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Looks like poster anon was at the meeting too.

Posted By: enlightenus on 2007-03-29
In Reply to: Easy! I was invited to the meeting... - m.e.d.

And you jumped down her neck as well. Are we in need of some Midol?


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    anon
    I thought their line counting was consistent. Why would someone settle for that and not ask to be moved to another account? Curious, is there something that you do get that offsets that?
    anon
    posts are from early 2006. people always running out of work. managers not flexible. thats why i dedided not to test.
    anon
    And it's really a shame because the dictation is so easy. On ER with 10 years' experience, I should be just flinging those charts out. Not so. I try really hard and average about 125 lph. For every doctor who is mentioned in an ER report, you have to look up his name to verify and then the number, go back to the entry screen and enter it. Sometimes that's 5 or 6 different doctors. I wonder if it's going to get any better or if it's better to get out now.
    ANON, please see my msg above...
    do you have trouble with ShortCut not expanding???  Did you fix it???? If so, how????  TIA
    Well said, anon! - nm
    .
    anon
    Whomever corrected my post from juice to sauce had the right idea - this one needs addiction psych and a stay in detox for sure!
    uh more than one anon??????nm
    nm
    Anon
    I just went shopping today and by shopping carefully was able to really stock my pantry for a hundred dollars. I was able to do this because I had been allowed some overtime on one of my smaller jobs. Was I grateful for it? You betcha.
    Anon
    I used to love Miami in its heyday--back before South Beach and all that. If I move to Florida, it will be nearer to Orlando. Not sure I am going to do it, just playing with the idea. I'm sorry things are so tough in Miami--it is such a gorgeous city.
    Anon
    And I will just bet the principals are out on their yachts (yep, they have them) toasting each other. Too bad we are under the bus. I wish I could say what I really feel but this is a family-friendly board.
    It is just a ra-ra meeting,,,
    Nothing will be discussed, I was in the corporate meeting on Friay, and they basically blew smoke up our a$$
    please let us know what happens at the meeting!!
    x
    Bet that meeting never happens now
    She probably wanted to get that meeting out of the way before the pay cuts, or as she likes to call it 'leveling' - yeah it really levels you to get whacked like that - so now it will probably never get rescheduled.  She wanted to say a bunch of stuff like how hard we work and how much she appreciates it and how valuable we are and don't let the door hit ya and then two days later . . . wham!  Pay cuts for all!
    reply to anon above
    Amen.
    Anon, you have e-mail. nm
    xx
    Anon...thanks for your opinion... I am
    about to start with TT and hope my experience will be a good one.
    Anon ... see inside
    Just keep a log like I do, write down the times of dictation. Seems like big batches are missing. When I started with DRC there were jobs 24 hours a day being dictated. Now more or less some specialties, but nothing ordinary, looks like the easier work is gone, and almost all my reports are 2 minutes, 3 minutes - can't make any money. You are correct there should be more jobs, but maybe there are way more MTs doing the work than we know. I'm sure it looks good for DRC or any MTS if the jobs turn fast and always look caught up. It's hard to guess what's going on when we only catch one job at a time over the line, the daily report may say work is from yesterday but there may be only one job. You can e-mail me if you like, but I don't have any secret knowledge. I just want enough work to keep me busy for the hours I promised. I'm overall very happy with everybody I deal with. I know work volume is a very delicate balance, I'm glad that's not my job.
    Thank you Anon for speaking up!!
    Thanks
    Anon postings

    I was threatened a few years ago for posting on the site by a company that wasn't paying its people.  The owner threatened to sue me for deformation of character and slander.  First of all, I told her as the owner of a transcription company, she needed to learn how to spell.  It's defamation of character.  Next, since the board is in print, it would be libel instead of slander. 


    For any MTs who are afraid of being sued over posts, the most important thing to remember is that they can only sue you if what you say is not true.  If you stick to the facts, whether it's not getting paid, bounced checks, etc., you don't have anything to worry about. 


