Sometimes the bigger they are, the harder they fall.
Posted By: Look at AIG & Citibank. on 2009-03-20
In Reply to: these were supposedly large sm - MT 30+years and running
Lots of these big MTSO co's are in bed with AHDI, and I have a hunch the whole kit-n-kaboodle of 'em are ridin' for a fall. Or a public hangin'.
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Much bigger and better than TT
Advise you to stay where you are.
It seems to mostly be the bigger
corporations looking to make an even bigger profit off our backs, paying much less but charging the same - not so much the smaller MTSOs.
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? 
Bigger yes, better, NWIH.
nm
Once the kids are bigger sm
I'm going into EMS. I'm an EMT now and going to go to paramedic school. Each and every day you get a chance to make a difference in someone's life doing that. I've wanted to be a paramedic since I first watched Emergency! years ago on TV, and once my children are all in school, I'm going to do it!
The bigger picture sm
I am an MT as well and have been in this business almost 20 years. There are some who have more years invested in this line of work than I do, but 20 years at one job is a long time, and for those of us who have worked at home in this business for that long, it is very difficult to reenter the public work world IF there is a job out there that we might qualify for.
I agree with you in that the entire industry is suffering and has been for the past few years, but when I see company after company not giving raises and, worse yet, cutting line rates, I think it is time to look for employment outside of the MT world. You won't find a better situation in another MT company. They are all swimming in the same murky water and circling the same drain.
No, it's not just MTs who are being impacted, but this is *MY* profession (or what's left of it) and *I* am being impacted with this company's decision to find another way for me to make even less in my paycheck while everything around me...utilities, groceries, gasoline, insurance, etc....is rising to the point that I simply cannot afford to live any more.
I'm a realist as well, and what I see is an entire industry crumbling under the weight of top-heavy management and slave wages for the ones how pay that management. It's time to move on down the road.
VR is a much bigger threat to MTs than offshore
They will still need us, but pay diddly for the most boring, exasperating work you could ever imagine. I'd rather lick stamps and put them on envelopes than continue doing this crud. It's terrible - most of the dictation comes out as a word salad and you have to make some sense of it all. Terrible.
The account can get bigger if the hospital uses...sm
several services for their transcription. So, if they decide to start letting company B do what company A used to do, then yes, the account is getting bigger and bigger for company B. Also, Maybe the hospital is part of a large system and company A was only doing one location and the hospital is happy with the work so they start giving them more and more locations, guess what, the account is getting bigger and bigger. There are many ways for the account to get bigger, so she is not lying to you, as I work on one of the accounts she is talking about and that is what has happened. They now need double the amount of MTs they first needed for this account, as they are now outsourcing more work to Diskriter. Make sense?
You won't see some of the bigger ones here. I know for a fact that the owners of sm
KS do not come on here anymore. I went to one of them a few weeks ago, and she told me not to get worked up about the posts on here, that not every company is for every person, just just like every MT is not a good fit for every company.
I just emailed her with the request put here today, and she responded that she would not answer any posts on here; every time in the past that she did, things were twisted around and turned ugly, both with the bashers and the cheerleaders, that MTs with questions should contact the companies directly.
She also asked me if I needed more work as I seem to spend a lot of time obsessing about these posts, which really threw me for a few seconds. On thinking about it, she's right.
Oreilly is an even bigger media
hore. Yes, and so are the ones on the so-called 'left'. And if you think ANY of them give a flip about you or America, you are easily fooled.
The are full-time propagandists - all of them. And they are laughing all the way to the bank.
When my company merged with a bigger one,
cpl pay stayed the same for a while, but eventually they readjusted the 'tiers' that their MTs worked on. No matter what 'tier' we were on, our pay was lowered approximately 15%. QA took a harder hit; some of them were cut 30%. They have plenty of work, but it's impossible to make a living doing it, unless you work 7-day weeks, 365 days a year.
So I would venture a guess that for the time being, things for you will stay as they are. They can't change everything at once, even if they wanted to. Physically impossible. But after the initial 'shake-out' of MTs who leave immediately, and those who stay for a while until they find other jobs, and those who stay to give the new company a chance, get disenchanted and leave later on, has finally occurred, and some of the other nuts and bolts of merging 2 companies are finally in position, eventually they will start to scrutinize MT pay. Those at the higher end of the pay scale will undoubtedly either find themselves re-tiered at a lower cpl rate, or else with horrendous accounts that cut the lines they're able to produce, and thus their pay.
Having just spent $16M to purchase MDI, you can bet they're going to want to start seeing some returns on their investment, and of course, the suits are going to want to see some extra cash for themselves for all the 'good work' they've been doing. [snort!] So when they start looking for places to cut their costs, guess whose pocket it's going to come out of?
