I certainly feel your pain/frustration

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thinking or believing that the company you work for is your friend. I most certainly have experienced this same stabbing pain and have learned never to fall prey to those emotions again. I started with a small local company where you actually saw the owners face to face, and they were lying dogs in the end - complete betrayal over a $$$. They sold to a company, who sold to a company, who sold to a company, and each one lied to all the MTs over and over again. You have to have yourself covered, have 2 jobs, make sure your bank account is padded - whatever you have to do. But get rid of the emotions that any company is your friend. As Dr. Phil would say, take your power back. This is business and its cut-throat in America these days in any industry.

I am currently working full-time at a hospital and looking for a part-time position as an independent contractor.  I have been transcribing for 33 years, so I have seen the ups and lately downs in medical transcription.

As an independent contractor, I am not going to accept less than 10 cpl, and I actually believe with my experience, I may be able to hold out for something higher.

I guess my advice which is given with the best intentions would be dependent on if you need benefits.  If you need benefits, you may be able to or have to accept less than 10 cpl, but I feel with your experience, that you definitely deserve at least 10 cpl as an employee.

Two hospitals in my area offer great benefits and pay 10 cpl during the week with a weekend bonus of up to 5 cpl! Currently, I am making an hourly wage with incentive bonus (if you want to call it that).  We have had 3 drops in our incentive in less than a year. I have gone from being fairly comfortable to barely making it, and actually have had to move.

I envy your 300 lines an hour! I average about 209, but our work is manually assigned to us and sometimes being experienced means you are given the hardest work.

Remember, you have a lot to offer a transcription company...your experience which is worth its weight in gold. You are an assest to the company and especially to the hospital which they service. Good Luck and it is nice to say Hi to an OLDBIE? Is that what we are??

Keep in touch with me if you like via private e-mail. I would love to help and would like your help also!

I have 4 kids ranging from 7 to 18.  Obviously the 18 yo can fend for himself as can my 17 yo, but the youngest two, 7 and 8, cannot.  They have a habit of picking up every bug known to man and always seem to get the worse of everything.  I am an IC as well, but have to work and also have a boss who when I cannot work, will give the work away and then I have to fight to get it back, which means normally waiting until the person that took over has to take time off. 

But, is what I have done, is keep the kids on the couch, set them up all comfy and they are within hearing distance.  I have given them walkie-talkies and they call if they need something, going to vomit, etc.  I check on them frequently as well.  I make sure to take a lunch break and spend that time cuddling with them.  If they aren't too bad like the last bout of chicken pox (even with the shot!), I have a table set up in my office that they can come in and color, etc and be with me. 

Keep your head up, you are Super Mom as we all are and things will work out in the end. 

anon...very, very frustrating these days in the MT world.  Unfortunately these company's true colors don't come shining through until you've experienced it first hand.  Best of luck to you.  Don't wait for things to get better as problems like this usually fall upon deaf ears. 

I am getting a little worried too.  If you can, wait until after Labor Day before you make such a major decision just in case it is simply last minute vacations before the kids go back to school.  I hope that will take care of some of it.  Good luck!

We all feel like that from time to time, but it doesn't matter whether you are an MT or working in any other profession - some days a job is just a job.  You sound like you work for a company like I did.  Too much management getting in the way.  That said, look at it this way.  At one point in my career I made 0.075 cpl for many years (raises unheard of).  I took that rate and turned it into $40,000 a year because I typed by fingers to the bone.  Minimum line count of 1,200 was not enough for me, but some people will only type the minimum and then quit. This is where their problem is.  It's called ambition.  Of course the pay will be low if you quit at 1,200 lines.  Being an MT for 5-10-15 years you certainly should be typing more than that.  If you are not, and it is not YOUR fault, but because of company dynamics, it is time to find a company and account that helps you reach your full potential.  Please do not cheat yourself.  The first thing I would do is not answer phone calls or e mail during your shift (do this before or after) because you are going to have enough to deal with to slow you down while you are working as you described. 

I do not move from company to company, never have, but I certainly would if I felt like I could do better than what is being offered to me, for whatever reason.  Again, no one is going to take care of you - except you, so don't cheat yourself.  Since you already have a job - go with the flow until you find what is absolutely perfect for you and you can make lots of $$ no matter what the rate ( to a degree of course).  It would be nice if we could all make 11 cpl or better.  I never have.  I have found a company and account that is perfect for me, making good money and love the work.  The kicker is, I would have taken that job for 7 cpl and because I am very good in that specialty - I could still make a decent living with it.  Don't go jumping at the first thing offered to you.  Think about it - and yourself.  What is it that you do best as an MT.  That's what you look for.  Being at this for 15 years, maybe you should just throw in the towel where you are but I think you do have the potential for something else.  Go for it - and good luck to you. 

I am just frustrated and needed to vent, and I am sure somewhere someone else has gone through this as well...

Here goes..

My company has been low or out of work several times this pay period.  We first get email after email asking us to please flex our hours and then we get an email asking us to not take work quickly so that we can share among the team the work that is there.

I am okay with flexing once or twice during a pay period, but this has been several times now and I frankly set my schedule because I can't work other times... because I have things I am doing then.  It makes me kind of annoyed that they assume that no one has anything else to do and can just change time around willy nilly more than a couple times in a pay period.  I asked for a third account and got the run around, but obviously they have too many MTs on the account most of the time or something.

The second thing irritates me because although I understand the team mentality I am not getting team pay and I feel like if there's very little work than I want what I can get my hands on to have the money for my family.  I feel like why should I worry about other people not working as much as I would not want them to be worrying about me.  Its not our responsibility as MTs to provide each other work as the expense of our own families.  Now if we were being paid as a team, then I would only take a couple jobs and leave the rest for the other team members.  I also get irritated at this because there are a bunch of people who never show up until the end of the pay period and no one seems to do anything about them.

Am I upset over nothing or would you guys be upset too?  In the past couple months I have seen my account go from 70/30 VR to 90/10 VR too, so I am losing money on those reports I used to type.  I asked for an account where I could type and was met with no information whatsoever.  The only thing they wanted to do was change my queuing for other worktypes, except I work 4 hours part time and by the time I get through the editing stuff, the typing stuff is either gone already (I don't know how those people get their queues where they can get the typing reports) or I have to leave because its the end of my shift and I have other things I need to do.

Anyways, just wanted to let that out as I am really frustrated.

Anybody out there still employed with Transcend, who is frustrated right now????   Well, I am for sure.  Seems no matter how hard you try or how much effort you put into correcting the errors in report, they still complain about quality.  Maybe it is this way everywhere, I don't know.  I am just really frustrated, especially because their pay is pretty bad.  Only 4 cpl for editing jobs.  I spent all day doing editing jobs and I figure I made about $40 that day.  Wow, then I can plan on making about #200 a week or so.  I have tried so hard to stay the course and keep hoping things will get better, but so far they are not. 

Anybody out there want to add a comment.