    I have posted deragotory comments about 2 companies, and both have threatened to sue me.  I have a little file in which I keep all the evidence of late pays and bounced checks, so I'm not concerned.


    Dear Anon
    Are the company initials AA? I'm still suffering there.

    question for anon
    I'm just curious - you said your company is changing to offshore. Do you work for a hospital or an MT service? Are they just going to have US MTs do ASR and offshore MTs do regular typing? Just wondering.
    anon -- a few questions

    Were you making more than 9 cpl? 10 cpl?, etc?  Do you know if all MTs were affected or just certain accounts.  If it wasn't all MTs, do you know why you were targeted? 


    I'm just trying to get a grasp on this as I work for MDI/Transcend and I'm worried about 01/01/10.


    Just An Anon, please forgive me for
    what I'm going to say first. I know you're hurting, but strictly for the sake of others: The writing was on the wall a long time ago. That's when we all needed to start developing our skills for this day so we wouldn't take a bad hit in the transition to new technology. Some did, and these rates to at least a good degree reflect that.

    Is $0.03 reasonable? It depends. It depends on how many corrections you have to make and how long it takes YOU to make them.

    eScription is a fantastic platform, likely the best currently available. A couple of years ago I worked on eScription on a good account (a prestigious hospital with high-caliber clinicians) and many reports needed little correction. I literally sat and sipped coffee with dictation cranked up as fast as it would go on the very best of them.

    Regarding how long it takes to make the corrections and the lowering of your base transcription line rate, I just counted up letters I typed in an Expander example I gave on another thread, and letters in the sentence were @81 without expander, @24 with. It's been a long time since I did any counting, so even I was surprised that it was over 3 times fewer with my expander.

    In your place I'd absolutely stay and commit to doing anywhere from almost as well as before to even better. You're a pro, so you should be somewhere in that range--once you've learned the new job. Best wishes.

    Now, let the flames snap and crack...
    My notes from the meeting - s/m
    Apparently Acusis started in India, not the US. It's not very old - only 6 years. The CEO seems to know alot about business & making money, but not much about MT-ing. Says he's learning. They apparently have aspirations to be THE largest MT company not only in the US, but globally. He thought he could do it from India, but found he couldn't, partly because of the fact that some US medical institutions don't want offshored work. Others will allow PART of their work offshore (like radiology, etc.), but not other work. So instead this would be what he called a Hybrid US+India company. Hmmm.

    So, according to what he said, he feels the best way to grow the company FAST is to also have a US MT force, so clients have a choice. They will have to pay more for US transcription, though he assures us the Indians are also good. (Yeah, RIGHT!) Initially the two-tiered business platform made sense to me. But other comments made later in the meeting made me wonder about what the REAL truth might be. Among other things, they plan to buy many other US MT companies, as well. DRC is just the first. He seems to think bigger is better. Having worked at PAMC since it was smaller, and seeing how nasty it got when it was bigger, I certainly don't agree.

    Someone asked the question about the less-skilled, or even the accurate, but slower transcribers' role there. For now he seems to want only top-notch people, but later says how having a plan for bringing less-skilled MTs up to speed would be a good thing. Some questions sounded slightly hedged or evaded, and sometimes had the words for now thrown in, like maybe we weren't going to notice them or something. This had to do mainly with questions about change as it affected us. Red flag.

    When asked about all the extra management people after the merge, he said that for now there was a seat for everyone on the bus. But he also allowed as how his company has always tended to have more execs than they really needed. Well, that certainly is one of the problems at PAMC, and it seems to cause them to continually find fault with the MTs, if for no other reason than to make themselves look good. So that was another rather loud warning-bell I heard.....it's a management-heavy company.

    Re: Pay/Benefits - He says so far it'll remain the same. He wants it well above average, but doesn't specifically say whether or not MTs are part of that plan. He does say that by improving the software, etc., they can make the MTs more productive, and thus enable them to make more money. I didn't particularly like that part, either.

