid 9 cents per line, you are making a minimum of (150 x 0.09) = $13.50 per hour. 

·        If you are being paid 10 cents per line, you are making a minimum of (150 x 0.10) = $15.00 per hour. 

If you are one of the highly trained experienced MT and type 200 lines per hour on average, you are even better off. 

·        If you are being paid 7 cents per line, you are making a minimum of (200 x 0.07) = $14.00 per hour.

·        If you are being paid 8 cents per line, you are making a minimum of (200 x 0.08) = $16.00 per hour. 

·        If you are being paid 9 cents per line, you are making a minimum of (200 x 0.09) = $18.00 per hour. 

·        If you are being paid 10 cents per line, you are making a minimum of (200 x 0.10) = $20.00 per hour. 

The median hourly earnings in 2004 was $13.64 per hour.  That was almost 4 years ago.  With a minimal 2% per year cost of living/inflation increase, by 2008 the median hourly earning should be about $14.76 per hour.       

2004 --------- $13.64

2005 x 2% = $13.91

2006 x 2% = $14.19

2007 x 2% = $14.47

2008 x 2% = $14.76

So, in my humble opinion, if you are an experienced MT with 5 or more years of experience, when you call that MTSO offering 7 cents per line the accounts you will be assigned to should be easy enough so that you can make an average of 210 lines per hour within a relatively short period of time.  If they say their experienced MTs are only doing 175 to 200 lines per hour on average, that MTSO is drastically underpaying their experienced MTs and it is time for you to move on.  If they say their MTs are averaging 250 to 300 lines per hour, then that MTSO may be worth looking into further, even if their starting wage is lower than what you originally thought you should be getting paid. 

I think if WE ALL start doing this, the MTSOs will start to figure out that we are not going to work for companies that underpay our skills and experience.  If enough experienced MTs hang up on these companies, eventually they will figure out that the recruiters/supervisors need to be more honest with us regarding their pay structure and the difficulty of their accounts. 

Some food for thought !! 

More information from the US Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook: 

Medical transcriptionists had median hourly earnings of $13.64 in May 2004. The middle 50 percent earned between $11.50 and $16.32. The lowest 10 percent earned less than $9.67, and the highest 10 percent earned more than $19.11. Median hourly earnings in the industries employing the largest numbers of medical transcriptionists in May 2004 were:

If you want more information, check out the US Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics web page for Medical Transcriptionist. 

http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos271.htm

I see posting all the time saying don't accept 7 cents a line that we are worth at least 9 cents or more.  Well it all depends how the line is calculated.  These national companies usually pay character with or without spaces and some of them have their own counting software where you just have to go with what they say and can't actually verify what is really being counted.  With that said you can be paid 7 cents a line counting Keystrokes (bolding, underline, etc - example the word paid is four characters but if you bold it then it is 8 characters and if you underline too then it is 12 characters) which would usually equal around 9-10 cents or more a line depending on the format of the document.  So it is very misleading when some transcriptionists say 7 cents is insulting when actually it is good if you are getting keystrokes with Abacus and you can actually verify it yourself to make sure the company is paying for all the headers, footers, template, shifts, tabs, spaces, returns, bolding, italic, underling, caps, etc.  You really have to investigate how the line is calculated to be able to compare.  So to all you people that keep saying don't accept it....I bet the ones that have are actually getting paid more than you in the long run!

say you do 1000 lines a day, that is 125 lines an hour x 8 hours (take longer make less an hour)

1000 X 8= 10 bucks an hour,$ 80 per day

 pretty cheap for the skill, speed and accuracy they expect.

If anything we post here keeps someone from getting suckered by a greedy MTSO, or making a bad career mistake, its worth it!  We tell the truth about non-payers, liars, scammers, and the good companies as well.  This board is where company reputations are made and lost - and that is how it should be!  Thank god for this board, where the truth is told and the people who are blowing sunshine up our skirts are outed!

I currently work for one of the larger MT companies that is mostly VR, platform isn't bad, but just not able to get my line count up.  I was curious if it just me or if there were MTs out there who were doing good on VR and glad they have made the switch.  Thanks.