Plain and simple, you have to be able to handle the difficult dictators in this profession if..

• bringing MTSO question below - Hhilda
  • Plain and simple, you have to be able to handle the difficult dictators in this profession if.. - mj
    • I have never heard so much BS in all of my life - Can't be quiet any longer.
      • What a rant - sirpercy
    • You nailed it! Too many people think it is going to be EASY - MOMT
  • ... and cut their line rate if they can't do the difficult stuff. nm - Another 2 cents
    • ... and give more to the MTs who do the difficult stuff. nm - make that 4 cents
      • Add that 4 cents on to my line rate and I'd be plenty happy while I'm doing these ESLs all day - MSMT
        • seems we all agree! - praz
          • Uh homey don't think so - sirpercy
        • to MSMT - mtmtmtmt
          • ESL is a relative term. We all know Dr. Joe EFL can be far worse! nm - MSMT
            • I once had a group practice client, which included ...sm - mj
            • Ain't that the truth. I've been doing this 30+ years sm - Lifer

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they want to make $$ - meet their turnaround times (for which they get paid more), take on clients, hire more MTs, perhaps lose clients, leave us all hanging with no work and as long as they can make a profit off of us, they could give a darn about all us lowly MTs.  Run out of work, too bad, and they don't need to give an explanation or they can just say they have new accounts coming and please be patient  and string us all along.  Plain and simple, they are in it for more profit, don't care about the MTs, kinda know we are all at their mercy cuz we have to have a job, but plain and simple just giving us all the runaround. 

Somebody prove me wrong - please. But unless you work for a company, can honestly say you never run out of work and never get bounced around on different accounts - spending YOUR  time logging in and out to scramble for work, please don't respond with how good your company is to you.  Yup, you guessed it, I am having a bad day, bad week, and bad past months working for MTSOs.  Unless you are making a decent wage, every hour of every shift - as management and owners are - you are being used and abused.  Feel more like I am on-call lately than an FT employee. 

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. 

1.  First off, if you don't stand up for yourself, others will continue to rely on you.

2.  When someone knocks on the door to visit you have to tell them that it's your work time and they need to come after ___ o'clock.  Some people think that if you work at home you have lots of flexible hours and if you don't set the rules then they don't know.  You may also want to consider posting a note by your front door that says my work hours are 9a-5p - please do not interrupt during this time or something like that. 

3.  When people call wanting you to take someone to the doctor, get horses rounded up, etc. remind them that you have a job to do and that they need to take care of their own problems.  If you were driving into a hospital or doctors office to work they wouldn't pull this stuff on you so why take it now? 

4.  Use caller ID and if you end up answering the phone politely tell the other person that you're working and they need to call back after such and such a time.  

5.  If you will stand up for yourself and do the above things you'll find yourself not being as stressed out and having actual free time again.  You will also gain respect from family/friends that currently call on you once they realize that you're serious about not being the bail out person anymore. 

Good luck!

If you can't handle the daily volume of work then don't apply for the job.  You risk getting the job, having more than you can handle and doing either a poor job just to get it all done or not meeting your deadline.  In either case, you risk damage to your reputation when the doctor is unimpressed with your work. 

Is there another Transcriptionist you can share the workload with? 

If the problem is more a lack of experience with transcription as opposed to too high a volume of work then my suggestion is to try to get transcription experience before venturing out on your own.

After 5 pm, they are dumping out whatever reports are in editors ques and sending them out to MTs, but just certain MTs who have high ratings and are not allowed to leave any blanks.  Sounds like a great idea, except if one is the MT who gets stuck with all the junk, one right after the other.

This isn't VR either.

The IRS has EVERYTHING to do with this.  IRS defines criteria for employee vs IC status, MTSOs laugh all the way to the bank at IRS and MT ICs because MTSOs have been on the non-legal side, pushing the limits, with little to no work force resistance.  Factor in the lack of employee benefits and although ICs may work as hard and put in as much hours as employees, ICs  make significantly less per unit than MT employeese.  Company owners have taken the risk that we are all just so grateful to have any income, that we won't fight IC vs employee status.  In fact, these company owners make millions of dollars annually filling employee jobs with IC employees without benefits, confident that no one will blow the whistle.

IRS laws clearly distinguish between independent contractor and employee status:
 
ICs:  Enter into a signed contractual agreement with Contracting Party, providing service of completing projects (work). 

-  Contracting Party CAN define begin/end deadlines, length of time IC service is required, basic guidelines, definitions of project and expected outcome.
-  If Contracting Party demands IC adhere to step-by-step instructions, supplies training, or insists IC work during specific hours of the day, specific days of the week, 30 or more hours per week, IC is an EMPLOYEE, entitled to all benefits afforded by definition, INCLUDING UNEMPLOYMENT COMPENSATION.

ICs: ICs purchase, procure and use their own tools, equipment, software, lbooks and other learning materials and training programs to carry out contracted project. 

- If Contracting Party loans, sells, leases, provides or pays for arrangements for loan, sale, or lease of tools, equipment, software, reference materials or books necessary to the project IC is an EMPLOYEE entitled to all benefits afforded by definition, INCLUDING UNEMPLOYMENT COMPENSATION.

ICs invoices Contracting Party for payment of services, arranging for CP financing, up front partial payment with final payment at completion of project, or payment submitted @10, @30, @60, day terms. 

- If a Contracting Party pays ICs on a regular biweekly or bimonthly  basis, through scheduled direct deposits, ICs most probably are employees robbed of the benefit of matching employer funds contributed their Social Security funds, as the law provides for Employees.  ICs (business owners and other self-employed) are solely responsible for payment of their individual quarterly state and fed tax installments, their own Social Security with no SS contribution by employer.

The IRS has EVERYTHING to do with this and by collective silence, MTs continue to allow MTSO's continue rob them.  After the lack of appreciation MTs have suffered, loss of jobs to VR, overseas, I think it's time to stand up and demand what is rightfully ours. As they've already dropped our wages to 0.06 - 0.08 cpl, and turned us against each other as we have to fight for our share of the work, we can only benefit from saying, Enough is enough.

(To poster:  You've been ill-advised.)

Are they prefilled by the platform and if so are they paid to the MT as having been typed by the MT or does the system subtract for the template? 

I have no problem not being paid for template characters; however, I have found (with a couple of services that I have worked for) that the platform (or client or maybe even the service) will fill in absolutely every heading that MIGHT possibly be dictated by the doctor.  We, as the MT, have then had to bounce up and down the template looking for the heading that is being dictated and in some cases, having to modify the template by extracting words to fit how the doctor is dictating that heading.  In both cases, the line counter was set up to deduct the characters from the ORIGINAL template (which we were not paid for).  If the doctor dictates a shorter heading than was prefilled by the system, we are essentially losing lines.  (I hope that wasn't too confusing.) 

It's just so much easier to type as the doctor is dictating and use my expansion program rather than jumping up and down a template.   I'm wondering how Keystrokes handles their templates.  TIA

ProHealth Care of Wisconsin hospitals. I heard that they have now changed to a national company to do all of their work for all their facilities.

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