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Not necessarily-if you get a bad dictator -- sm

Posted By: no name on 2007-08-02
In Reply to: Yes, but - LK

your production is hurt whether you are experienced or not.  Fast production not only depends on the MT's ability but the quality of the dictator and how fast or slow they speak or how clear the speak.


A person with more experience will leave far less blanks but will still be limited on how fast she/he is.  Thus they deserve to be paid more than 7 cpl.




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I had a dictator like that once. (sm)

At first, I found it to be very irritating, but then I started to feel sorry for the guy.


Then, a couple months ago, I had a ministroke and now have intermittent difficulty with, not so much stuttering, but stammering/stuttering sometimes when I speak, as if the connection has broken somewhere between my brain and my mouth.


It happened to me recently when I was on the phone with someone from my doctor's office, and I started crying because I was so embarrassed and frustrated.


In something as important as dictating a patient's medical record, I think someone should gently bring this to the doc's attention, though maybe it embarrasses him as much as it embarrasses me.


On the other hand, with some USA companies outsourcing American work to foreign countries, obviously somewhere along the line, somebody stopped caring about accuracy (and confidentiality and HIPAA laws, etc.), IMHO.


ESL - SPANISH DICTATOR
AND UNFORTUNATELY NOT AN 800 NUMBER FOR DIAL IN TO GET THE DICTATIONS. Hospital will not invest the money to make the wave files available either. I just read this posting. I didn't see the others that were posting bad things about me until tonight. Some people just don't accept that you need excellent skills to make top money. Nothing comes easy. Thus my offer to pay more just to get this guy done. Thank you for all of your help. Karen
SR is not the problem, the dictator is
The problem is not with the product (SR) but with the person using it. You can't just install the program, start dictating, and see perfection appear on the screen. There's a lot involved with the training process, which never ends. It's really no different than building up an expansion program. The more time and effort you put into make entries, the better your line count will ultimately be.

I also work with SR every day, but I use the product instead of the keyboard. Previously, with the use of an expansion program, I had to kill myself to hit 1800 lines in a 9-hour day. Now, I can whip out at least 3000 lines in an 8-hour day (6-1/2 to 7 hours of dictating and about an hour of proofing). Any mistakes which I do have are my fault ... I did not articulate/enunciate correctly.

SR was once a product I wanted to use, 'cause I thought it would make this work more enjoyable. Now, it's a necessity. More than 30 years of MT has led to repetitive stress injuries (bilateral CTS and right cubital tunnel syndrome).

Sometimes I wish there were MTs who lived close to me, 'cause I would invite them over so they could see how well SR works, when it's been trained correctly.
But if that is the type of dictator that you will be doing, isn't it best for both of you sm

to know how you will do?  If you can't do whatever kind of awful dictation they have, then they need to know.  AND, most importantly, if that's the kind of dictation you would be facing every day, then YOU need to know so you can say no, thank you.   I know if I tested and had Mr Dream Doc for the test and then started working for the company and had Mr Devil Dictator every day, I'd feel like they did a bait and switch.


Just my opinion.  Good luck! 


Yes, very serious; however, 700 lph is not the norm every day. It just depends on the dictator. Th
Sometimes the reports are 98% accurate and sometimes, depending on the dictator, they are 90% accurate. As you know in this field, it depends on the day and dictator. The daily average, after all is said and done, is about 600 lph, 700 is on the very high end and not a consistent average every day.
Will the dictator change? Could end up being a foreigner (sm)
talking over that incessant sound of running water I always hear in path reports.  I wouldn't do it.
I truly think that if every doctor or dictator had to spend
was forced to listen to themselves for a period of time...say an hour or two, I would almost bet the farm that a lot of mumblemouths, yawners, eaters, and people who dictate in the bathroom while they are flushing would change their habits radically. Or sending their dictation EXACTLY the way they say it...um...uh...uh...ummmm........hmmmm.........dead air....You know the ones.

No one will ever convince me differently. LOL. IN a perfect world maybe. in the MT world??? Not!!!
Thanks for that info! No way am I muddling through a dictator like that
xx
As I said, it is going to depend on the dictator's style.
My doctors dictate a lot of lines like:

MEDICATIONS: None.

ALLERGIES: No known drug allergies.

