Indian typists, not dictators... BETTER THAN VR, not perfect nm
Posted By: India is here to stay on 2009-04-08
In Reply to: I would say most here would not agree with you that people from India get all their words right - Really?
sallie dfjaskldfja;
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DSG Typists s/m
I am considering a position with DSG. I've seen a few things on here, but they seem to be from QA. I'd like to know what it's like from the MT side of things. Do you run out of work often? How is the tech support?
I'm also curious about pay. I have been with the same company for 10 years and I don't think I'm paid very well at 7.75 cpl (haven't gotten a raise in 5 years). My accuracy rate has always been 98% or better.
What is the average pay per line for this company? How often are raises given (some places do yearly evals)? PTO? Holiday pay? Bonus/incentives?
I have 10+ years experience and an associate's degree in medical secretarial. I'm planning to get certified this summer.
Any comments would be appreciated.
typists
OK, I'll be quite honest and say that I started out as a typist. I never took any classes to be an MT. I bought some word books and sent out my applications locally. I was hired by both a transcription company and a private doctor's office within a few weeks.
However, with that said, I now do consider myself an MT after almost 25 years in this field.
I'm proof that somebody can do this job without the prior official training as long as they have good typing and English grammar skills.
I have many friends who have spent their hard earned money going to MT school. Their skills are no better than those I've acquired over the years on-the-job.
I've worked for multiple MT companies over the years and transcribed just about every type of report there is.
Being a typist doesn't mean you can't transcribe.
I totally agree with this but I edit Pakistan typists. Won't call them transcriptionists, they
:+
Beg to differ. It is not perfect and is a long way from being perfect. A LOT of hospitals
are moving away from voice recognition after trying it and failing. The good news is that once burned, it is hard to convince a board of directors to put out money like that for a second try.
I think that it has its place and does work if done right in certain facilities, but it is a VERY small percentage and will not hurt us for many, many years to come.
I am not hiding my head in the sand; I am actually seeing the trend reverse.
Focus is Indian run and you'll be editing Indian
work, so seriously doubt you'll make a bunch of $$ on editing. 99% of the MTs love KS. If you'll just scroll down the page you'll see dozens of posts about them.
Probably not - I believe they are Indian run or Indian based company. nm
x
Go to their Indian website or other Indian websites
xx
Never said perfect. If it were perfect, there would never be room for sm
change or growth. What I was talking about was the continuous posting by the same people, over and over again, that is vague and destructive. This is not just about Keystrokes, this is about the posts for other companies as well.
I think that not every MT is a good fit for every company, and not every company is good fit for every MT. If this were the case, there would be very little job searching or hiring going on, only if someone retired or left the field or entered the field.
It is the outright lying that is so horrible. Keystrokes is a transcription company which means that we have the normal ups and downs that every company has in terms of slow and busy periods. We have been very fortunate to have very little down time due to busy and also new accounts.
If there are check problems, they are resolved. We all wish there were no problems and this is the biggest topic at manager meetings, but human error comes into play here as well. We have a new time recording system that should eliminate that, if the information is entered correctly from the MT.
If there are tough dictators on the account, it is not the fault of the company. It is the fault of the hospital that has them on staff, but you have to take the good with the bad.
If there are QA complaints, it is usually that the leads are too strict. The owners have said that they would rather be known for being too picky than too lenient, thus having accounts say the work is not up to standard.
If there is a reliability problem, it just might not be a good fit.
I know that if I were to take over recruiting and hiring (which I absolutely want NOTHING to do with), I would not take job hoppers. However, I have been told that you have to look at the hopping and why it has happened. A lot could be poor choices. That's why I will never be in charge of hiring, but I can control the MT QA and reliability once they are on my account.
Dictators
Actually, yes. The dictators are very good and the variety was also a good mix.
How many dictators a day do you do who
speak clearly, enunciate each word, isn't eating, chewing gum, or flipping through the chart while they are trying to dictate, who does umm, umm, umm every third word? I don't think VR will be a threat any time soon, if ever.
dictators
The majority are good. After a few times of transcribing them and with sample reports, not a problem
You must be getting my **not so bad** ones, then ! Let me have some of those dictators ! n/m
b
Hispanic Dictators
Hopefully its not De Tar Navarro. That's an awful account. They have quite a few of "mush mouth" RN's who dictate for the doctors. You don't get samples, so you pretty much wing it. At least you don't get the defy's (QA markers at MQ) counted against you!! De Tar is all progress notes and a few discharge summaries. You're lucky if you can get 3/4 of your required line count!! Other than that account, the others were pretty easy (with the exception of those bad quality sound files that is).