The big companies are ALL this way. I believe the best chance for a decent-paying job is to find a small or medium-sized MTSO to work for. Only problem is, that's what I did a few years ago. A great company, decent pay, good accounts. And they were gobbled up by one of the current 'Axis-of-Evil' MT giants.
I wouldn't be surprised if in the future there are NO small MTSOs -- only 3 or 4 of the mega-large 'McMTSOs'. My company makes it no secret that they want absolute domination of the industry. I'm sure the other biggies have the same aspirations. Then it'll all boil down to cutthroat competition, price wars and back-stabbing, all the while flinging U.S. workers aside, and sending EVERYTHING offshore, because if hospitals no longer have a CHOICE whether they offshore or not, that paves the way for MT to become a 100% foreign affair.
I do believe, however, that if a company reaches a point where it has all or most of its workers offshore, they should no longer be allowed to have their offices on U.S. soil. They should be forced to move to India completely, corporate offices, CEOs, and all. It's about time the Suits developed a taste for curry, themselves.
It's harder to get your own accounts
Most guys don't have a choice but to work for nationals in this business or own their own business. Would like some input into how guys work at making that much money in MT. Thanks.
I was doing VR, too. For me, the work is just harder to come by.
I work second shift, and it used to be early evening the OPs would start coming in. I could really roll on those, but they have all but disappeared. I now only get handful per shift and mostly EGDs or I&Ds. I also worked Fridays and Saturdays, which were great for work, but even those days are depleted now.
I think now I just am bummed out thinking I worked my butt off to get to the 5 to 6-year mark where I could apply with the better companies, and there just is no work. My daughter is almost done with her transcription course, and it is scary to me that she has to work for 3 cpl but even scarier that I might have to pretty soon :(
Seems like they are just making their job harder.
They should be taking the time to do the job correct the first time. How is rushing through going to help them in the long run? The reports are just going to come back for corrections, which is then going to take them longer to fix in the end then just editing them properly the first time through. I understand not wanting to get pay docked, but it seems they are only making things worse for themselves in the end.
Working harder for less pay.........
to achieve the same figure on one's paycheck is circular reasoning.
As has been stated before here, it is a pretty sure bet that the clients are being charged the same for their reports whether an MT physically transcribes it or whether a speech engine translates it and an MT cleans it up. That being the case, with the MT being paid even less for speech recognition, the middle man (management) is making way more money off the MTs back and will continue to make more as the MT is pushed to turn out more production.
As for adapting to more coming technilogical changes, you'd better prepare to adapt yourself to another line of work because the MT field will become obsolete as we know it even today. There will be fewer MT positions needed as speech recognition becomes more and more proficient at creating a medical document that is within acceptable limits.
How big is Transheath and now does this make Webmedex bigger than MQ? nm
Work Smarter, Not Harder...
Exactly! Go to work for a company that pays for ALL of your work, not just what is reflected in your typed reports. What about time spent looking up physicians out of a data base of 50,000! Trying to figure out what in God's name the doc is saying when pronouncing some foreigner's name, and wasting 10 minutes doing so...with no pay! ALL of my expertise is worth compensation, not just what they see on the final report. How many times do you type an entire report, just to hear at the end, Erase this, I'll redictate! No credit! What a waste of time and I deserve to be paid for the work I did, even though the DOCTOR screwed up and screwed me out of earning my pay for those lines! What a bunch of BS!!!
I must agree with you. Seems harder the older you get.sm
When I was in my 20s, sure I could do 1800+ a day, but it's a different story now that I'm in my 40s. Sore wrist and fingers. Forearms tight and painful.
IT SUCKS!!
PS: Chinamom, sorry, I didn't mean to reply by email. Clicked the wrong thing by mistake. I must be getting old!!
Yes, for some reason Bayscribe does seem harder (sm)
Harder to make your lines, that is. The only time that Bayscribe will not add demographics (or autopopulated info) to your character count is if you mark the report as a No Report. Otherwise, on all reports, including the ones marked Incomplete Report, it will count all the demographic info too.
They say that Bayscribe is Word-based, but personally, I haven't seen much simularity at all between Word and Bayscribe. I do know that when I switched from using Word to using the Bayscribe platform, my average lines-per-hour production dropped somewhere around 25%.
So yes, with Bayscribe, I do find myself working longer hours in order to make the same line counts that I used to make. I'm not really sure what the answer is, but I don't think that it's the accounts.
Even if some of them aren't harder to manipulate,
it's just assumed that they are. I've found that the few guys I worked with on-site in the past WERE fairly woman-like in their willingness to be manipulated and taken advantage of. Which is probably why they got into, and stuck with, MT in the first place. Those guys who won't stand for that sort of thing never got into MT at all. Which is probably about 99.999% of them.
