I have been in your shoes and perhaps worse sm
Posted By: Lyndia on 2008-01-11
In Reply to: Bad Business - bad business
You don't need to explain yourself. You are here with a complaint about something a recruiter said to you, not so that others can pounce on you for not handling your personal difficulties! OF COURSE this didn't happen overnight and OF COURSE you have been working on it. I have had this very thing happen and it took many months to get ahead of it, but I did. I have faith that you can too.
I hang out here and I hope that like several others, I have a voice that is a voice of reason, maturity with more than a little heart in it. (Okay, so I am not the whiz kid of tech issues and some of you call me verbose and a braggart and I don't care.) Some days I come on here and think whew! Some of us need to go back to kindergarten and learn how to get along with others, learn to share, root for home team, share the ropes, hug our neighbors when they need it and understand that if we like our boo boos kissed better, then we need to do some boo boo kissin' too.
Now, I don't know about some of you with cold hearts and nasty fingers...but my mom told me several things growing up and I don't forget them even if I am olderer than dirt:
--if you can't say something nice, keep your mouth shut.
--you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.
--if you want a friend, be a friend.
--if you hang your dirty laundry out to dry, it isn't going to get any cleaner.
--life gives you lemons, make lemonade.
--what goes around comes around.
I especially believe in that last one. I used to be a very angry, bitter person and I used to lash out and be nasty. Then I got sick. Then I came as close to dying as I want to get for a very long time yet. I don't have my health and I might not have much time left either. I have grown thin and frail though I am not yet 50. I woke up one morning while I was recuperating and decided that since my life was going to be shorter than I thought, so I had better shape up before I got shipped out for good. I changed my attitude and I changed my life.
Today, I have spent years sowing seeds of gladness, seeds of caring, seeds of friendship, seeds of understanding and I find my life incredibly rich and full.
I know that all of you who have to rip others apart have small, unhappy lives and you can't see that you have a major role in that, in fact, you have the STARRING ROLE. I feel sorry for you and you know who you are. I feel sorry for you because you are always going to have an unhappy, unfulfilled life because WHAT GOES AROUND COMES AROUND.
sorry, I had to rant and it is off topic, but not exactly.
Complete Discussion Below:  marks the location of current message within thread
- Bad Business - bad business
- I have been in your shoes and perhaps worse sm - Lyndia
The messages you are viewing
are archived/old.
To view latest messages and participate in discussions, select
the boards given in left menu
Other related messages found in our database
Definitely not TransTech -- gets worse and worse with no work each and every day and who cares???
NOBODY, except the MT's who are making less and less money and losing whatever comfortable lifestyle they had previously had the pleasure to live. Unless you have more than 1 member in the household to bring in the money, or you have received an inheritance from family member, there is ABSOLUTELY NO WAY TO MAKE A LIVING AT Transtech anymore. They absolutely DON'T CARE either. TransTech mgmt will not talk about it; only promises of new accounts coming on . . . ha ! Possibly an overflow account to replace the LOST account.
I so wish mgmt's paychecks would be affected by this NO WORK situation that has been going on for more than a year now and they would get out of that Houston high-dollar office and FIND US MT's some WORK !
Pay for MT work is getting worse and worse!!!! NM
X
And the reports look worse and worse
Any VR program and system into which it is imported is fraught with problems. At my local hospital, they have editors editing the editors. The reports are still full of mistakes and bad formatting. At my local radiology group, they have 5 different programs ranging from a combination of EMR point and click to front end SR. The MTs spend their whole day patching together the various parts of the patient record to make one cohesive record. The IT department has ballooned from 2 to 7. They only got rid of 3 MTs but exchanged them for 5 ITs. A local doctor uses point and click EMR and spends the whole patient visit with his snoot glued to the computer. The patient sits there crying and he isn't paying attention. It takes him 20 minutes to complete the record and then charges the patient for the extra time inside the room because of his bad choices or the practice manager in record keeping. I know all this first hand. I wonder when they will realize the boondoggle they have bought into.
I have put myself in her shoes.
If she does not feel she is cut out to roll with the punches, she needs to find a job with a company that offers a mentoring program. If she is a regular MT with Spheris, she is expected to meet the same QA scoring guidelines as everyone else or risk being terminated.
