Ouch. This hurts but it's so true. It might be time to step
Posted By: back and go with a local MTSO. sm on 2006-05-19
In Reply to: All I can tell you is that I don't ask - mthanded
I think it might be time to give up some benefits in exchange for someone who knows what I look like and treats me mostly like I'm a human being. I'm so discouraged.
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its true, but wish WMX would take the first step
been here for awhile and I am not an underperformer by any means. Yet i still get the NSA message dozens of times a day for the past month. So while I think that waiting it out is the right move for me and that those who can't will go someplace else and create more work, I do wish mgmt would evaluate who is not performing up to par and cut them loose. Sorry if that sound harsh, but i consistently do over 200 lph straight and close to 300 ASR and I think those that perform better should have some kind of preference over those that are at 125 to 150 lph, which i believe is below what mgmt expects each day. don't mean to be offensive to anyone personally, but this is what the industry has come down to.
Spheris - is it true they will hire Career Step grads without
making them take employment test? It is so stated on New MT board.
now that HURTS -- nm
xx
Oh that hurts, but good for you!
I applied about two weeks ago and had an interview Tuesday and was told I did not have enough experience for acute, but did for clinic, but that they did not have any open clinic spots! Ouch for me. Congratulations to you -- and I sincerely mean that.
I said, "Doc, when I do this it hurts!!"
and the doctor said...
(stop escalating) LOL
The truth hurts
It was NOT editing. It was straight typing and just because it didn't happen to you must make it a lie? Wow, what's it like in your little world?
If you work there, good for you. If you make more than 7 cents a line, good for you. This is my experience, not yours. If you want to post YOUR experience, go right ahead.
OUCH!
good one.
we pay for them ourselves. Ouch!
x
Ouch!
No raise in 3 years; I'd best stay put! Thanks for the info...
I may have to go another route then. 
Ouch!
Guess they won't be recruiting too many people at that line rate.
OUCH!
That does NOT sound like fun. I gather since it's called Patriot and the company is US Transcription that it's a proprietary platform? That doesn't sound MT-friendly at all.
Oh ouch!!! It does sound concerning
I really wish you luck in this, but I would start polishing up the resume and start looking. Very similar situation as my old company...eerie...
they use escription and have 3 hr turnaround OUCH
sounds really tight to me
MQ has 6000? Ouch - 2 years ago they had 9-10,000
x
Ouch! I agree with MT30+
Maybe you have never been in a position where you HAD to take a job at 6 cpl but you shouldn't call those you have a disgrace to the profession. The profession may evolve into what some consider a disgrace but for the most part, I don't think it's the MTs fault.
So very true and I think sad at the same time...Nuff said...nm
nm
That's so true. Sometimes I spend a lot of time (sm)
looking up old reports, more than I would like; but I want to put out a good report, not a piece of crap. I want to be proud of my work which I am.
So true--Big waste of time.
You are so right--And it doesnt make one bit of difference whether QA is paid to find errors or not. The back-and-forth nit-picking, petty, so-called corrections that are usually just personal preferences is exhausting, demoralizing, and a big waste of time (which equals money) for the MT.
I do over 10K a pay period. The point is this only hurts the faster people.
And that's not you. I came here from MQ and these folks are moving in that same direction. You have a lovely Easter too.
False or incomplete information is what hurts this industry the most. sm
Keystrokes is hiring and has many openings. The ER account I am on needs 2 or 3 more people, the B4 account my SIL is on is short-handed and they are hiring like crazy because of new accounts.
If you do not have enough work, contact your manager or go above her/his head. There is plenty of work there.
I also know for a fact that they are hiring for orthopedics due to a large new account because they sent an email asking if anyone knew anyone who was looking for full-time ortho work.
They do not overhire. Quite the opposite, actually. We are always asked to work extra. I know they are looking to balance this out but will not hurt current employees by overhiring.
You gotta be kidding me! Do NOT work for those wages it hurts the entire industry. sm
People taking those wages are hurting the entire MT field period whether in the US or elsewhere. You are only padding someone else's pockets with those wages. Highway robbery.
It looks like you need to hire yourself a proofer.
Not true - Amphion may suck in some ways but they always paid on time.
x
We should go one step further than that!
We should stop buying products made in other countries if at all possible (Wal*Mart comes to mind). Don't forget: Every time you buy a foreign product, an American somewhere at some point lost her/his job to offshoring because of that product. MTs represent ONE segment in a loooooooong line of people who are losing/have lost their jobs to offshoring.
One step further
You got one step further than myself. I sent my resume but didn't even hear back from them...so I am guessing they were probably inundated with resumes. Doggone it anyway!
Maybe Transcend needs to step up
to the plate and fix these issues before their investimate goes down the drain.
Yes but Transcend needs to step up
They are loosing a lot of their money by allowing MDI to continue to operate they way they do. I personally would love to see them merge MDI into Transcend and be one company. I'm holding out hope this happens, if it does not then I'm leaving MDI.