The benefits to the MTSO for having at-home MTs is not only the savings of NOT having to run, maintain, insure, heat, cool, and clean a brick-and-mortar building for their workers, but more importantly, the physical and social ISOLATION of those workers by basically chaining them to their desks at home. The isolation makes it far easier for us to be lied to, intimidated, cheated and overworked because NO ONE ELSE SEES IT HAPPENING.
The internet, and forums like this one, have broken us out of that isolation to some degree, but obviously not enough of a degree for change to happen. It's likely that for every MT that knows of this, or other MT forums, there are 10 who don't.
Further compounding the trouble those of us who DO use online forums to communicate with each other have, is the fact that we all know the MTSO suits cruise these boards, and we have to be careful about what we say, and to not reveal our identities, or else we'd most likely find our little selves fired.
So to date, medical transcription, and the sweatshop conditions it's done under, is the healthcare industry's best-kept 'dirty little secret'.
or the small ones do not draw attention. It seems to be the bigger companies. sm
They are the ones mentioned the most, at least the ones that are growing.
Don't forget voice recognition. Bigger threat than too many MTs and
nm
Any bigger companies out there that do 10+ hours flex time?
I'm looking for a job to supplement my income on top of my full-time MT job, but really need one that allows me to log on at any time throughout the week and do, say, 2,000 lines a week or 10 hours a week or something like that.
Are there any companies out there that still offer this or is it too much to hope for? Anyone have a company they would like to recommend? Thanks.
LET THEM KNOW IT IS BIGGER THAN MT BUSINESS - Make them want to do the research and dig deeper
Give them facts that will blow their mind. MT business and otherwise. According to the web site for the Population Reference Bureau, they claim you can not get an accurate figure on offshored jobs (all jobs). In 2008 they said they could only estimate it to be about 30 MILLION. That is the equivalent to the total population in 3 U.S. states. No concrete and credible figures are documented anywhere. Wonder why? Make the reporter want to start with the MT business and branch out. See if they can come up with a figure cutting Uncle Sam's pay and our jobs.
Do not let anyone tell you this will not do any good. Even if some do not wish to participate, enough voices want to be heard. I myself sent a letter to President Obama. This is posted on the main board. Read it. I sent it to the major newspapers, NY Times, whitehouse.com, Washington Post, 60 Minutes, Forbes Magazine, USA today, etc. Make your guy want to do some investigation into this. Ask him to contact credible sources he may have. Ask for feedback.
Whether this works or not - pat yourself on the back!!! Thank you for 30 Million Plus U.S. Jobs and all the upcoming college graduates. We're all behind you. Share your results.
ALL YOU MTs, GET INVOLVED!! You're not working that much right now anyway. Just send 1 letter to a major newspaper near you. Share it with us.
And fall out of TAT?
erdf
Is it getting harder for anyone to get jobs now with all the people applying for them. How does
this seem to be going for most MTs looking for jobs. What seems to be the one factor that gets MTs a job before all the other 100 or so looking for the same job and what are the most desired qualities today that companies are looking for.
Anyone else going from DQS to ExText and noticing lines are harder to get? (sm)
Both accounts are about the same difficulty, just find ExText more cumbersome and where I used to do 1200 lines in 6 hours on DQS I now take every bit of 8 hours and sometimes that doesn't do it. Am i just getting slow to learn new things or has anyone else noticed this same thing?
Definitely harder and I've given it a lot of time. I'm thinking about
nm
You have it all wrong. I work SMARTER, not harder.
I will take on any acct. After months of getting used to it, I see what I am making an hour. If it is worth the work required to do that acct, great. If it isnt, I ask to be taken off acct and so far, have never been refused. Sometimes takes little while for them to get another MT for acct but have never been refused. Company is not working for the prestige, loyalty to an acct, or ME for that matter, or for the good of mankind. Why should I? I am in this for the money, just like the company. I am very much a pro, which is probably why companies would rather have me on another acct, than to quit giving me work all together. They know many companies are always looking for a good MT. Like other posters, I dont understand why someone would work below their worth. There are too many companies out there to try. I have tried several, staying with the ones where I could make good money.
Acute care is quite a bit harder than clinic.
Definitely. Never a good idea to lie. You won't find anyone at most big companies to ask beginner questions to, on ops or otherwise.
I, too, went from MQ to TT, and line counts are much harder to get at TT with Dictaphone ExText.
I have always been called *firey fingers*, so know it is not me, as I am very fast and accurate on the keyboard. Line count continually gets harder to achieve. I know it depends on how the company has Dictaphone set the line count parameters -- whether to pay headers, footers, spaces, demos, normals, expanders, etc.
Also speech recognition using ExSpeech at TT is so cumbersome and awful. Really made good money and line count with DQS speech editing. Just must my opinion. Other comments would be interesting.