That is why I was saying it would be good if you have a lot of short lines. It also would depend on the page format. With the page format we use, each line is approximately 65 characters, so if the doctor dictated a lot in paragraph form versus the short lines, then it would indeed be a paycut. All I was suggesting was that you really can't judge the pay rate as there are so many variables that go into it. It ould be decent pay with the right conditions. As I said, with just the one report, I would have made $3 more. Times that by the 20 reports I do a day and that is a huge difference.

I agree though about the software. Not going to take the chance of buying expensive software only to find out that the job isn't going to work out in the end a month or two down the road.
Everytime I start this dictator she has a mouthful
of gum, candy, ?? swishing around in her mouth. How rude can you get? Even if she is not sucking, chewing or whatever she is rolling that crap around in her mouth and then there is this physician who cannot pronounce her medical terms and yet she seems like she needs to snort something back every sentence. Just gross!!
YES! I will get numerous reports from the same ugly dictator

8 times in one night -- these H&P's being 6 plus hours old, and each dictated with plenty of time in between, my knowing that there were other dictators dictating in between his -- so know that they have been holding them for me after the day shift gets off. They don't delay H&P's getting out for this many hours, so it is so very obvious what is taking place. I don't like companies manipulating the system for their favorites.


I absolutely despise this practice by a company.


You're assuming this is a sweetheart dictator ... sm

With a good dictator that knows what he/she wants to say and says it, without all the ...uh....ah....mmmm.....ah.....ugh, ad nauseum... rudely shuffles papers while you're waiting for the next sound ... without the courtesy of shutting the machine off while they steal even more of your time....yes, without all this inconsiderate behavior on the part of dictators...the above equation would probably be correct.


I agree that the dictator on the 1st test file...
is difficult to hear in places.  I'm going to try and re-record it in WavePad to see if I can't boost up the audio a bit.  I could hear the 2nd and 3rd files much better.  I've still got to proof my files and then will send them in.
I find it varies widely by dictator
Caveat up front: I've only been on VR less than 6 months. More experienced MT editors might have a completely different VR experience.

That said, I notice the big factors in how many LPH I can do with it are (1) how long the dictating provider has been using the VR system and how many times s/he's been through readaptation, (2) whether the dictator is ESL. The software so far seems to favor native speakers over ESL's; it 'gets' the native speaker's speech pattern faster.

I am looking for quality, myself. The temptation to 'skim' is there with this kind of work, but I'm too afraid I'll make critical errors that way.

If I have a good dictator who's been readapted a few times, I can get by with little editing and average 400 lph. Most of the editing I do in that capacity is formatting, and a few good ShortHand entries can make a world of difference in speeding that up. I'd say definitely visit the Community page Training tab if you haven't already.

With a new and/or ESL dictator, though, I admit it: It's faster for me to straight-type it. So I do, because I can get between 300 and 350 lph that way. Editing might easily drop me down to that 200 lph ceiling you're struggling with. I don't know if that will always be so, or if, as I get more used to the rhythm of editing, it will become second nature and go faster. But right now, if the report's bad enough I simply transcribe it.

Again, just my experience so far.
We worked out of a pool, and when a report came up from a cruddy dictator (sm)
they would hit "1" and send it back to the pool so the next Transcriptionist would get it.  It was so obvious, as soon as you went on in the morning the first few reports you got would be from the most God-awful ESLs and you can see that they were dictated the previous day, but then all of a sudden you start getting jobs that were dictated just an hour before.   
Yes, if gross line count and easy dictator
to start with.
6 cents a line for surgical reports for an ESL dictator? Are you NUTS??

I'm just absolutely appalled and disgusted...


Not necessarily going to ASR

All of a sudden, no work at ALL on my offices biggest ED account...no one seemed to know what happened


Well, MQ's ED templates is what happened.."over 70 different templates for 70 main chief complaints" is how it's billed...go to MQ's home page, look at the link for ER's.  Doc picks the form, circles his choices and voila..all done! Don't need no MT to take care of business with these.


So, you mean to tell me after a week. the office finally says.."well, unbeknownst to us.SOMEONE sold them on the template system..just amazing the answers they think we will believe.


