How hard is it to be prepared if
Posted By: cantfigurepeople on 2009-01-03
In Reply to: Anybody get direct deposit in their bank today ????? - TT MTer
your check isn't there for one day? Wow, payday is Monday; if you get it early, great; if not, maybe don't over extend yourself....flame away if you must, but if you are truly living that tightly, maybe another job or backup plan?
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Prepared
You sound like one savvy person. I think any hope that either MDI or Transcend might have for getting trust from MTs would be evaporated with the way this merger was handled. It is obvious that MTs are only things like pieces of equipment. Who knows, someone will invent a faux human with a USB port and they can do away with us altogether. I am still disillusioned that America's most patriotic company could have done this.
Prepared to be bored and much more. sm
I did legal for 9 years. I even went on to get my paralegal degree too. I loved the research, client interviews, etc., but the transcription is boring with a capital B. Tons and tons of formatting and forms as everything is different for each area of law and has to be done just so.
I was good at it, but ended up moving and couldn't find legal. I love MT so much more than legal. So much more interesting and a lot more money.
If you think healthcare is a tough field, wait until you deal with lawyers. If you want to stay at home and If you're going to go legal, study court reporting. That's where the interesting stuff is and the big bucks. Most legal transcription is inhouse so that the lawyers can have you schedule, answer phones, greet clients, take care of their trailing dockets AND do the transcription which they generally crab about if it's not done in a timely fashion even though the phone rings off the hook all day.
And if you work for a lawyer inhouse, buy suits, nice shoes and a briefcase (with an extra pair of nylons in case you get a run) and make sure your car doesn't look bad next to their caddy. They generally don't like that. :)
I did have one really great lawyer I worked for that didn't really care about all of that, but he also didn't really care about paying all that much.
Good luck!
and p.s. be prepared to hear from
*supposed* employees who will tell you it isn't so. They are lying and they are getting paid to lie. They know that American MTs are getting wise to being used by them.
Don't accept anything less than $50K and be prepared
,,,
Be prepared to be let go if you don't comply.
/
Be prepared to run out of work
a lot. Feast or famine. If you're planning to get that $1500 signon bonus, forget it. The indians get all the jobs at night, nary a report left for an American to do.
Be prepared to find
another job. I don't believe this can be done anonymously, and it will probably also have tax implications for you on past tax returns.
I am prepared not to break the law
Among other things.
Will I need to file past taxes? Yeah. But I've only worked for this company for a year, so it's not that big of a deal for me.
Will it mean I have to pay MORE in taxes? VERY HIGHLY unlikely. However, even if I do, it's worth it to me.
Why? Because I would prefer to stay inside the law.
There are several reasons why it's a Very Bad Thing for companies to willfully misclassify employees as independent contractors. The least of which is that misclassification - on average - costs taxpayers money.
Second, and most importantly, because so many companies are willing to dramatically uneven the playing field ILLEGALLY, it leaves VERY little room for success for an honest company willing to provide quality service and pay their employees accordingly.
Being complicit in the cheating of one company SCREWS the majority of all other transcriptionists.
Are you really so selfish to be a cog in this machine? For what cannot be much more than a few dollars a paycheck, when you start figuring in the tax issue and the lack of benefits?
If we're going to have rules, EVERYONE should have to play by them. Or we should get rid of the rules ... and then see what happens.
Be prepared to go on welfare. (SM)
Most of the regions for Transcend are fairly good but there are a couple that the managers consistently overhire and leave us with no work. My manager and team leads do not care whether I eat or not or whether I have insurance because we have no work, but some of my friends tell me they have more work than they can do, so I guess it is just the luck of the draw. Too bad they keep a couple of bad eggs to make things stinky for some of us. One thing I learned a long time ago - do not complain or you get labeled as a complainer and then the next step is out the door. They are heartless.
If you go to the docs, be prepared to lose your job.
Although how much can that matter if you are not being paid anyway!!! I personally have never had this happen to me, but I can see where it could cause major problems on many levels (especially if you have automatic bank withdrawals). I would have to consider - Is it the client's fault? Is the company not managing money correctly? Does this happen often?
It is your employer's place to investigate this problem with the client, not you. I would strongly suggest that you not go directly to the client unless you have reached your limit with the company and no longer wish to be employed by them. Have they actually broken their contract agreement with you. If so, then I say it is every man for himself so to speak.
Be prepared to give a schedule and stick to it.
In my personal experirence, I was titled IC but let me tell you, if I was not signed on DURING THE SET HOURS I WAS ASKED TO PROVIDE, EMAILS AND CALLS ENSUED.
IC? Not so much. More like employee without employees, IMO.
Sincerely, I do hope you're prepared to work for 8 cpl now
Apparently MDI was one of the companies that paid their experienced MTs pretty well.
With the merge, you'll be making less eventually. If you quit and look for a new job, you'll be making less, way less, than you were making at MDI.
I'm another one who's BTDT, too. I went from making 11 cpl to now making 8 cpl. I tried HARD to find any company, obscure to well known, that will start off more than that. Couldn't find 'em. Probably won't ever go up, either.
Just sayin' that you should be prepared to budget your living costs for the amount of money you'll be missing each month compared to what you were making at MDI. It's awful, I know, been through it. Going to school now to do something else, getting out.
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.
It is hard!
My first two children, who are 11 months apart, made it very difficult to work at home. They are 8 and 9 now... and they are SO easy now... because they play with their neighborhood kids a lot and dont really bother me much. however, I just had a baby and she is very demanding, of course, like all babies are. You cant neglect them.... so you have to squeeze in your time here and there... Sometimes I do 10 minutes here, 20 minutes there, as much as I can throughout the day. Then when my hsuband is home I will work a pretty long stretch... I also work at night to finish up my work for the day. It is hard, very hard. I feel like I am working ALL the time... Because even when you are not working, it is hanging over your head and you end up being stressed, wondering if you will be able to get the work done on time.