They are in a folder as are they for a ton of dictators.
Unfortunately, there are TONS of them that I have to scroll through. Even though they are alphabetized by dictators last name, it is very time consuming.
Difficult dictators?
So MDI-FL and WebMedx both have decent health insurance for a decent price? And what do we have to do to get that? Are they all ESL? Or do they truly have decent dictators where you can make some money. I have done very few ESL. What typing speed are they looking for?
Been there . . . this is actually a step up on dictators for me!!! NM
NM
Depends on who the dictators will be.
At Spheris, I got paid 0.09 for acute care but only 0.075 for ER work.
I could do nearly twice the lines of ER work, though, because of better dictators.
So, I pushed to do as much ER work as possible and made considerably more money.
Yep REALLY low job #'s from dictators from hell
slow dictators
but can't you speed them up with ExText so they sound like chipmunks, hahaha....
Some of these cesspool dictators would not...........sm
 actually be so bad if there wasn't so much background noise and you could hear what they were actually saying!
Awful dictators
Awful dictators. They cannot keep people on this ortho account. The sound is so muffled, you cannot understand even an otherwise very clear dictator. They do not have a website.
We could say the same thing about their ESL dictators...sm
who are making a 6-figure fortune off of our backs...while they pay us pennies. Learn the language, at least!
definitely horrid dictators...
and the account specifics would make you nuts. specifically, they wanted tables edited that would take about 15 mins/per @ 4 cpl. also we kept running out of work, so yea, at $7/hour I quit and am doing just fine now back on clinic work.
Stuttering dictators
Just wondering what you all think about this: Should a doctor who obviously has a terrible problem with ssssstuttering be dictating? Seems like it might be an invitation for errors on the poor patient's medical record. What do you think?
but if the company has dictators sm
who dictate like this then YES it is fair to test you on those. It does no good to give you a good dictator (whatever you deem to be good) and then most of the dictators of of the caliber you had on the test. It is very fair and honest to the potential employee. What happens if you test on a dictator that is good and then your account has the really bad ones? Is that fair to you or the company?
It use to be that folks in the MT profession accepted this as part of the profession and none of this was ever a point. Seems now MT has come down to lines, spaces, cpl and all the rest and forget the real reason behind this profession, THE PATIENTS!
Dictators getting worse all over.
More and more ESLs. Many younger doctors not as 'literary' as older (retiring) doctors, may have opted out of language and literature courses in school in favor of science courses. In some cases good dictators requiring less proficiency to transcribe may be sent offshore or routed to VR. Seems to me that some younger doctors don't care much about documenting their work and don't spend any time preparing a dictation in advance, then fly through it just to get it over with.
Thanks. They told me it was mainly Hispanic dictators..??
I'm curious if it is mainly acute care (OPs, HPs, Dis, Con, etc.) or clinic...??
I didn't think they paid overtime..? If I'm an IC, and they don't keep up with hours, should I have to put up a schedule? THanks.
If you like getting docked pay for lousy dictators, go for it. nm
adf
Was the test really difficult? How bad are their ESL dictators?
x
Your dictators are clear, and there's *no guessing at all*??
So if you get one that isn't so clear, does that mean you *guess*?? 
A fair share of ESL dictators.sm
Platform easy to learn, I think it is a good place to work.
FutureNet ... Very very difficult dictators
The people at FutureNet are nice and for the most part easy to work with. Their platform is easy to use. The accounts are the bottom of the barrel as far as dictators with thick accents, fast talkers, slurred speech. QA is nice but can't help you get used to these awful dictators. The quality of dictation just stopped me in my tracks, it was so terrible. Again, the staff are pleasant, but they aren't the ones who have to try to decipher the dictation to make a decent line count.
If you have the experience, the pay is higher than most nationals, and if you have an extremely good ear for accents, you can do very well. The dictation is internet based so you don't have to scratch around for your own unlimited long distance. The pay comes on time in my experience, but there's no Direct Deposit. The line counter is always accurate, I have checked against my own, and never any discrepancies.
The editors always seem able to fill in the blanks, so it is proof that some people can understand these dictators, but even though the folks at FutureNet were some of the nicest I have worked with, I could never get a handle on the accents, so regretfully I had to move on. Don't be fooled by the test reports, the actual dictation is much worse.
Lower rate/better dictators
Again I agree with you! The MTSO, hospitals should go to dictators that are bad or hard to understand and ask them politely to clean it up. How are we supposed to do our jobs 100% when we get crap to deal with? You give clean dictation you get clean reports. Any fool can figure that out . . . . well maybe not.
I see no problem with yawning dictators. I'm sure if I
worked a 16-hour day, I'd be yawning too.