    One thing that DID sound good was that although we would have to change over to Acusis' 401K (and who knows how good it is.....), he says they'll match it with 3%. Well, to me that isn't exactly MATCHING.... but I guess if you put in $100, they put in another $3.

    Their company goals were:
    - Global world-class customer satisfaction (sounds kinda' generic, but whatever...)
    - Service flexibility & choice of options (the Hybrid-thing).
    - Create the strongest organization (so they can gobble up & digest the competition?)
    - Have the best technology (boys do like their toys.....)

    I guess we'll lose the nice DRC software we're using now. He says he wants to have a new, blended software platform that will be called AcuSuite 3.0. It is supposed to have enhanced user-friendliness (hard to believe, if it's not written by someone who knows a LOT about MT!). He also mentions back-end speech-recognition.

    He also mentioned that he was a leader in his church. (Oh, pul-eeeze! Not more holy-rollers trying to take over the healthcare industry!?!?) Definitely a red flag in my book.

    The Future Plans are:
    - To acquire more MT companies.
    - To develop a repetitive model to acquire and integrate future acquisitions.

    Again, all this talk about growing, merging, acquiring -- has nothing to do with the nuts & bolts of MEDICAL TRANSCRIPTION. He talked about MONEY, a LOT. But not MTs making money - but instead about his goal of having this be the world's BIGGEST and WEALTHIEST MT company. I don't think anyone can have those kind of aspirations and stay honest or have their employee's best interests at heart for very long.

    One person brought up the fact that the Chief Officer of Acusis-India desires India to dominate the medical information field worldwide, and wanted to know if he intended to convert the clients from US-transcribed to Indian-transcribed. His answer was very ODD, and most certainly got me wondering: It was that it was his belief until 55 minutes ago. (Whaaaat?) He tried to clarify that by saying he used to think domination of the MT industry could be done solely through India, and that now he believes it cannot. But, either way, all this domination talk makes me uneasy.

    Another question was How do US clients view the above statement by the C.O.O.? He admits it was viewed with skepticism. He also says hes been trying to take our clients for a long time, now. (What???) (I guess he tried from India, couldn't do it, and so now has come onshore.)

    When asked about accrued vacation time, and would the MTs be able to keep it, the answer was YES. (Though said he doesn't yet understand DRCs system of accrual of vacation time according to Keystrokes typed, or how much can be carried.

    In the first 100 days they plan to:
    - Integrate talent, IT, Processes, Benefits.
    - Establish performance goals, alignment.
    - Retain only high customer satisfaction performers who get results. (Does this pertain to management? MTs? Everyone? What exactly does this mean? This wasn't clear).
    - Continue to have quarterly conference calls. (Jeez .... even semi-annually would be more than I could stand.)

    Later he says the MTs are where the rubber meets the road. (Good analogy, but will Acusis follow through on their statement that they consider the US-based MTs to be a valuable part of the company?) I wonder if he is aware of how many people are ready to walk out RIGHT NOW, just based on their strong ties with India?

    Well, anyway, that was my take on everything, from all the notes I took. I don't plan to do anything rash.... and will instead just keep on typin' and see what develops. If I like it I'll stay, if I don't, then I guess I'll leave. But I won't cross that bridge 'til I come to it, as it's still too early to tell how the takeover will ultimately go. What we were told could be the truth, or it could all just be smoke and mirrors.
    Anybody at TT have trouble meeting

    I work days so I am wondering if the system is just plain bogged down.  