Most companies cannot baby newbies. They just don't have the staff to do this. She needs to find a company that offers mentoring for newbies and stop complaining...or she needs to bite the bullet and try to do the work.
I felt overwhelmed when I first started in acute care. I found that it was helpful to type a blank on parts where I was having trouble and transcribe the entire report and go back to the blanks and listen again a few times. I was often able to figure them out.
I had to work ten hour a day when I started out in order to meet my quota, but I did it and it has paid off for me.
you are not in my shoes, so .......
if you are not, how do you know what the situation is for me, personally? So, your experience has been good. Others have shared with me in private that it has not been so good for them, either. I am not alone in this, so please do not criticize my opinion, okay??
Been in your shoes
I too started out in clinics about 5 years ago and was managed to be hired by a local hospital. Well...5 years later I'm working at Diskriter in their QA department. You can do it, it will come. Don't give up, it's worth it in the end.
Been in your shoes
Sorry but I've been in your shoes and did not like it one bit. I know this profession sucks but leaving the house for $10 an hour sucks too after taxes, gas, clothes, lunches, etc. I choose to work for 3 services to never again run out of work. I never work more than 10 hours a day (which is what it would amount to if I worked outside the house including driving there, being stuck in traffic, working and then driving home.) I was MTSO of my own company for 8 years until the hospitals kept taking longer and longer to pay and then suddenly there were all these woman who had taken the course and believed the hype and were willing to work for $.08 a line and then I was out of work. It that time I made $.14 per line and paid my subs $.11. I was good to them. I even kept most of the crappy dictators and did them myself so I've been on both sides of this job. I've worked for the services who don't pay or won't pay, who have no work. This job is not what it used to be but I've decided it is where I need to be right now so I will make the best of it. My family is coming off of 4 very lean years and I won't go there again. I'm all for helping someone who is trying to help themselves but not for people who want a pity party...and if I made $3 a day at my job I'd be finding out why and doing something about it.
I was in your shoes!
Mine were exactly the same ages as yours. It is very difficult to manage a home, 3 babies and work. My hat is off to you. I was able to get most of my work done when my hubby was home at night and on the weekends, but when I got real backed up, I would hire one of the teens in my neighborhood to come sit for a couple of hours so I could work uninterrupted.
Good luck to you and God bless you. You have your hads full....BUT they grow up so fast, believe it or not, someday you will miss these times. :-)
Those are big shoes to fill
I guess you've never worked on the inside of an MTSO business, but you wouldn't believe how physicians and hospitals are chipping away at our pay by demanding lower rates from the MTSOs. Some MTSOs that people on this site complain about offering offshored services to client did it to KEEP from losing their clients. When it starts with the doctors and hospitals, what choice do the MTSOs have but to pass that on to the MTs? It really is a vicious circle.
Some MTSOs team up with schools and offer interships where an MT in training works for free for a period of time to gain experience. Now trust me, THOSE savings are not passed on to the experienced MTs...that goes directly into the MTSO's pockets and those MTSO push their long-term, higher paid MTs out the door to save a few pennies with no trouble sleeping at night.
So what about a union? You're right. More jobs will be offshored. More experienced MTs will lose their jobs. Doesn't anyone remember what happened when the air traffic controllers went on strike and the president of our United States canned every single one of them and airports had to hire an entirely new staff of controllers? Did you see airlines stop flying passengers? Nope. Managers worked triple shifts until restaffing occurred, oh, without extra pay since they were salarired.
I don't pretend to know the answers as to how an MTSO should run its business but honest communication, good benefits and wages that have been lost in just a few short years (less than 10) would be nice. It should stick to its gun and promote keeping jobs in the states for the patients' sakes. And for the Indian physicians who have organized and created their own MTSO's to keep their families in India employed should be boycotted. MTs should educate anyone they know who uses a doctor to ask the physician where his/her transcription is done or if s/he even knows and use only physicians with American-based transcription.
