I couldn't agree more...it was beyond ridiculous.

• Have you noticed not one Focus ad - posted today!!! yippeeee - nm
  • I couldn't agree more...it was beyond ridiculous. - double yippie from me!

The messages you are viewing are archived/old.
To view latest messages and participate in discussions, select the boards given in left menu

I worked for MQ for 6 years,  and they went from bad to worse. I am glad I do not work there anymore. I worked every weekend (my choice) and almost every holiday for them. They do not give you any differential for working w/e or holidays and will try to screw you out of any $$ they possibly can.  After 6 years, no one even said thank you, good luck..nothing!!!  I now work for a company that actually appreciates my work!

Google is not a reliable source for spellings, terminology, drugs, etc.

I have had MTs tell me but I found it on google

and especially with getting the media involved. Nothing is going to happen until people realize what is happening to their personal information. It is just now coming to the forefront, thanks to the media, the reality and effect of what happens to our personal information when all of these companies have access to it and the result thereof. It's on television every time we turn around; our personal information being *out there* and in the hands of who knows who, stolen and disseminated in whatever way someone or some company chooses. As well, physicians truly need to understand that companies are outsourcing (I don't believe for a moment that most of them understand this fact). That aside, the effect on the lives and work of the American MT is something that needs to be known, and the media is the only way the information is going to be released to the general public. Using American MTs is the only way this information is *safe*, to so speak.

Additionally, as you state, using us to correct all of the mistakes made by the client in ADT and not paying us for it is so absurd, I am sick to death of it myself. I run across it every day (and MQ (for whom I work doesn't pay us, either). On one account I have, in particular, virtually nothing matches in ADT and if we don't get it correctly, it IS the fault of the MT, no matter what (??). We get email after email about it from out PS on up. Also, everything is done to lessen the line count, no matter how awful it looks. ASR keeps lessening our pay. Everything is beginning to look as if it were done by Indians or Pakistanis, etc., and it's not as if I have anything against those people, in case anyone wants to jump on me for that statement, other than they are being given our jobs. However, the work is substandard.

As an aside, can you think of any better way for a terrorist organization to infiltrate?

but was anal retentive when it came to punctuation.  You would have a report with 10 blanks in it because of poor sound quality, and he wouldn't fill in one blank, but he had put commas all throughout your report, or taken apostrophes out, etc. and he wasn't correct in his punctuation a lot of the time.   Several of the MTs complained about him and asked to not have him do their QA, so he was demoted from QA to an MT.  Well, as I said earlier, he couldn't fill in a blank.  I saw a couple of his reports and there was blank after blank in reports that I had no trouble with at all.  He also didn't proof his reports because he would have inapproriate/incorrect expansions in them.  Not sure if he left on his own, or didn't really have a choice.  Anyway, talk to your supervisor.  Maybe this person is just on a power trip, knows you are new and wants to train you to do it her way, even if your way isn't incorrect.  I think punctuation is a valid issue, but if it doesn't change the integrity of the report and there are no other errors it shouldn't be flagged by QA.    You could also take into account her corrections and maybe try to use a few more commas, etc. and that might help.  

I received an email today regarding an employment application I had submitted some time ago.  I currently work as an IC and am very happy with my job, so the application must have been submitted at least 6 months ago.  First of all, the email does not state the name of the company that I supposedly applied to.  It is three sentences long and states that they are looking for ICs to work from home.  They will pay 6.5 cpl without spaces!  Attached is a list of their computer requirements.  The email states that if I meet the requirements to contact them and they will direct me to their testing site.

I have about 20 years of experience as an MT.  What is going on with this field that a company thinks that 6.5 cpl is a respectable rate for a seasoned MT?  Not to mention not putting the name of the company in the email...so I don't even know who I'm dealing with.  And, not paying for spaces?!?!?  I will not work for a company that does not pay for spaces.  A space is a keystroke.  It should be counted.  Spaces don't get into a document by magic!!

I have a good mind to respond to this email and tell them exactly what I think of their offer, but then again, it probably wouldn't do a bit of good.

I have to say that I used to be MTSO and while I was not rich, I definitely made more than the people who worked for me...if you don't, even part of the time, then you are doing something wrong and why be in business? And yes, most of the MTSOs that I know (and I do know 5 of them right in my general area) do live in the very best neighorhoods, have 5000 sq foot houses, and if not vacations homes, then quite a bit of money in the bank.

You're not the only person I've heard say this and it's a shame this is happening.  I realize we MTs cannot expect to be paid higher wages when the services are suffering as well. 

But I see too many ways for this whole mess the transcription profession finds itself in now to just fail and do a turnaround.  The government insists on privacy protection of medical records, then allows us to send them overseas with little if any regulation.  What about taxes and Social Security loss due to this?  The Department of Labor gives us our own classification (a bit of recognition for us) but our pay is not on par with other professions in the same classification.  AAMT wants certification to be mandatory but what's the incentive to study and work so hard for it if it doesn't make a much more substantial increase in our salaries than a penny a line? Yes, that can add up, but it should be more, way more.  Physicians want cheap rates with excellent quality but how many qualified MTs are willing to work for pennies before feeling used, frustrated, burned out?  How many young people are willing to enter a profession with such low wages and have to work hard and wait years to achieve even that?  

In the end, I don't see how all this VR and offshoring and underbidding it is going to benefit anyone except lawyers who will profit from suits brought about by privacy violations, malpractice suits due to the result of physicians depending on missing and/or wrong information in the medical record, misplaced records, dictation getting lost in the process of transfer between here and there, etc.  How many service owners will want to continue making as little profit as they do now (small ones)?  I also see coming an overall shortage of qualified MTs who can understand the American physicians who are impossible dictators and the ESLs.   What incentive do the new MTs have to hang in there and strive for this other than a sense of accomplishment but that doesn't pay the bills.  Yes, if you work long hours and/or multiple jobs you can do well, but is this what it has come down to?  And how many will be willing to do this for any length of time when they have other options?

It's all going too fast to prevent errors, serious errors.  I think we will be needed again, hopefully paid a higher salary again like so many years ago, but not until a tragedy happens and America wakes up to how these allegedly cost-saving methods of doing medical transcription is hurting the economy and the physicians start getting only what they are willing to pay for.  There are the lives of the human beings (patients) involved here.  This isn't about producing just a product (like a garment) in another country.   Medical transcription involves too many people in too many areas of medicine to let it totally falter.  Something has to give at some point.

One thing I'd like to see is for the insurance companies to raise the fees for physicians and services who offshore since their transcription is more prone to error than if it was done by a knowledgeable native American MT who knows our language, and also because it leaves the country thereby jeopardizing the patient's protection and privacy since these other countries do not have the security measures that America does. 

I'm that person.  This is a frivilous lawsuit and will be proven as such.