    What kind of meeting? nm
    nm
    Supervisor meeting...
    nm
    I believe it was actually a big meeting of suits,
    ya know, the real thinkers and shakers, at some annual meeting or something. I know of one manager who had to slink back to the office - there were offices in those days - with his tail between his legs, as the word beat of the  monkeys beat him back to the office. It was horrible. Happened probably a good 10 years ago, though, so its been their mentality for a long time.
    I had been posting as anon. This is my new handle.
    nm
    Visited but what if somebody wants to post anon. They have

    all info to know who posts what so seems to me that the problems and negative things about the company will not get posted there.  To register to post you have to give name and e-mail address, etc. which would not make it easy for somebody to track a poster down.  Just my 2cents.


    this is very good advice, anon. I did the same
    sing-song of the voice you are listening to and forget your own inflections. You almost have to adopt that accept and understands that ra means la. Leave those blanks, go back to relisten and you will usually have saved time and some sanity.
    ANON - you must be reading my mind...

    as I was just looking to see what will happen to my file of shortcuts and expansions when I uninstall.  I am going to try to save them to CD before uninstalling.  It would be very discouraging to lose over 1000 entries!


    Try opening SC before your word program and see if the double letters disappear.  Also, if you open Stedman's Medical Dictionary before SC, that should stop the double letters. 


    Wish me luck!


    Anon, you mentioned a website...
    where you took a test and not 10 minutes after the recruiter called? Could you give any info on that.

    Thanks

    Very sad to be unhappy at MQ
    Anon, you shouold care
    if they offshore. They are killing the American economy and the American worker. Don't be a participant in your own demise. AMERICAN JOBS FOR AMERICAN WORKERS.
    this "anon/Anon" seems to have a problem...
    with me. Always making stupid comments without thinking--just like after my recent post (if you're the same person). Stop stalking me Anon. LOL.
    you put this very nicely...not like "anon/Anon"
    TY
    Just a quick definition for you anon for now...


    SATIRE


    1.the use of irony, sarcasm, ridicule, or the like, in exposing, denouncing, or deriding vice, folly, etc.
    2. a literary composition, in verse or prose, in which human folly and vice are held up to scorn, derision, or ridicule.
    3. a literary genre comprising such compositions.

    obviously my post wasn't trying to trick anyone into believing I was a TT CEO, I didn't even give his name, and if anybody is slow enough to think that I am the CEO for a minute, please email me, I have a bridge to sale you.

    This whole thread is about the pay decreases and why they are happending...satire, my friend, satire. I need to buy you one of those word-a-day calendars.

    If you post anon, you get flamed for being a BIG, BAD,
    anonymous poster who would PEE THEIR PANTS if they met a CEO of a company and have to come here to vent about your spineless life instead of standing up for yourself.

    At least GP calls it as she sees it, and I respect her for stating it even when the same people attack her over and over with their amazingly intelligent 'go paint gourd' responses.

    By the way, who are you?
    I had the pleasure of meeting D several years ago

    when you actually had to fly to Maryland to train before you worked for Signal.  To say I was impressed is an understatement.  I liked her immediately.  D is one of those people that you meet and feel like you have known your entire life; the kind of person everyone wants to be around.  Her personality comes across over the phone as well.  D genuinely cares.  I'm sure others know her far better than I do, but how could anyone have ANY interaction with her and not know she cares?  What other company can you email or call the head honcho, as busy as they are, and have them actually talk to you and address your concerns?  When I see someone being critical of D, all I can think is that person must not know her at all. 


    Carlotta, thanks for the positive post and for putting things in perspective.  Sometimes we (me included) focus on what is wrong instead of what is right.  I feel sheepish for doing that.  I have worked in a hospital, for MDI, for other companies and had my own accounts and in not one of those situations was there always, or even usually, a happy medium in regard to work flow.  Too much or too little, feast or famine.   I should know that by now, and yet I have at times let myself forget it and slip into a negative attitude.


    Those of us at MDI-MD really do have a good thing.  Maybe we should appreciate it more and complain less (me included). 