Boycotts worked in South Carlolinia and other states to take down the Rebel flag. Why can't we have a similar affect? Mostly because we are not organized (I did NOT say unionized) and we do not generate the media coverage necessary to affect change.
d~
Walk in my shoes
I am very small MTSO and it still gets hairy with turn around time. All it takes is for one I/C to say, today I don't want to work -- which they can -- like the one above said, I want to work when I want to and do as much as I want -- and suddenly she decides not to work, well suddenly that leaves 1000 to 3000 lines to be spread around, times that by 2 and what a mess. You cannot control what and how much the docs dictate. I would not hire someone unless they were strictly for overflow without somewhat of a committment whether it be the lines or time that the could do on specific days. Imagine having 15 people with this attitude. Like I said walk in my shoes, it is a balancing act. Too much work, they gripe -- too little they gripe. But someone that wants to work when they want, how much they want could not budget accounts that way. It would be strictly overflow and then if you weren't available when the work was you probably would not stick around nor again would I keep you around. Sure an IC can set their own hours but I expect a certain amount of work done in a certain amount of time to meet my TAT and not be docked because we didn't.
I DID wear the same shoes as others..
HENCE, where I am now. So there.
I was in your shoes not that long ago
I had 3 under the age of 5 at home. I've worked both statutory/IC (the only difference is that statutory means they take out the federal taxes and IC doesn't)and employee positions. By far, the best for me was statutory. Even now that my kids are all in school, statutory is still better because of summer vacations.
Some things to remember: Most employee positions require you to punch a timeclock. Some companies let you get your work done in a 12-hour window, others require you to work just the shift your scheduled for. The employee position I had did not give you the window.
My employee position also required me to produce so many lines per hour, even though I was paid by production not hourly. Therefore, if you are scheduled 6 hours and had to produce 100 lines per hour, you needed to have 600 lines in by the time you clocked out. If you got interrupted by 1 of your kids, you had to either clock out and make the time up at the end of your shift (which no one feels like doing) or stay clocked in, try to handle the problem in a few minutes, and hope you make your 100 lines per hour. Of course, the line requirement was averaged over the week or payperiod (can't remember which now), so I always went with the second option of staying clocked in rather than having to make up time at the end of my shift. But, anything that took more than a few minutes to handle, you'd better clock out or else Big Brother will report you for stealing from the company.
There are some downsides to statutory. You do not get benefits. If you want a day off, you take it, but you don't get paid for it. You also don't get time and a half. You work what you work and get paid the same amount, unless you're with a company that pays incentives/bonuses for anything over a certain amount.
I honestly can't say much else about statutory. It's my favorite. The flexibility is just too good to pass by when you have little ones at home.
I won't comment on companies to work for. Too many people like to argue when you try to post something positive about a company. Read the archives, decide on 2 or 3 companies, then ask about those companies. It's just too broad otherwise.
Having worn your shoes,
I feel your pain. I've worked for a couple of companies that went offshore, also. In one I was transcribing Social Security disability evaluations. Those went to the Philippines.
Picture this: Your full name, DOB and SSN, as well as details of all your physical and mental disabilities, going to another country, potentially to be stolen and used by identity thieves. The US government contracting to have its work done by a company that sends the work to a foreign country.
Inconceivable to me at the time. Still makes no sense, but then I'm obviously not management material.
Great post! In the same shoes you are! sm
I'm not worried anymore, though. I made it through my probationary period with lots of ups and downs, a lot of tough dictators, one that I STILL cannot understand and I do this guy EVERY DAY! But I like the job, like the QA people I have and have finally made it up to line count and I've been there since December. Now, to stay there.... Nice group of people. I like it a lot. Don't know what account you are on but I logged off just a while ago and the stats were still coming in. LOL  
I've been in your shoes, with 3 kids, but (sm)
there is a very fine line to walk between hiring enough people for a new account and putting them somewhere until it actually starts, and overhiring. You want enough people, not too many, not too few. Try walking that line sometime. I have, and you usually get flak from both sides. Hang in there.
But what if the shoes doesn't fit? What then? What about TT getting unfairly
bashed here from some anonymous poster who can come on here and say anything?
Do not judge unless you have been in their shoes. I worked for another sm
company that went through the exact same thing for 2 years. They were too big for small company insurance and do not have enough people that want insurance to qualify for large group. They would get all the way to the final contract and the insurance company would double the rate.
Keystrokes has been trying to get this resolved for a year. The reason for the information is because each company wants different things.
I spoke with someone very high up in the company about this. She told me that they get close and then something happens to change it, like the insurance company backs out due to too many health issues or that they decide that the group is not diverse enough. Keystrokes employs mostly women. The insurance companies do like this because women tend to go to the doctor more.
