Hard to do, when the per-line pay is so low. Give us
Posted By: a better wage, & you'll see better work. on 2009-01-05
In Reply to: I see so many mistakes in reports.. - amen!
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You are trying a little too hard. Give it
xx
Are the goals hard to meet? How long do they give you to get there? (nm)
/
It is hard to give Spheris facts, since there are multiple units to it. Leave
zz
Do you find it hard to get your line count in daily? sm
And the recruiter told me that they did not mind you not working a strict daily shift as long as you got your line count in -do you find this to be true? Thanks for your information!
It's hard to explain. We got a certain line count reading
on the hospital system, which is what we thought we were paid for. Then, we were told not to use that number, but to go to the site in which TT counts the lines, and the money was considerably less. We never knew how they figured the lines or why it was lower. I tried to work harder to make up for it but the work kept disappearing during my shift, so I tried to work late at night but it became too difficult to make up for the lost line count, and also to make up for no work.
Very nice but hard to get line count due to lack of work...nm
s
I agree - hard to get decent line count with ExText...sm
Good to know other people are having the same issue as I thought I was just getting slower in my old age! Seems like I can do almost twice as much with DocQScribe and escription.
They really dont pay enough for having most ESL accounts. Hard to get a good line count
and then to only make 8 cpl. It really is not worth it. Chartscript is not productive in my opinion.
TS has very outdated platform, and it's very hard to get a good daily line count. NMout
x
Does Keystrokes give line raises. If so, when and how much.
Very interested
Where do you get that Scribe does not give you a line count??
I have been with Transportal for over 6 months and NEVER have I not been able to see my line count instantly at anytime I wanted. The ONLY exception to this is if a file is pending in QA it does not show until QA has completed it. This is not new within the last few weeks. It has been this way since January at least since I was hired.
It sounds to me like possibly you did not stay long enough to learn your account nor how to use the software and give it the full dedication it takes to learn all aspects.
I can easily type 250-300 lph when I give it my full dedication and am having a good day. I can say I have major health issues and Transportal has been a WONDERFUL company to work for for me. I do wish the pay was a little higher but I am thankful not to have an account full of ESLs day in and out too so I feel that compensates somewhat. I am an IC and I have NEVER been questioned about my work hours EVER and I have worked under 2 account managers, both beginning with a J. They are exceptional. Some weeks I work days, some weeks I work nights. I work whenever I can with no questions asked. Just as your work schedule may not be the same as everyone else, account managers have their schedules that work for them as well. Who cares when they upload the work, you have work don't you? If the files are already late on TAT, it doesn't mean you HAVE to stay up all night doing them. It means the entire acct is most likely out of TAT and working the oldest first. No, I am not in management. I am merely a team player, IC MT as stated, and I realize what it takes to keep the work flowing and the account happy. I hate seeing someone come on here and bash a wonderful place to work just because it may not have worked for them or because they didn't stick around to figure it out. If you had software issues, why didn't you ask how it worked? They should do more info regarding the use of the software but most experienced MTs can figure it out as it is that simple to use.
Take everything you see with a grain of salt for sure on this one. Free feel to email me if you have any further questions. Out of 15 years experience, I have never been more satisfied with an account, company, or team lead with the exception of the good ole days and basic Word without platforms. With any platform, you have to do at least some demographic work and that is the wave of the future so you might as well get used to it and thank Obama for pushing electronic medical records. At least we are still typing rather than going to full EMR or VR or editing work from you know where. I am glad you left though, leaves more work for me, YEAH!! Also, I have NEVER received a rude email EVER from anyone within this company.
Ok, so give some examples then. I can attest that more than less are paying by the line
o
Control i does not give us the exact line count where
we work. We do not get paid for everything that control i would show. It has recently been fixed so that we can use control i, but the line shown there is not what we will get paid for. We have to go to ichart to get our *true* line count. Ichart often is very slow and/or down ! There is a big difference in the control i line count and what we get paid for. We also have no way to see the reports that we have done with the exact line count for that report, nor any report that shows us the job numbers we transcribed EVER! We are even blocked from the function that shows the prior report that we did. Control i does absolutely no good if it is not a correct line count (paycheck-wise). The only thing that I see good out of it with Transtech is that it does show the number of reports that I have transcribed so that I can compare it with my handwritten tablet of jobs, but it does not show each and every report number or line count for each report. The only way we could that is to look at Ichart at the end of each job which is very time consuming since it is so very SLOW ! But still no job numbers.
Just curious...do they give you a higher line rate? nm
Are you required to give feedback even though paid by the line?