My first two children will always remember their childhood as their mom working all the time.. because that is how it feels.
My husband goes to work, puts in his nine hours and comes home and it is all over...
If I could afford day care they would definitely be enrolled.
Hard to believe . . .
I believe you hit the proverbial nail on the head there when you asked if Larry deliberately minimized the percentage to be deceptive . . .
Hard to get a job now, only very low sm
paying companies hiring.
It's going to be hard to believe this since they've already
Or they'll change it again once it suits their purpose.
Think long and hard.
Do you want to work for a company that doesn't pay any down time for a platform that goes down almost every day? Even when it's working, it has significant sound quality problems. Do you want to wait an entire year before getting even one minute of PTO? Account instructions that are pages and pages long, very confusing and poorly written? Do you want to do VR or transcribe? Did they mention their goal of getting most if not all accounts on voice recognition, and then they're going to pay you roughly half of what they promised you now?
A higher line rate is only good if you can get lines, don't run out of work and work a platform that's Transcriptionist friendly and doesn't go down every other hour. Unfortunately, you're not going to find those things at Transcend. Maybe they're hiring you to replace me because I couldn't take it any longer and accepted a job offer for what seemed like less money, but I feel I'll wind up making more if I don't have to deal with all the problems I just mentioned.
They pay every other Friday. How hard is that
duh!
A LITTLE hard to understand????
Did you ever figure out how much you would have been paid on the report you just edited and ALMOST COMPLETELY RETYPED compared to your editing pay????
Why is it so hard to get speed
with that company, are they on a slow system or something?
the lines are hard
x
So easy to say, so hard to do. If you were going to do
it, you would have already. It is so much easier to bash companies and service owners than to do it yourself. Just like armchair quarterbacks. If you had the time and talent to do it better yourself, wouldn't you?
I don't think they are hard to learn, but they are much more
technical in the terminology, lots of equipment and procedure names that change all the time. It seems that each time a new batch of doctors come in that the terminology is different. They come from other parts of the country/world and they used different equipment or different techniques. Lots of stuff to look up - just like the new drugs.
JLG did, but it was so ridiculously hard that
I turned them down flat. Some places expect you to know things only a dr would!
Many posts about it being very hard to get
lines because of the way they count them, supposed deducts for low QA, frequently switched from one account to another, they are in the process of training MTs in Trinidad, so obviously they support offshoring.
That's extremely hard to believe
xx
The ESRs are really hard, but you won't get them sm
on the low level 3 ER accounts. Those are really easy. If I were you, I would test for level 4. Much more potential for money. What cpl did they offer you?
Hard decision.......
My heart would be heavy, but if it is inside information you probably are thought to keep it confidential NO MATTER WHAT, just like if you typed a report on your neighbor and found out they had HIV----IT IS CONFIDENTIAL. I think you should keep quiet about it, even though it will hurt your heart.
Is it hard to get lines in.
or is it just me. I have been typing all day and only have 300 lines. I am using their Merit system. At my other job, usually after 4 hours I have 500 to 600 lines. Maybe I am just not used to their plateform yet. Good thing I am still on hourly. I would starve to death if I were on line count. 
It is hard to get lines anyway, but....
It is easier for a company to manipulate lines if you have to go to the Dicataphone web site you get your bulk lines, with reports not broken down, i.e., 1000 lines, 25 reports. At least if you can verify you have 25 reports on their line counter and what you wrote down, you can always copy your reports from Ex-Text (it is word based), go into your Word (outside of Ex-Text) and verify the line counts, maybe spot check them, or you can ask your trainer how to check the line count after you have finished it and click on the doctor or the patient, it gives the line count for that job. (to me a lot of wasted time but it is a way to verify). I'm sorry, I do not trust a company who will not let you verify the # of reports with the amount of lines you have done. What if 2 to 3 reports are dropped? You have no way of telling them that report did not show up on your line count. That means your WORKED FREE, and they got the total line count, or someone else redid your report.
I found if I had to go the Dictaphone web site to get my conglomerate line count for the day, at the end of the pay period and I got my check I was usually shocked, it was way lower than if I can go into Sessions, the same screen you click on to go into the demographics. There is shows how many reports (the # of reports for that specific time and the line count) you have done and the total lines and it is quick.
There must be a reason some companies don't use it and I think it is because they know you can't verify how many reports you have done. To me that is dishonest with a capital D.
You will find with most companies using Ex-Text that Sessions is blocked for your use, thus, you cannot get the # of reports you have done in a day.
It's a hard time for all of us
I know every one of us involved is very torn, stressed out and I think we should cut one another some slack.
A big huge to all my fellow DRCer's. RIP, DRC.
Well sir then just let everybody learn the hard way
Give it a try, see if we're all lying and making this up. There are simply too many people that can confirm the same facts my dear. You will hear the same story over and over and over again. This is such a big fat lie that you're telling. I hope nobody buys into it.
It's really not hard to understand (sm)
When people pitch in and help, they get within the TAT again (especially at the end of a pay period) It's not rocket science.
Are you that hard up for a job? Maybe OSi will suit you.
good luck
You are trying a little too hard. Give it
xx
Thanks so much...As usual trying to do it the hard way
xx
old habits die hard
I have the {BKSP}-year-old expansion too, but I used to work on DQS and I just cannot get used to having to put the space between the number and yo. I add each age as they come up in reports, not actually entering 1 - 105. I agree that would be painful!
hard drive
If you just delete the icon or link to it, yes, it will still be on your hard drive. If you go into Control Panel and Remove Program it will be deleted from the hard drive.
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