I do know that they are going to pay a portion though.
I think that the shame should be on you. Do you think that you are helping by complaining on a public board? There are 500 happy employees and just a handful who come to the boards to bash them. This is worse than high school.
let the MTSOs step in the MTs shoes - sm
If they cant pay a decent wage, them maybe it is time to let some of the clients go and work for yourself. It is just like MTs, if you accept a low rate of pay that is what you get. Stand up for yourself MTSOs and ask for more money. Get a back bone.
We're all moody at times. I would never want to be in the shoes of one of the sm
big service owners. I imagine I would be postal, not just moody. I could never run a service of that size and be in a good mood all the time, could you? Have you tried? Didn't think so.
We have work. I've been in your shoes though with other jobs
They are screaming desperately, I get the job, and the second day of the job, there is no work so I sat there all afternoon twiddling my thumbs. By day 3, when I was told there was only 3 reports to do, I quit. Life's too short to waste my time and energy.
There is nothing worse
than this monopoly that is technically not a monopoly in this field. There is always an antagonist wherever you go. When we all loved our job, MQHATER was probably here.
It's worse when you can't see them.
It can get pretty tricky when you have to rely on your senses and your past experience to figure out that somebody is either assigning the good dictators to themselves or assigning the bad dictators to you.
I have left more than one account when I found out that they assign work to MTs some or all of the time. I've never heard a valid justification for it. Anytime there is human intervention in assigning work there is the potential for abuse. Let the machine do the assigning--oldest job first.
worse pay ever
Making less than I did 12 years ago. This is very very sad for this industry. Anybody have any good companies to refer.
Spi getting worse
I started when they were Cymed, just about a year ago. Since the merge, the payroll company has twice not paid people in certain areas due to problems and just within the last month, we got an email that the payroll company lost a laptop with employee banking information on it.
Don't expect any communication from anybody with this company. You may get emails from somebody with no name associated with the email, no title, anything. You have no idea who you are hearing from.
If you are an editor, you better be very flexible. You may have to cross servers and handle up to 30 accounts to find maybe 6 good hours of work. Moveup for editors is based on line production and some of the accounts don't even count lines. Let's not forget a great many require log sheets, that's very time consuming.
I don't know what exactly the account managers do because the lead QAs run the show. Don't expect an answer if you email the account manager with a question. My account has a lead who is power hungry and even uses initials after her name that just means she is a member of a group, not professional affiliation. I've seen 3 very well-qualified people, MTs and editors, just quit without notice after being fed up. I've seen MTs left on full QA for 6-7 months, not because they were bad, but because nobody noticed they needed taken off. I am just disgusted.
I would get out before it gets even worse
This sounds like Focus Infomatics. I worked for them for about a month almost 2 years ago and quit right away. They don't communicate with you and, yes, everyone you deal with will be in India. They have a main office in Massachusetts, but they only do the Payroll and things of that nature. When they did communicate with me, they were usually very rude and hard to understand. The training was HORRID! There was such a language barrier that I could not understand a word they said. I finally quit and went with a US based company. It will only get worse!
better or worse cpl than MQ?
thx
AND.... Get this - this is worse
You have to meet minimum line counts for preceding 6 out of 8 pay periods (not only day before, day of and day after) but FOUR MONTHS of minimum line count and if your account runs out of work or you use PTO that would cause you to have less than the minimum line count TOO BAD.
You also cannot take off any time the 2 weeks prior to the holiday nor the day after the holiday for any reason.
Is this for the better or worse?
.
What is the best for one is the worse
x
Worse (sm)
Having worked at both, I'd say stay away from both. Precyse's VR editing is very bad at picking up anything and invents things. If you're at precyse just stay transcribing and be glad you didnt waste your time.
Just gets worse each day
VR is a joke..
No better and no worse than any other. nm
xxx
NO and it seems to be getting worse..
on many levels.
MDI is just as bad if not worse. No work.
x
Ok, so this is hopefully just worse than usual? sm
Do I have to let them know to hop on at other times, or is it understood that it's necessary?
thanks much for your help!!!
7 months later and worse than ever!!!