If so, I encourage all QA folks to STOP taking these by the line QA positions when you are required to spend your time providing feedback for which you are not paid. Every company that does this is cheating you. And there is absolutely no way I would QA on DQS/QASAR while being paid by the line. Rip off.
What companies give an accurate EXText line count?
Either an accurate count or the option to check your own!
Wanna give the rest of us instructions on how to make a line count like that, aside from doing all
m
Slow, does not give line counts, if you accidently send on before done, have to find TL to
:}
Then you are a line leader taking what you want to type, the rest of take what your leave, Give me
Nm
"warned" by someone who won't give facts or sign her name. Give me a break! nm
x
Nationals give at least a week to learn program. Give
xx
A line is a line is a line. Doesn't matter if we are talking about radiology or acute care.
1600 is not a fair minimum requirement. Sure you can achieve 1600, it shouldn't be the required minimum.
They used to give out $25 Amex cheques -- give them time. :-) nm
Means a line is a line is a line, even if it only has one word on the line
it is considered a line.
I get what you are all saying about them not having to give give you work, but...
I guess I just figure that as an IC, I am basically my own business and it is my responsibility to make sure that the work is done when it should be. I just think that if the standard of the company is 24 hour TAT then that is what I am agreeing to do when they hire me. There are advantages for both of us to the IC senerio, they do not have to pay benefits, or take care of collecting and reporting the taxes, and I have to adhear to the 24 hour TAT (or what every thier standards are) but can do that during hours that are convenient to me. Of course it is better for the company if they know exactly when I am going to be sitting at my desk and typing that is why they have the option of hiring employees. Just my opinion and wanting things to be like they used to be.. I guess I have to get out of my time warp or look a little harder for a company who really knows what IC status means.
"a line is a line" means gross line.
Gross line is a line, no matter how long or short.
Yes to old reports! Their ExText has all the regular functions except line counts are done on line
s
Thanks for the info! Do you *feel* like you make more with a gross line v. character line? (nm)
Oh, they make money off us. Line rate is 17 cents a gross line.nm
z
Keystrokes has very few accts on line using ExText. Most use Cphones/2nd line. Lots of Rad
s
Could someone help me with the figuring out of gross line versus character line? sm
I have generally been paid by character line, 65-character line. Now, I have had job opportunities offering to pay gross line but it like 3 cents cheaper than what I am being paid now. A few places I have read that gross line is MUCH better, but is it much better if the pay is so much lower? Please explain how it works or equals out. This position has offered me 6 cents per gross line - what would that equal out to in character lines? Thanks...so confused...
Spaces are not taken into account with gross lines....a line is a line...sm
if there seven words on a line.
or two
one
or a full line of typing...all of the companies that I have worked for define a gross line as 1 inch margins, 12 pt courier font....does not matter what we type in margins or font.....we convert all reports to the 1 inch margins and courier 12 font and then count the lines. not the blank spaces between the lines.
Hope this helps.
I left MQ for TT. The base line rate was less at TT, but overall I make more per line with the
shift differential (I work second shift) and the incentive plan (I have never once failed to make at least an extra half cent per line on incentives - most of the time a penny). I was scared to death to make that move, as I had been with MQ since back in the Transcriptions Limited days. I have to say, though, that it was the best career move I have ever made and I have never, not once, regretted it.
I hope that was of some help.
15 years ago, I charged .22 per line to big accounts. Now I have been forced down to .13 per line.
This is in part due to offshore companies, in part due to newbies coming in and underbidding to get an account but not being able to service it and then the account expecting everyone else to meet that price. The market is being driven down by many forces, and it is not pretty. I used to pay .14 per line (gross line too) and now pay my subs 0.08. It is not something I wanted to do, but something that was necessary. With only 15 MTs, I feel the squeeze more than some of the big companies out there, but cannot grow and keep up the same standards.
Healthcare in general is not the money-maker it once was, and transcription has taken a hard hit over the years.
Line counts - the lower the line count requirements
the harder the account and problems with trying to get production off the platform the company uses.
I see they pay on a VBC line. Isn't that a huge paycut from a 65-char. line with spaces? nm
x
Actually, SBC does allow it. I had my line changed to a business line and talked with a sm
supervisor who okayed it. As long as I am listening to voice files, and not one computer talking to another, faxing, etc., it is within their guidelines. :-)
Ask what is a line. I was offered 6 clp for a 42 black character line sm
that seemed to strange, but really it was not so bad. Came out pretty close to a 65 k/s line at 8.5 to 9.
Hard to say...
In my experience, one minute of dictation is roughly equivalent to 10 lines of transcription, so, approximately 180 minutes of dictation, and figuring an average length of a report at around 3 minutes, that's probably around 60 reports.