Been there . . . this is actually a step up on dictators for me!!! NM
NM
You don't have to go to Career Step
I smell something a little fishy here. Are you advertising for Career Step? I repeat if you are already a transcriptionist, then you can apply for online jobs. It does not take a certificate from Career Step. I have been offered many jobs online, and I do not have a certificate from Career Step or any other training program. 
Career Step
Just to clarify about Career Step, the cost is nowhere near $5000. It is in fact, between $1500 and $2000 the last I knew. I do not work for them, but graduated a year ago and they did prepare me for acute care MT work. (After 9 months I am making about $20,000 a year, working 2 IC jobs for a total of about 40 hours a week).
Career Step
CS has been a dream for me. With their training, I had 7 offers for at-home MT employment within 2 weeks of graduation. It is a hard course, and the final exam has a 50% fail rate, but it really prepares you for the real world of MT. If it wasn't that hard I think I would be dead in the water. If you want to learn more, they have a forum for people who have questions about joining at http://careerstep.groupee.net/eve/forums/a/frm/f/6960008433
and their website is www.careerstep.com. Before joinging, I checked them out with the BBB and called them probably 20 times with questions. They were very helpful and have a shiny record with the BBB. Also, they are one of the few schools approved by the AAMT, as you can see from the AAMT website. They are also a lot cheaper than most places. Hope that helps!
Career Step
Career Step is legit (and I don't get any $$ for recommending them). The course is self-paced and allowed me to work from home right after graduation. The website has all the cost info. on it.
Career Step
If I knew then what I know now, I would not have attended Career Step. I would have attended MTEC or Andrews.
Does feel like the new Q. This is step 1...
Beware.
Career Step
My sister took this course 3 years ago and was hired as a graduate. I was able to view this course and was very impressed with it and how it prepared the students. There is a lot of practice dictation starting from beginner to advanced, working your way up. Another good school is M-TEC. When I helped my sister research what companies were looking for in graduates, these were the 2 schools that always popped up as being recognized by companies that hire graduates.
I went to a local business school and worked on site at a hospital/clinic for 5 years before working from home.
I agree, but it's a step up from
and I don't care to the Nth power.
Hold on there! Now I must step in.
Don't be putting down people who like to do VR. I did straight typing for over 15 years and I am making the same, if not more, doing VR now. I was not a very slow typist, and quality is my first priority. I've been doing VR for almost a year now and love it. What makes it easy for me is I never really relied on Expanders to up my line rate since my hospital didn't really allow them, except for autocorrect. I didn't have an Expander until 6 years ago. Doing VR, I can't use the expander I did finally learn, but it's no big deal.
Like some other posters stated, it depends on who else is doing the reports whether or not VR is easy or hard. Some days, my reports are easy, other days tough. It's the same when doing straight typing. Some dictators are easy, other are tough.
I don't think VR is really made for large companies with hundreds of transcriptionists. It's made for the smaller companies that all conform to the same verbiage.
If you're good/fast/quality-oriented with straight typing without expanders, then VR would be good for you. If you rely on an expander to get those lines, you will have a problem in the beginning, but if you're flexible, it will pan out.
Don't down people because they like VR. You know what they say......try it. You may like it.
Let's take a step back
Okay. I think we can agree that in this industry, like every other, there are some bad apples. There are some bad MTSOs, some bad MTs and even some bad clients. And there are some good apples, too.
Unfortunately, even the best MTSOs have to deal with a lot of new realities in this business that limit their options. Over the past 15 to 20 years, the business has become much more competitive, clients are now being run by bean-counters who squeeze every penny out of contracts that they can, and the investment that an MTSO has to make in technology today has simply skyrocketed - not only the initial investment, but the ongoing investment in tech people, etc. to keep it running. On top of that, there's been the deteriorating business climate that has actually been going on since 2007, although it didn't attract significant notice until late in 2008.
And now comes speech rec. There's a lot of MTSOs who haven't been thrilled about this because it's a huge investment and because they know how crummy SR really is - but clients become sold on the exaggerations in savings that the SR missionaries preach, and start insisting on it. So you'll do SR or they'll find someone else.
The costs to every business in America for what we call compliance (to all of the jillions of laws that affect business) have also skyrocketed. You can find plenty of information about this yourself. These costs include all sorts of insurance and a lot of costs in terms of your operation just to keep yourself out of court or an administrative hearing of some kind.
MTSO's don't run the industry like some people here seem to think. Clients run the industry. Technology runs the industry. Congress and various administrative agencies at every level of government run the industry. Lawyers run the industry.
There is one thing that I do criticize many MTSOs for, however, and that is the crappy line rate that many of them are paying for SR editing. The typical scenario is that they promise you'll be able to edit jillions more lines per hour than you can transcribe, so you shouldn't mind going from 9 or 10 cpl to 3 or 4 cpl. Unfortunately, you buy into this and then discover that if you do your editing job properly, you really can't do all that many more lines per hour. So your next paycheck sucks. You give it a little longer...and your paycheck still sucks. A couple more paychecks that suck, and now YOU are the one who is out of options.