     


    I wasn't asking for the meeting minutes.
    I wasn't even asking what is said. I wanted to know if they were sold. I DO NOT want to get hired into that company if they are off-shoring, plain and simple. A simple e-mail would have sufficed instead of attacking a simple question. You think they would have told this potential hire that information BEFORE I entered the company? No worries, I am not jumping onto that boat anyway. Will take 2nd choice.
    Easy! I was invited to the meeting...
    ...and it's an account I work on. Everyone else who works on this account was also invited to the meeting. Otherwise why would it matter to the casual passer-by? Clients are not to be named on this board... or did I get that wrong, too?
    What meeting? I just left but would sure love to know
    what is going on with OSI. I was there for four years. TIA
    meeting line counts

    I guess I am confused as I have not actually worked for Amphion, but my sister works there, is constantly changing accounts and having to do 2nd and 3rd account to get her lines, and consistently meets 2000 lines a day in about 6-1/2 hours.  I don't understand how you could not meet their minimum line count...


    I was counseled about not meeting my lines
    when I had some personal issues that were making me very unreliable over several pay periods in a row...not just a day here or there, but I was only meeting about 60% of my lines for about 6-7 weeks.

    I got a professional email offering to place me on a p.r.n. basis at a lower line rate, or get my act together and keep my promise by being reliable.

    I looked at what was keeping me from making my lines, straightened out my issues (including having an outpatient surgery for something that had been dragging me down). After making my lines for 2 paychecks, I was sent another email thanking me for getting things fixed and patting me on the back for being the MT the person writing believed me to be.

    They never dropped my pay. In fact, a few months later when I was able to increase my lines even more, I got a raise.

    The point was that I committed to lines that I wasn't meeting (not due to lack of work) and they counseled me before giving up on me. If I hadn't pulled myself together, we would have parted ways. I needed that kick in the bum. I feel it made me a better MT and it made me feel better about myself in general. No one has ever said a word to me about not meeting my lines for lack of work...in fact, I usually get emails where they acknowledge the issue and reassure the team everything will be okay.

    I think they are very professional, but they do have high expectations, which is why the best of the best work there.
    I was told that it was going to be brought up at their next meeting...
    hopefully something like that will be set up because I think it would be beneficial...
    SPI account managers meeting

    Well, Well....The account managers are at a conference in Nashville once again...I have heard rumors that some of them are going to fight for the MTs to get paid for headers/footers once again!!!  GOOD LUCK TO THEM!!  The last time they had a big account managers meeting like this (sometime last year) both my account manager and senior account manager left the next week!!!!  Wonder how many they are going to lose this time???   I heard there is plenty of work now, but the problem is there isn't anyone left to type it, so they are trying to work to death the ones that are left...what a mess!!!


    Do you have any problems meeting production?

    What's "out of work" for you? Are you meeting your
    minimum line count or barely scraping by?
    Any comments on the Acusis/DRC meeting?
    Sometimes change can be a good thing, BUT...I have to say that I wasn't feeling too warm and fuzzy by the end of the call. What's with letting go of key people? Or maybe I haven't been with Acusis long enough to know that it happens all the time, just part of the business.

    Also not feeling too thrilled about the change from KS to LPH. I thought I'd lucked out and found a company who understood the nitty gritty of production and paid fairly, but now they're switching to how everyone else does it. I'll wait and see how it shakes out (once they get it together and figure out the magic conversion formula) but why am I thinking it's going to be downhill from here? Or maybe it's just a mild case of paranoia...like MQ deja vu all over again.
    town hall meeting
    I agree.  This is very much a listening meeting, basically a pep rally about how great Webmedx is and how they put the employees first.  Unfortunately this is not the case demonstrated by the amount of posts here and the lack of work for those of us who have given so much to this company.  Now we sit with nary a thing to do.
    Raises were not the purpose of the meeting.... sm
    Did you not hear it said that prices are down 25% overall in the industry over the last few years? How can a company give you a ____ cent-per-line increase if the industry prices are down?

    Did you not hear about the technology they are implementing to help the MTs increase productivity?

    Increased Productivity = Increased Paycheck.

    Overall, I came away from the meeting with a very good feeling. I'm sorry if it was not the same for you.