Not many posts cause small company

You didn't say if you interviewed for acute care or clinic.  There is not much chatter on this board because Axolotl is a small company.  About 20 to 25 acute care and 20 to 25 clinic MTs. 

Your questions:

Platform: can be slow depending on your accounts

Incentives: none to speak of besides overtime

Benefits: comparable to good.  Depends on what you need

Communication:  Average

Flexibility:  If you comit to working 7 am to 3 pm you better be there are 7 am.  If you don't call in they might call you to find out where you are because they are so small and need everyone to be there when they say because of turn around time.   No timeclock to speak of so you can work as long as you want to get in your 1200 lines per day if there is work.  When there is no work you have to leave after your shift even if you have not gotten your minimum lines in. 

ESL:  If you are acute care you could get stuck on a couple of really nasty ESL accounts where you can go for several days getting mostly ESL and not enough others to average out the lines.  So if you are not real strong and love to do ESL getting lines in may be a problem during an 8 hour shift even after several months. 

Like any company everyone's experience is different.  What is great for one may be a disaster for another.  I have been with them less than 9 months and there seem to have been quite a few MTs whose names seem to suddenly disappear so it seems like Axolotl may not have been a good fit for those MTs.   

If you have other specific questions, you can E-Mail me. 

Good luck in whatever you decide. 

• I also would like to know about Axolotl, please.....sm - curious
  • Not many posts cause small company - just my opinion

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Axolotl is a WONDERFUL company with great benefits and competitive pay.  We have maybe 100 MTs but are growing rapidly.

I think just an owner and IT person, company in Wyoming, I believe.   I can't remember the name of the company.  They offered me a position and I turned them down, but I need to make a list of all the companies I've turned down as many of them continue to contact me and I want to be able to say no right away instead of going through the interview again because I forgot.   I know there is a company in Cody, WY, but I don't think that is them.  They were extremely disorganized. 

Anyone have a clue who is may be?  I know I haven't given much info to work with. 

Hello. I am sure many have asked this same thing before, just looking for a rooting section to feel better about this.  I currently work for a national.  With many changes, not feeling like a person, production sinking, morale gone, on and on and on... I decided to seek PT position with a smaller company.  So, I found a second company.  They are small, but growing. The director is a former MT.  They currently have about 100 MTs. The pay is very standard at 8 cents.  Their platform is slowing me down a bit, but they say they are working on upgradiing it.  Their communication and personal attention to me has been excellent.  I have 1 dictator. I see what work is coming in and have 20 hours to get it done. 

Is the small company too good to be true?  Being burnt from national, I am finding it hard to grasp that this really could be this good.  sure, the pay isn't as great..it is an IC position, rather than employee...but I am not stuck with God knows what work, changing all the time...and I am heard and appreciated.

Do I just bite the bullet and transition the small company into full-time and do the national PT?  Any comments, suggestions, etc would be appreciated!

Just looking for opinions on the positive side and/or negative side of a small company vs. a larger one.  Help me out here....please!

The woman that owns the company is crazy.  She treats physical therapy like it's acute care.  They are office visit notes and she acts like they are Op notes and the doctor is breathing down her back waiting for them to be typed.  The physical therapist could care less ------- it's an exercise class lady - get over it.  At 6 cpl she wants a miracle. 

There is no reason for me to lie about this.

I am NOT talking about offshoring, but the company whom they outsource to may offshore . . . I have no idea about that.  But straight from the horse's mouth, they have outsourced to a small MTSO before. 

You can notice how the work dries up all of a sudden when they turn it over to the service and we have no work.

TT mgmt may not tell that they outsource today, but they definitely told me about 9 months ago when I asked when the work was low.  From the way the jobs disappear occasionally, I think it happens quite often.

And for most companies, there are also good posts. 

There are a couple bad things to really listen to--late/no pay is one of them.  However, most have an opinion based on personal preferences.  Some people don't like OSi (or Spheris, or Medquist, or fill-in-the-blank), and some people do.  It's all based on a personal preference, and that's why many people say again and again that every company is good for some, bad for some.  No one company is going to be perfect for everyone.  The most balanced views acknowledge the good and bad of a company.

I currently work for OSi and have for almost 2 years.  I loved working for them as an MT and hated working as QA.  I am back to part-time MT, and while I'm generally happy and still would and do recommend them to MTs, there are some things I don't like.  Just as I assume there will be some things I will not like about the company I go to next.  But as far as OSi goes, they ALWAYS pay on time, the account coordinators are great, and most of the management are nice and try their best to be accommodating. 