Not necessarily ......sm
It could have the opposite affect too. The aircraft industry has tried that too and it just pushed more and more work offshore. We used to have 30,000 aircraft workers in my town and now we barely have 5000. My opinion is you train everybody you can to do transcription and take as much work as you can and that will leave less for them to do and evetually they will find out it is not the little pot of gold they once thought.
Not necessarily
Some MTs who have posted this kind of income were working for a service - it's mostly a matter of getting on a good account, I think.
Not necessarily so
I work at Spheris and have an account I've been on since day 1 with plenty of work. I do have a secondary but really just work on 2 accounts. I have not found them to be inflexible at all -quite the contrary. It's a big company with lots of supervisors, several platforms, and different people have different experiences. There are MANY happy employees here, along with some that are unhappy. Sorry you had a bad experience - I have had a very good one.
Well...not necessarily, but it CAN

All you have to do is create a new folder each week that you save all of your work into.  At the end of the week, have Sylcount count all of the lines in that folder (the place where you saved all of your files for the week).


So, you would have a main folder called:


ABC Transcription (or whatever your company is called)


and inside that folder (after a year's time) you would have 52 folders (one for each week of the year).


Hope this helps,


Chickadee


Not necessarily
Just want decent pay, and to work with people I can respect, not people sticking daggers in my back. Managing people is really not my thing, I am more into QA, things like that.
Not so necessarily
Many high school grads are avoiding higher education in highly trained skills BECAUSE of the influx of foreign workers -- so yes, it is due, in part, to a reduced US skilled labor force not due to pay, but the realization of competition from outside countries. Even in the mid 1990s, software companies were bringing in foreign workers. I have a friend who works for one of those companies and while he has held onto his position, he recently told me that 90% of his coworkers from the 90s were laid off and have been replaced by foreign workers. The skill set of the foreign workers is higher than the ones let go and the work force is younger with fresher ideas, having grown up sucking their thumbs while surfing the net. They get an equal pay and performance bonus as he, while prorated for longevity.

If Silicon Valley employers can buy a retired cruise ship, import large numbers of foreign workers and float them in international waters for months at a time to work, bring them on shore for the government allotted time before returning them to sea, tell me where money is saved?

If our international MTSOs can spend millions of dollars on the construction from the ground up for the training of and employing of up to 5000 MTs (just for one company) in foreign countries, and those employees are now beginning to earn salaries and benefits close to what US MTs are getting, tell me where to find the savings, especially when you factor in lost profit due to power outages and riots over things we would never lose a day's work over.

It is a global economy, not just in the MT world, and will continue to filter down in every aspect of our daily lives.
Not necessarily.
I recently applied for a similar position. They did have a website, but it was very limited and didn't really have any info. No one had ever heard of this company. I was a little hesitant, but decided to accept the other anyway. It has turned out to be the best company I have ever worked for. The pay is much more than I was offered at any of the nationals. I had been there less than a month and received a raise as they said I was doing great and they appreciated all my hard work. There are good companies out there. I am very happy I took a chance.
Not necessarily - LOL (sm)

SM's platform is a horror.


Not necessarily..

Unless you don't mind working more than an 8-hour shift when the work is low to get your counts, or when there are problems with the platform, etc.   Not trying to discourage you but there are problems there.  And they quoted you 10 cpl?   


Not necessarily

I can do 2000 lines in a day - usually a 9 to 10 hour day, but still ....


Anyhoo, my accuracy stays in the 98 to 99% range.  I have occasional blanks when I just can't make something out.  My company uses templates, too, for each doc (it's a clinic account) and I have them saved in Word with the modifications that are needed.  I type in Word and then cut and paste into the platform.


I use lots and lots of expanders.  That's how I can get 250 lph.  Everything that is more than two or three characters that can be made into two or three characters is or has been and I add to it constantly when something else comes up.


Not everyone is fast and sloppy. 


Not necessarily. When you have new MTs,
Indian MTs, or MTs who just really don't even try, it can slow you down DRASTICALLY & be very time-consuming. QAing is not something that should pay per line if you want it done right.
Not necessarily - sm
It is my belief that if the number of employees laid off is less than 50, then 29 USCS 2106 and 20 CFR 639.1 would still apply.

Good luck!






Not necessarily--probably just tell them --sm
to look in the *archives* or Google it. *This has been discussed here a thousand times. look it up* or some other such rude answer. Nobody on this board seems to want to help any longer.
Not necessarily...
Sometimes the bar is set so high that, even those who do meet it, can't do so for any length of time without suffering the consequences in terms of health, mentally and/or physically. Sometimes meeting the bar takes a toll. It doesn't necessarily mean a person can't meet it...simply that they won't. It all depends on each person's priorities. ;-)
Not necessarily.
Signing a nondisclosure agreement at the outset of your conversation with the company presents no onerous burden to you and allows them to discuss the position in greater (specific) detail with the knowledge that you have agreed not to disclose anything you learn during your conversation with them, such as who their clients are. This is reasonable for them to ask, especially since neither of you knows whether you will be offered or will accept a position with them.

