I work FT for a national,
Posted By: CrankyBeach on 2009-03-03
In Reply to: How many of you actually work for more than one service - Wondering MT
and a few hours a week as an IC for a local doc, whose transcription I have done for nearly 11 years now. The full-time job is 32 or more hours per week, and includes benefits. The IC gig might take 3 hours a week, but the line rate is a LOT more than for the national, and in fact is keeping me alive.
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I work for a small national. I have steady work, usually
extra if I want it. I make 10 cpl as an employee, get vacation, 401K matching, PTO, wonderful QA, lots of ESL dictators but mostly decent ones, direct deposit, no IM, no nasty e-mails, no phone calls asking me to work extra day after day. Saying that MTs are surprised at how much money they make because they have steady work even though the line rate is low sounds like a line a used car salesman would use. A low line rate is a low line and an insult, especially since without the MTs you wouldn't be able to pay your bills.
Just because everyone else sees to be going to India is like the saying you parents would say if everyone else jumped off the bridge .... Many companies sell out, but you don't HAVE to sell out. You choose to get more bang from your buck but I've seen the work that comes back from overseas and I would never put my name to it.
You might can fool some of the people some of the time, but it won't fly with me.
The national I work for does not do that. sm
If low on work, they do not take away benefits. 
you work for a national....nm
x
Unfortunately, when you work for a national or particularly a specialist, there are ..sm
many, many referring physicians. Doctors do not want to take the time during dictation to be considerate in providing spellings of doctors names, towns, and even spelling of patient names. It is ashame, however very common for many of us to have to take the time to look it up. I have found, in my experience, when I have had my own clients over the years, I don't take this horse sh_ _. I left blanks and had their office staff fill in the missing info. After time, the doctors became more disciplined and provided more complete dictation after being hounded by their office staff. Unfortunatley, when you work for a local service or national transcription company, you have to take the heat for not researching the doctor names, addresses, etc. Sad, but true. Find some good national doctor databases for this purpose. If you are referring to patient names in relation to demographics, you simply cannot guess on them. Spell it as it sounds and type spelling not given (doc's problem in this case).
Would anyone work for a large national co, with a
I use the company provided computer. They had a change in computers and I was sent a new one. Since that time, the foot pedal provided has not worked. I can hear reports, but I cannot backup or move ahead using the pedal. To hear something again, I have to bang my foot on the pedal. To move ahead forward or go backward for any length, I must go to playback page and manually move the cursor to where I need to be.
I have put up with this for five years. Yes, that is right, FIVE YEARS!!!! I have called our so-called Help Desk numerous times and I have been sent two more pedals, neither of which work, or, rather, work the same as the original pedal. I have asked for help from countless people. The Help Desk states I am the only one having the problem. The supervisor says I am the only one having the problem. I know one other person on my team who is also having having the problem, but we are too ashamed to really raise heck. I am disgusted.
By the way, it is the most commonly used foot pedal. Even their ad states it works with any computer. I just had to vent.
I too work for a national which is DCing the DD on 8/1. sm
My other job is working for a hospital at home. So glad I have that hospital position! I get full benefits, plenty of work, and respect. (3/3 ain't bad!!) I also have 30+ years' experience, ex-CMT by exam. Go for it, CMT, and I wish you the best of luck.
Check out not-so-local hospitals within your state, too.
I used to work for a national and when we ran an ad, we would get 200-300 resumes. sm
These all came at once, so it was a little time-consuming to get through them. Email or call because the squeaky wheel does get the grease!
Yes I work for a smallish national..plus still has not come in mail either
nm
Talking about the ones who say you cannot work for another national MT service. nm
nm
I work full time for a national and as an IC
for a local company. The FT is 40 hours per week, the IC is when I want to work, usually about 10 to 12 hours a week.
i work for one national, 2 services, and have one private account...
I have four kids between ages 18 and 5. Right now I have bitten off more than I want to chew with all the accounts. One pays 10.5, one pays 9, and one pays 8.5 with incentive. My private account, believe this, pays 21 cents per line, but they only dictate about $500 per month worth. I need to get rid of one but don't know which one yet. The good thing, if there is one.......I never run out of work.
Co I work for, large national, allows normals. Of course, you must listen
zz
I agree with ChiaPet- I work for a big National that advertised
Sun-Thursday or Tuesday through Saturday. I told them I would prefer M-F, because Saturday and Sundays are my time. They found an account that accommodated my wishes. I also might add that it is day shift. You have the choice. Yes, they would prefer everyone work that shift, but I promise you there are enough of us that those that love weekend work can do the weekend work, and those that like our weekends can have our weekends off.
Can work as many hours as I want at the national I work for now, and they don't pay OT until you
to a certain level of production.
I work for a small national and use FTP, also work for
a small local and use a website. If you check the job boards you'll see lots of companies use FTP.