Hard to say
what the situation is. It is fairly common to have times here and there where there is no work in this business due to many different things. The company may have over hired and don't have enough work. Do you work on clinic or acute care. If clinic and you work on only one account, is it possible a doctor is out of town? There could be many different reasons, although I think it is somewhat strange that they can predict that there will be no work at all for you for several days (this might make me a little suspicious). Might not hurt to try to find another part-time position to fill in the gaps.
it is hard
to say that our profession is not going to exist. I see a high demand for experienced MTs. If you look on the occupational outlook handbook, it even says that there is going to be greater than average demand for MTs. I copied and pasted below what it says.
Contracting out transcription work overseas and advancements in speech recognition technology are not expected to significantly reduce the need for well-trained medical transcriptionists. Outsourcing transcription work abroad—to countries such as India, Pakistan, Philippines, and the Caribbean—has grown more popular as transmitting confidential health information over the Internet has become more secure; however, the demand for overseas transcription services is expected only to supplement the demand for well-trained domestic medical transcriptionists. In addition, reports transcribed by overseas medical transcription services usually require editing for accuracy by domestic medical transcriptionists before they meet domestic quality standards. Speech-recognition technology allows physicians and other health professionals to dictate medical reports to a computer that immediately creates an electronic document. In spite of the advances in this technology, the software has been slow to grasp and analyze the human voice and the English language, and the medical vernacular with all its diversity. As a result, there will continue to be a need for skilled medical transcriptionists to identify and appropriately edit the inevitable errors created by speech recognition systems, and to create a final document.
JLG hard?
If you thought the JLG phone test was hard, you are in for a rude awakening in the MT field. They are standard questions you would know if you have any experience.
Trying hard
I'm trying to like Amphion, but the platform is awful. If I could ever get the chance to type, I could really get a good line count, but the filling in the DI screen and constant looking up physicians is killing me. I kept track over one hour, and I had to look up 14 doctors' names and numbers and cc them. And this is going into a separate window and then coming back to the chart, not using just a keystroke to look them up. I love the dictators. They're very clear, and the supervisors are adequate, not overly helpful, but pretty nice. Right now, I'm struggling to make $10 an hour.
Yes, hard at first but
you get used to it. I dropped 2 cents a line, but the company part of the taxes worked out equally. At least I don't have to pay in the quarterly taxes anymore! Not as much freedom but if you are with a good company it helps.
Not that hard
I do the acute care on 2 accounts. What I find with Keystrokes is the accounts I do are not 50/50 ESL. I don't mind ESLs but something is fishy with other companies I have worked for when I get over 50% ESL. I am not making a good living. I can't do it with 90% ESLs and I have 17 years experience.
I am now making a GOOD living and enjoy going to work every day. I have ESLs but they are the average ESLs, not every other dictation and the accent so thick I despair.
I have some hard dictators but I am making a good living and I haven't for over 5 years. I am also not the fastest typist but I am picky, and I am still making a good living. I work on Ex-Text and the Control I is not blocked. That being the case I can check constantly if I want. I am averagin between 1500 and 1700 lines if I turn the TV off, concentrate and work. Like I said, I am not the fastest typist, but I can live with those lines.
Don't be too hard on yourself, we
spend a lot of time researching words/equipment, looking up CC docs, checking old reports to get proper dictation, etc. You have to figure that in.
It really is hard to believe...
I have been gone now for at least a month, and I cant believe how unaffected my life has been. I mean, I wouldnt leave MQ because I was afraid that I would have to start all over again and worry more about income, etc., etc. Well, stupid me, I shoulda, shoulda, ad. infinitum...
Hard to believe.
nm
not hard
The test was just a general test but beware. I took it along with two friends of mine and they told all of us we failed (we took it for QA/QC) and offered us by line VR jobs instead of hourly. Then a month later, got called back for an interview for QA, then the next week told they hired somebody else. Then I got an email asking if I was still interested in a position. I didn't even bother to answer. There's got to be a reason they are always hiring for every position.
I tried really hard to believe this, but SM
I'm still trying to get past why anyone there would spend all that time and energy doing something like this when they could have just let you go. They don't have to have cause to let you go.
Before you call me a cheerleader for All Type, know that I have my own not-so-pleasant experience with them. I just don't believe they (or any company) has the amount of time to do something like this. Bottom line. If you are as good as you say you are, then you should be employed by the beginning of next week. Don't waste any more time on this, just apply to some companies.
What is so hard to think out?
OP said people letting work go VR WITHOUT correcting it because otherwise they would be DOCKED. Again, I would not work at any place that wanted to dock my money and secondly you are not much of an MT to just let any and all mistakes go thru so you can make the $$. Oh, by the way hubby NEVER tells me or else.
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