Sign the forms and get yourself into the conversation. It's nothing you should worry about and it makes perfect legal sense.
Not necessarily - there are 2 systems....sm
Transcend's and eScription used by MDI-Florida.
Bigger ain't necessarily better!

Just because someone works for a national doesn't mean their accounts aren't overstaffed, they don't have a terrible platform that breaks down virtually every day, (sometimes for 8 hours at a time), and they don't constantly run out of work. I simply can no longer afford to remain with my current employer, which is a national.


I'm a hard-working, loyal, dependable, dedicated person who takes pride in her work and doesn't like to switch jobs.  I'm not looking for my next job; I'm looking for my FINAL job.


All I want is an HONEST company with a dependable platform that actually works, an abundance of work (with no overstaffing/bait-and-switch games) and decent medical benefits.  If it's a small company, that's fine.  I just want to work for an ethical company that I can trust and respect, and one which is willing to pay a fair cpl rate.  (To actually receive respect and some loyalty in return would be the proverbial icing on the cake.)


Is there such an animal out there somewhere?


Not necessarily 2 weeks (sm)
It depends on how fast you pick up their excellent system. Your reimbursed after so many months for your expenses out of pocket. No charge for the use of their computer which they maintain excellently. No one looking over your shoulder. What more could a happy MT ask for. Excelent work environment.
Not necessarily. I was a CS grad...
xx
It isn't necessarily overscheduling. My
account is fairly new.  They may get 800 minutes one day and get 1500 the next day.  The TAT on my account is very short.  If they staff for 800 minutes and there is 1500 they can't stay within TAT.  If they staff for 1500 and only get 800 then obviously there isn't going to be enough work to go around.

If you've had an account a while and can see the trend in dictation, or have a longer TAT, then you can better staff so that everyone has plenty of work.

I agree there are companies that overhire.  There are horrible companies that constantly have ads running because they can't keep people, but there are also companies that frequently have ads running because they have getting new accounts.  My company has gotten 4 large accounts within the past 6 weeks and have had to hire probably 100 new MTs. 
That is not necessarily true...
The company has a right to control the end result, but they cannot control the means to the end result.  As I understand it, they can require a certain number of lines each week, but cannot tell the IC how to complete those lines (which hours or how many hours).
Not necessarily spiteful
The negative comments were well unpleasant, but seemed genuine and not over the top. Is it not possible that some people really did have a bad experience, and were just trying to answer the original poster's question honestly?

Most readers know to take comments posted with a grain of salt...
Not necessarily true.
My company has Global in their name, yet they are a very small US-based company. They are the best company I have worked for yet. I wouldn't judge a company based on their name.
VR does not necessarily increase
your speed. If you are making lots of corrections, then you will actually lose ground.
not necessarily fault of the MT
I ran into a former coworker of mine. She works at a hospital where the doctors are allowed to send the VR reports out without review by an MT and was telling me about the HUGE problems this has caused. Can you imagine? Egads.
Agreed. What you train on is not necessarily what
you'll end up with.  You'll never know what account you'll be on from day to day or hour to hour.  I agree with the 1 to 2 days for support, but that is too long IMHO if you have several similar reports back to back and have to leave blanks in all of them.
Not necessarily, I'm paid better by the national right now. -nm
x
Are all the bad applicants necessarily newbies?????

x


Not necessarily true; my acct is less than 50% ESL SM
The higher paying accts are higher percentage ESL but there are many other accounts which are nowhere near as high as your 80%. There are at least 20 different accounts there (maybe more?) and not all of them are high ESL. (BTW, been with them for 6 years now so don't suggest that I'm a newbie and they will bait and switch me to another account later.)
Outsourcing does not necessarily mean offshoring. nm

not necessarily so - I think it depends on the company and how they set it up(sm)
I worked on a hospital using Cquence and the lines produced on it were paid with spaces (the way my company was paying us.)
VOip and digital are not necessarily the same.
VOip is voice over internet protocol.  I have digital phone and it is not over the internet, uses a regular phone line.  It is not connected to my computer at all, thus you don't get the hesitations, etc.  
Do you necessarily make more if you only type ops?
nm