I was under a 90 probationary period. I just started the beginning of December and put on a 2nd probation period after hearing how accounts didn't pull through that were to start Jan. 1st. Their pay by the hour is a scam. They don't have enough work to put in a full day of work. You sit there 19 hours just to get 600 lines worth of work, you log 8 hours and they go through your time sheet and change it to 2 hours. Thats 300 lines an hour. You follow account specifics, such as use patient name, and they count it against ya, grade your audit bad because of it, and terminate you for nothing. Supposed to pass 3 out of 5 audits. They already had their decision made by Wednesday, the 3rd day, without grading the last 2 days. Passed the 1st day of audit and terminated Wednesday without working Thursday or Friday. Just a scam and low-down!!!
Also the platform they use now is WORSE than the one before, if you can believe that (sm)
 Stay away!!
Yes, it could get worse but you can prevent that by
Please immediately get out of that situation -- even if you must take something temporarily.
Contact your mortgagor and, if your loan is FHA backed, then each state has an office designed to step in and mediate for you against your mortgagor in case of default.
Do not wait. You must take care of yourself and your family.
You are obviously extremely intelligent, responsible, and experienced.
Just because you have seen worse does not make it right. nm
nm
Went from bad (Transcend) to worse (sm)
I'm so glad you were able to dump SPI and hope you are happier with your new job(can't be worse)! I need to leave SPI too, but I don't want to take the first thing that comes along just to get out of here and get suckered again by another crap co.!
I came from a horrible company (Transcend). I went totally broke while working there. We were completely out of work for days on end. What little work we did get was being switched to VR (at a much lower cpl rate) which was just horrific since it was new. We were treatd as lab rats and were supposed to work just a few bugs out while our pay and line counts plummeted! The only time they communicated with us was to tell us we were doing something wrong, and when we had concerns about the VR, our pay, lack of work, etc., we were told to basically keep it to ourselves and not talk with other employees about it. They hated people that had a mind of their own and people who stood up for themselves at all.
I was desperate to get out of there and searched this board. I read great things about Cymed on this board, asked questions here, and it sounded good. I talked with the recruiter and asked some more questions. Again, sounded pretty good, but I never really looked into or compared other companies which was a HUGE mistake! As soon as Cymed offered me a job, I went for it without applying anywhere else.
Cymed wasn't great to begin with. Right away, probably within the first month, they started breaking promises, switched my account, and had poor communication, but it was still better than Transcend. Then came the SPI buyout, and good things about Cymed are disappearing.
Basically, I don't want to just research/test/interview with 1 co. like I did when I made this move. Even though I hate it here, I want to make sure I take more time, do more research, etc., so I don't end up going through all the hassles of switching companies only to get burned again by another crap co.
Sorry for the extremely long rant. I started off just wanting to wish you luck and saying good for you, but I'm so frustrated about my current situation that I guess I had to get it off my chest. Again, best of luck to you and thanks for listening to the rambling of a lunatic, LOL. =)
It's gonna get worse SM
When someone posted below who cares about construction workers that pretty well summed up the problem in general. Everything is about 'me.' Our America is on its way to becoming a Third World Country. Watch the news sometime.
oops, Worse. nm
.
What could be worse? I hate OSI
My husband wants me to flat out quit OSI, just walk out now and worry about finding something else later. I am very sorry for the MT's who don't have other means of income.
You could have not thought up a worse
Not surprising, though. Keep on trying! I'm sure you can justify theft a million other ways...Yeppers. A sewing machine, honestly.
Dude, nothing's worse than MQ right now.
nm
Or even WORSE, Medquist might buy both! :(
.
worse than Transcam? Now that is BAD
TY
know what makes it even worse?
I was in the hospital before I worked at home. I could see the Lanier system where our vendors would cherrypick. MTs who worked in-house would also cherrypick and you could actually see them skipping around. Now, I'm at home and, although I cannot see the system itself, I can see by the job numbers that it is still happening.
The worst thing about it? The clerks and bosses know about it and, guess what they do? NOTHING.
Probably the worse 13 cpl you will ever work for.
x
It stinks right now, worse than ever - sm
It seems no one pays much anymore and if they don't post their pay and ask you to state what your requirements are and you tell them, you never hear from them again. Or worse, they have idiotic platforms that are not MT friendly, no matter what they say. I swear there are no decent-paying jobs out there anymore for the MTs who have been doing this for over 20 years.
S/l your STM was even worse than mine was. nm
|