Do what you think is best. I just left a major national, went to another national but after
6 weeks found it did not fit. Just happened to luck into another smaller national and things couldn't be better. There are other jobs out there.
I work for a major national and starting rate is no where near 9 cpl for acute care. (nm)
x
WEBMEDX???? It's a small national, right? Benefits, running out of work, what kind of accounts,
flexible schedule (as in working EVERY weekend mandatory?
Any opinions on the company would be appreciated. Found some in the archives but all mostly from 2004 and 1 recent post but not much info. Thanks.
9 cpl, national, 10 yrs exp.
Unless you are an I/C then 9 cpl is good.
Which national is that?
nm
You are less apt to do it with a national!
More apt to do it with your own accounts or land a great paying job with someone who is not using the internet MTSOs, the internet robbers!
They pay you crap and suck the life out of you! Go independent.
Can you get a job at a national
with going to a community college for your MT education? Thanks!!
Which national is the best for...
flexibility, clinic work and fair pay. I have about 17 years of experience, looking for STEADY part-time work for now. If it works out with a company, I would consider full time. Who is the favorite national here? TIA
at the BIG national I get 7.2 CPL for ASR
but I have been an MT for 26 years.......
4 CPL??? Unheard of in my world....actually....sorry
I used to be AC at a national for $32,000
//
Pay with National
I made 41K last year with very little overtime, and this included incentive pay. My account is going to SR shortly, though, and this kind of money will be a thing of the past. For that reason, I will be moving on soon to a company where I can do straight transcription and be paid a decent wage for it.
Forgot to say that was with a national. NM
x
National Certification for MTs
Can someone refer me to a website or something so I can get certified. Finished my course with a college and they don't of course deal with the National Certification. Anyone out there done the certification part. Please help. Thanks
When is National MT Week? TIA
They were the first national I worked for, and sm
Giselle had a wonderful personal touch with the employees, and swore they would never outsource their work overseas, and it was pasted proudly over their website. The accounts I had were sucky and I left, but with no hard feelings. Now, I see their web site no longer says anything about them not keeping everything in the US -- sad.
Small national
Try - www.milnertranscriptionservices.com
No other national beginning with "M"...
I worked for Cymed and stayed with SPi. I hate it. Absolutely. TAT is so tightly controlled that there is almost never any work. It totally sucks. And they don't give a damn about us MTs. Just in it for the money. A HORRIBLE company.
in my first year of MT at a national
I was making $130 a day with my main account...then the rug was pulled out from underneath me and my company lost the account (would not say why). I have not made that money since and that was 7 years ago.
national company
I have been with a national for about a year - was on one account for about 6 months - then all of a sudden the work load dropped and then was told the hospital went another direction. I waited it out for a month, as they told us that they would place us on other accounts - they finally did - now some of us are being moved to another account - which I don't mind - other than the downtime in learning it - and this is supposed to be helping out another service. I learned today that the reason they lost the first account that I transcribed was because they outsourced it to India and the hospital had specifically had in their contract that their work was not to be outsourced. Why would a company take that kind of risk - and then lose a very large account? Plus lose good transcriptionists who could not wait a month to be reassigned to another account? I now have spoken with the company who has my original account and hopefully will be hired. They know I worked the account for 6 months, so I could just pick up where I left off. How many nationals do this, though, contract for US work and then outsource? I also heard of a company who is hiring only editors to QA and edit work coming back directly from India - now that is a job I want nothing to do with.
Pay is much much much lower than any other national
/
TT is my favorite national so far
NM
Is it possible to make 35K/yr with a national?
employee status
The national that starts with an S.
I am wondering if the message regarding Spheris, stating that should they want an MT to go, sabotage of their work may take place, could be elaborated on.
It is important that I stay with this job. I have BC and ins. is an issue and honestly, I love it. But, it is very stressful for me to work under these conditions.
If I thought that there was a possibility that the more hostile arm of my management team could retype my work to include an error that would place the patient in jeopardy, just so they could get rid of me, I would take action now.
I would like to know if ex employees who left with heavy hearts would e-mail me confidentially and anonymously to let me know how they came to the conclusion that the sups were brutal and ruthless.
Is this normal for a national?
In my 12 years, this is my first IC position with a national and I'm spinning my wheels. Just wondering if this is normal stuff I need to get used to?
Things like, their field codes sometimes are there and sometimes are not, so if not, I have to go back and put in say the patient's name or DOB by hand. Ok, so that's not too big deal. But most of the referrring doc addresses are not in their system. So I have to look up in their info or search internet, enter into their system, but if there are no codes, have to go put all that in each document by hand. Their templates are mess, IMO. They don't have necessary spaces and some even have grammatical errors. But the worst...sometimes at the end of a report that has a lengthy template where I've had to delete some of it because it wasn't what he said (for example, they have a limited number of templates so maybe I have to use a stress echo template for a nuclear test, so I have to delete much of doc's canned words), it gives me a NEGATIVE LINE COUNT for that report. They have told me they can't fix this, that all in all I'm doing better in the course of my shift by getting paid for the templates, i.e., that it all equals out.