It's no good telling people who get caught in this trap Well, then, get into another field! because by this time they have no money to be trained in anything else. Their kids are already fighting with the dog to see who gets the food in his bowl. So my criticism is the shameful way that many MTSOs have dealt with their people.
What bothers me the most about this is that every line of an SR document gets edited - even if it doesn't need to be changed. In other words, there's really no difference in the KNOWLEDGE that an Editor has to bring to a line whether she declares the line to be correct or decides that it needs correction. That line is correct is PRECISELY THE SAME SORT OF JUDGMENT as saying That line is wrong.
This is a knowledge business, not a typing business. There is absolutely no excuse for reducing the line rates so drastically (and little experience to show that people can still earn the same living). This means, then, that the MTSO is buying knowledge on the cheap - and that's one thing that I can't forgive them for. That, and the way they sucker people into accepting editing jobs in the first place.
okay, your first step would be to find out...
What the sale or merger involved, if the sale involved assets only or if it included ALL contracts. If the sale was assets only (meaning accounts) you SHOULD be free of the contract. This would mean they could not have included employees as an asset. If the terms of the sale included existing employee contracts or included the employees as assets, you would be bound by the noncompete clause. Sounds confusing but makes sense. In other words, you need to know if they sold you guys along with the company. That is what happened to me in the past (this was way long ago, 1970s). The new company paid $1000 per employee. We got no notice. one day they told us at 2 p.m. today you no longer work for _____ but are an employee of _____. I walked right then and there. I was not then nor will I ever be for sale! Fortunately for me, at that time we had no noncompete clause in place so we just went and recruited the old clients and started our own service.
Anyone hear of Future Step?
I received an email from Future Step telling me about a job. Never heard of them. Never applied with them?????
QA is not a step up. They make less than the MTs and are on quota.
x
but of course, people in the 10-step program
.
They do get a fee for all who actually enroll in career step.
Watch that first step off the horse. NM
nm
let the MTSOs step in the MTs shoes - sm
If they cant pay a decent wage, them maybe it is time to let some of the clients go and work for yourself. It is just like MTs, if you accept a low rate of pay that is what you get. Stand up for yourself MTSOs and ask for more money. Get a back bone.
To follow that logic one step further,
then why is Transcend trying so hard on this board to convince everyone they are not the anti-Christ? If they were that good, everyone would be beating a path to their door and they wouldn't have to be defending themselves to the degree we are seeing...
but correct me if I'm wrong...
Career Step is $1320 or $1560
x
If they use MTTEST by Career Step - Don't bother...
...just like Career Step's program, MTtest is GREATLY flawed. And the potential employers don't bother to review this or your testing. If an employer lazily uses MTTest (and is recruiting people to buy Career Step's scam terrible training program), I don't bother. Even if you get it right, the module is flawed and will likely say you got it wrong. Don't waste your time being insulted by same.
Companies that actually send you dictation to transcribe are the best to test with. They test your true knowledge/ability, not through a flawed and inadequate multiple choice module that's sole purpose is to recruit people to Career Step.
Just my 2 cents... :O)
Each journey begins with one small step.
If one hospital/MTSO sees the folly of VR, the lawsuits, etc., they will stop this NONSENSE. Thank you for your validation of my efforts.
Yes...Career Step has a referral program where you receive something like sm
50.00 for every person who signs up for Career Step through you. I BET they are affiliated. How unprofessional can one co. be?
For seasoned, fast transcriptionists, hourly would be a step down ...
I agree with your post. I've given a lot of thought lately to whether hourly would be more fair (given the extras that we have to do), and I've come to the conclusion that it is not. In the spirit of honesty, if I were to take an hourly position, my production would suffer for it.
As an experienced and fast transcriptionist, the amount of time I spend looking up unfamiliar terms is negligible, and I've reached a point of knowing what mush-mouthed blanks I won't get, after listening six or seven times.
The only thing I ask for is pay commensurate to my experience and knowledge. With a decent line rate, I could accept that there are other things that go into my job and that my line rate doesn't just pay for my production - it pays for the emails, and the instant messages, and figuring out line counts, and spending ten minutes every so often looking for a doctor's address.
As it is, at 8 cpl, those things are not worth the amount of money that I'm making. They seem superfluous and cut into my real life.
So, in answer to the first question, with 12 years of experience, an ingrained attention to detail, and all the knowledge of this profession that 12 years can bring, I believe my worth is 13-14 cpl. That's roughly $47,000 a year at 1500 lines a day. I think, given the intensity of our work hours (and the fact that, unlike other jobs, we don't get to spend an hour talking to coworkers or daydreaming or resting for any reason), that's a very, very fair wage in this day and age.
I think the voice file is the next step. As far as the copy typing, sm
I didn't do as well as I thought I would either. That not being able to back up more than a word kinda sucks. Still, it was fun. I guess I need to get out more - ha.
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