The honest truth is that I would not recommend arguing with the QA department, or at least to pick your battles carefully.  However, mostly the QA dept leaves you alone unless you fail a review.  Just don't ever work for QA there... lol  The QA dept is seriously the only bad thing I would say about OSi.  And they're mostly good people, just very inept at QA sometimes. 

So all in all, I say OSi is a good place to work.  Despite my personal distaste for the QA dept, they are not terrible and do not really affect your day-to-day work.  I recommend them with all honesty and I think that MOST MTs would find them a good place to work.

They have great accounts, some very good line-makers.  I seldom run out of work, but cannot say that I never run out.  But when I do, I have the choice of going to a secondary account.  I really do like all of the accounts and the sound quality is never a problem (at least for me--and obviously there are times that docs dictate on cell phones that sound as though they are on a motorcycle, going 100 mph).  But the overall sound quality is great, and ExText is my favorite platform thus far. Again, the account coordinators are very good, very friendly, and very easy to talk with.

Lisha

doesn't mean they're in management, and you're presuming that someone who posts a positive is a manager is pretty ludicrious.  There are plenty of MTs out there happy with their employer... even some folks happy with MQ even with all of the legal problems that company has ongoing.

Unless someone makes a statement about someone in particular at a company that is completely false then there would be no reason for anyone to request a trace to find out who a poster is.  For example, on most internet boards anywhere you can say something like "XYZ company stinks" and be OK, but if you said something like "XYZ's payroll department paid me only a fraction of my earnings and failed to correct the problem" without proof to support your statement then you could be potentially held liable for posting false information.   If you did have proof of in this instance a payroll problem and proof of where it was attempted to be resolved then you'd be safe. 

turn the whole thread ugly.  Then the posts are all removed, and the company looks bad because the good was removed with the bad.  Yes, Keystrokes pays to have an ad on this forum but it is just an advertisement like the ones we have on other medical sites, in magazines, at trade shows and in other publications. 

I am going to set the record straight for those who are intersted.  If you are not, ignore the post. 

Keystrokes has grown from 5 to over 200 transcriptionists, from $50,000 in revenue to over $5 million dollars in revenue in 8 years, with the majority of the increase in the past 3 years.  This is public knowledge, available on the website, Inc Magazine site, Aspatore books, etc. so there is no reason to delete this. 

We have 100% account retention.  We recently declined meeting the price of an offshore company when a few of our radiology accounts went to voice recognition in the same health system.  We chose not to do voice recognition with them by not meeting an outragiously low price.  We do not outsource and stand firm on that regardless of what other do.

Keystrokes has been changing over the past three years, not disputed, but the changes benefit the MTs more than anyone.  Our rates are higher than many (not all) companies, our schedules have some flexibility, our managers are all MTs. 

We have caught a lot of grief on this board for various reasons, and a lot of it seems to be from the same few people.  Or from those who talk nonsense.  I truly hope that people reading these negative posts see sour grapes when they read them and understand.  Yes, there are some bitter people out there but they are ones that either did not make it through the initial period, have poor quality, have zero reliability, have made gross patient care errors or have breached HIPAA regulations.  Yes, there has been a turnover, but we have a great team in place and those who work at Keystrokes like/love working there.

We have heard that only a very small percentage of transcriptionists actually visit the MT websites for anything other than the job openings.  A big reason is the pettiness and ugliness that the posts seem to bring out.  Another is time.  A lot of MTs work on computers all day long and want to spend off work time off their computer. 

If you have questions about Keystrokes, go to the company for answers. 

I defend the company that I work for but have made a promise to myself to stop visiting here and two other sites because they really just take up time that should be spent on other things.  I hate that the bashers will still be bashers and that no one can defend a company (any company) without being attacked.  So the bashers are the only ones that post.  I wish you all the best and rest assured, Keystrokes will continue to grow as a national presence, and will continue to attract customers and MTs and will continue to make both very happy.

I will share this about the MTSO I work for.  I called her late last Wednesday night after Church and told her I was compelled to help out with Hurricaine Katrina in some way and an opportunity arose for a small group from my Church to go to Louisianna this coming week.  Would she be able to cover my work.  She told me no problem without any hesitation and even donated money for the trip. 

And I am sure there are plenty of good companies out there to work for.  To compare us to migrant workers is just not right.