Dictators who don't know what a Chief Complaint is. (sm)
Here are some chief complaints: Chest pain. Shortness of breath. Back pain. Type that and now you have some context and you're ready for the history of present illness. But so many dictators want to include all sorts of patient information, like age and details of what happened. That is not a chief complaint guys. Comprehend the headings and let them help you save time! Grrrr.
Everything about SS is atrocious. Worst dictators
I've ever had and sound quality to match.
I liked Transform as far as the dictators, supervisor
but I couldn't make any lines for my account typing in Word. I have been working as a Transcriptionist for years and know what it feels like to type a 50+ report, but when I would check on the line count it was be less, way less. I don't know what the other Transform accounts type in.That is my experience with them.
If you have a good range of dictators...sm
I do radiology and acute care for a facility. There are some doctors I am glad I get paid by minute and there are some that I wish I was not so it all equals out. I read an article some time back about being paid by the minute of dictation is really the more fair way for Transcriptionist to be paid. I have 3-4 docs that I speed up so I do their lines in half the time but still get paid for the whole time. It works for me.
My most hated dictators are not the ESLs, sm
they are sloppy dictators who talk at the speed of light and mumble but still expect an accurate report. 
You're right that there is a lot of work. I just wish we had a definite payday. It would be nice to know if I'm getting paid on the 4th, the 8th, the 10th or whenever. That would be my only complaint with the place. Otherwise, it is easy work with great people.
More offshoring of the easy dictators
nm
Switched to an IC job at 8 cpl, great dictators, no ESL
x
Wondered where my better dictators were when I got on at 3 a.m. this morning.
It is really irritating when pets are put the good/best dictators in their pool and I am put the worst. Glad you GOT your lines, because I took the beating doing what we should have been sharing, report-wise, rather than leads filling pools of their pets with the good stuff!
Horrible company. Bad dictators,
platform has got to be the worst thing out there. They are run by a bunch of people who don't know what they are doing. They all tell you to do something different when it comes to the account specs. Impossible to make any money there.
Dictaphone with the worst dictators
NM
It's going to depend on the dictators/accounts you
have, so there's really no reason to worry in the meantime. You just have to wait and see how your pay will be affected. Everyone's is different. VR paid lower for me. If it's too much of a cut in pay, you can always find a company that either doesn't force you to do VR or has better pay for it or better accounts, etc. Free will, baby! :)
All easy dictators are offshored
I was part of a package that Transcend purchased. We were all assured there would be no changes, which was initially true for several months........then the massive offshoring became more and more noticable. One account would have hundreds of jobs in the evening; at 5 AM there was nothing left and if there were any jobs available they were very difficult dictators.
It got to a point where any audible dictator was offshored and there were no decent dictators left. You also had to be flexible waiting for work. Sometimes you would have to wait 4-5 hours for jobs to be available. Then your health insurance was revoked for not meeting your quota.
My advice is that you have no choice, give them a try. Maybe your luck will be better. If you do have job currently, I would not consider changing.
Good luck!
All easy dictators are offshored
I was part of a package that Transcend purchased. We were all assured there would be no changes, which was initially true for several months........then the massive offshoring became more and more noticable. One account would have hundreds of jobs in the evening; at 5 AM there was nothing left and if there were any jobs available they were very difficult dictators.
It got to a point where any audible dictator was offshored and there were no decent dictators left. You also had to be flexible waiting for work. Sometimes you would have to wait 4-5 hours for jobs to be available. Then your health insurance was revoked for not meeting your quota.
My advice is that you have no choice, give them a try. Maybe your luck will be better. If you do have job currently, I would not consider changing.
Good luck!
How many of these VR lines for heavy ESL dictators?
Thanks.
You said they claim easy dictators..
Are they easy with a significant amount of repetitiveness? If there isn't...and all they do is talk then as an IC, 7 cents is not gonna pay the rent. If the doc repeats things over and over...then you have a chance.
I had an ESL once who others wouldn't do. However, once I figured him out I found that he repeated 90% of the reports so it was great.
It also depends on platform. If it's in MS Word with an FTP site...great. If they use something like Emdat but don't have the demos and base information correct then your line count goes even lower. Shop wisely....
No way. Worst dictators I ever heard and QA very very RUDE! SM
Condescending e-mails from QA, but as I said, the bottom of the fish pond dictators. Stinko!
Are you crazy? Worst dictators I've ever had...SM
I've been an MT forever and worked for several nationals on a lot of terrible accounts but FN is the worst dictation I have ever done. Office staff is terrific, pay is fair but I hate the dictators and am actively looking for a new job now that 2006 is here.
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