Their system is very slow, bogs down, all this click and point stuff I'm not used to, and I can't produce more than about 150 lines an hour. It's just a part-time gig for me, trying to make some extra money in these crappy times, but it's getting frustrating. Have I just been pampered with awesome MTSOs and docs all these years? Or should I jump ship? Sorry so long, thanks for your input.
National Disgrace?
I don't think I would take it that far, but I do understand. The way things are getting outsourced, some news media would certainly get more physicians and groups to start hiring local ICs instead of making use of the big name companies. I talked to one physician a couple of days ago (Tuesday I think) when I took my son in and she said she has to call in her dictation to the medical group's line and then one of the big companies takes it to transcribe. The last year or so she gets the files back and they still need a lot of editing by her because neither the Transcriptionist nor the QA person could understand her. Now, I've done per diem for her when they get backed up or she needed something back that day, her dictation is very clear as are most physicians in her group. They speak slowly – but not overly – and they enunciate very well. She will even pause and say: instruction - put that in bold: or something like that so you know it doesn't need typed, just done. There is really no reason for this much QA to be done by her.
She is working with many other physicians in the group and they are trying to get approval to hire in house instead of this stuff. I think that if attention is drawn to the fact that physicians are paying the same amount per report, and the reports are being outsourced with very poor quality, that more CEO's of these major groups will pay more attention and hopefully get their heads out of their rears and stop outsourcing. CEO's only see the bottom line and that is very bad for patient care!
Bottom line, when a company is screwing their employees most people immediately think union - but that is kind of hard to have in this field. I have printed some of the posts from this site and taken them to her. They are gathering for a meeting the first of May to discuss this with the group’s CEO and CFO and VPs. I am hoping they succeed. They hire their billing and coding in house so why not their transcriptionists. After all, they had to setup the dictation system, so they could use IC’s as well as in house to do their dictation without much change in the structure that the physicians use! Yea, it would be a bit more expensive to start, but the end reward would be significantly improved! Let’s cross our fingers that this works out and that other groups (Kaiser Permenente, etc.) follow suit!!
The national out of GA, cannot find anything on the
the other one. At least that is the one I am talking about, and from the other posts on here, it seems that everyone else is too, the over-kill with emails, low work, changing time sheets. I would steer clear of them.
10.75 cpl National; 11 cpl smaller MTSO. 25 yrs exp. nm
x
14.5 cpl National, 16.0 cpl small MTSO
Happy, both accounts are California accounts which is a higher pay!!!!
cascas: what national is offering 11 CPL?
thanks 
Yes - it's the 2nd largest national, begins with S. :) NM
x
Medquist. No other national compared that I sm
worked at Transcend, Spheris, MDI-FL, Webmedx. I work for local doctors and get paid by the hour.
I have never worked as an employee for a national. Can someone tell me what you do at MQ when you
have no work and obviously if you get a huge report at the end of your hours you dont dump the report to make sure you dont go over your set hours so I dont see how set hours can be set in stone.
National Transcription Services - SM
Disorganized is an understatement. The company is run by people who have absolutely no experience or understanding of the transcription business. They work on ChartScript.net, SoftMed's web based platform. There are numerous complaints on this site in regards to this platform.
Not necessarily, I'm paid better by the national right now. -nm
x
When I worked for a large national, they
had a gal from New York using a steno machine. She consistently turned out over 20,000 lines every 2 weeks/pay period. So if you know the steno machine, you can make megabucks in transcription. She always won awards at this biggest national.
Would a national company hire me?
I have several years experience working for a very prominent healthcare institution doing acute care, clinic, and hospital dictation in every specialty and subspecialty imaginable. We were never assigned accounts, so my exposure to all of the specialties and dictation by hundreds of physicians at our institution was extensive throughout the years.
Over two years ago I had to take employer-paid disability and have yet to return to work. I have hope with my latest treatment that I will be able to return to work soon and have contacted my MT department head, but did not hear back. Although my reviews were always exemplary, my attendance did suffer slightly prior to my taking disability. I say slightly only because I still attempted to work a portion of each day even while ill and the actual amount of days absent was not that high; however, working at a healthcare institution our attendance requirements are necessarily strict.
If my department head is unwilling to take me back into the department, I don't know what I'll do. I love MT, have great skills, am highly accurate, and don't want to give up on this career. If worse comes to worse and a position will not be available for me when I return to work, do you think a national company would hire me with over a two-year lapse in my work record?
Does anyone have any advice or ideas in this regard? I desire to stay with my current employer, but don't want to leave medical transcription. Thank you.
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