The requirement is 50% participation. It is actually harder for a larger company sm
than a small company if they are national to get good rates. Once in, they will have it easy after that. I dealt with it personally for another company and it was a nightmare. Insurance is crazy and once national, it is harder to get the insurance. They should have gone with BC/BS when smaller but chose Unicare for some reason. Now they are regretting it.
Burnout...wanted to work smarter, not harder.
It seemed like I was sitting at my desk for 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, just trying to pull the bare minimum. I had to hop around from one hospitals operating system to another and to another constantly...and if you've ever had the pleasure of doing that, you know that lines don't come easy that way because you spend all your time waiting for things to load and what not. There just wasn't enough work to stay on one account all the time, the way I think it should be, so instead of becoming an angry and bitter employee, I left.
They really did try to make me happy, but all they could offer were more hours, or more accounts, and like I told them, I simply wanted to work my 8 hours and make a decent living. Had a really hard time doing that over the winter. I think they overhired but I never asked that question head on. It was a great company when they first started out, but then got really big really fast. Great benefits though, if you can make the lines.
If I needed to get my foot in the door, I'd work for them, get the experience, and move on. It's that kind of place. But during a moonlighting gig I tasted freedom, more money due to a more efficient way to work, and better overall work environment, surrounded by people who truly loved their jobs, and when I was happy to log on for THAT job, and got sick to my stomach when I had to log on at DVHP, well that's when I knew it was time to be on my way.
I always have had something to fall back on too.
I have a full time job as hospital employee, plus an IC subcontractor position for a few hours a day. I will say though, the only thing that saved me the last two weeks was the fact that I get paid downtime for full time job. It's an hourly wage, which is not nearly what I average on production (about half), but at least it is something. I had work with my IC position, but things were slow, plus the facility was closed a couple days for the holidays. I myself am not complaining though, it was nice to have some time off.
Ah but see, you DO NOT fall in the category I was
referring too. You do produce and I would almost bet very accurate work. YOUR kind of work is highly appreciated. Does not matter whether you need to take a break after 4 hours, 2 hours, whatever. That works for you and I think that is great. If you read my post, I am referring to the people that think they should get paid more to work less. Yes MT is a production position no matter how you look at it. As long as you are happy with your production and your company is happy with your production, then double happiness for both of you. This was aimed at the people that are griping at offshoring, constantly wanting higher wages etc that DO NOT produce accurate work and in fact instead, more and more of their work has to go to an editor.
I think any MTSO would be nuts not to work with an experienced MT over a less experienced one, even if that means we need to take a few more breaks, etc. I am no spring chicken myself.
As far your statement of ME getting back to work....... Nah, I only work Mon through Fri roughly 8-4 or 8-5, so at night I get lazy 
was it last fall?, or maybe longer, whenever...
nm
I worked for them for a while last fall, they never
x
I tell ya, when it all hits you the fall sm
is going to be much harder! I only hope folks won't be as unfeeling to you as you have been.
Folks do what they have to do to stretch a dollar my dear. It just hasn't hit you yet but it could and it a much bigger way.
Sometimes you get spelling and abbrvns over the phone, typing later on. Bone up on your harder
s
If you fall below 98.9% accuracy twice within a year, sm
they dock you 1 cpl. It is on page 10 of the information I received from the recruiter.
How'd you fall of the couch if u were in bed sleeping? Lol nm
..
I can't believe anyone would fall for this. Didn't your mother (sm)
tell you if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is?
I worked for them last fall for a few weeks, pay was
9.5 cpl, but always ran out of work and still after 6 weeks they never got around to giving me a second account, even though they said they would. Left after that.
I'm in CA, too...I hope it doesn't fall off, LOL (sm)
Hey fatcat...My primary is very high ESL as well, but it's one of the Lanier accounts. Apparently, the account is phasing out the Lanier system and going to Inova, which is an Escription platform. Perhaps your account just isn't going to affected by it.
If you have any questions, feel free to send me an email. In the meantime, I'm gonna get some coffee and check to see if my lifeboat is ready to go in case CA does break off into the water, lol!!!
Don't fall for the sweet talk.
The recruiter is the sweetest person in the world when trying to sucker you in, but will bite you in the back like a viper after a while. The honeymoon phase was wonderful, but then they started changing all the terms that I had agreed to one by one, including a cut in pay. She got really mean and nasty towards then end and I just quit. I didn't need to be treated like that.
Yeah, I was dumb enough to fall for that one!
nm
It is much harder on the wrist to constanly use the mouse to jump around the report to edit, rather
x
I agree that it is an easy platform, but compared to other platforms I have used, lines are harder
to get, probably counted or weighted differently.
I can't wait until you fall on your face. The nerve of you sm
to think you are better than someone else. You are pathetic. Nothing will come good out of that statment mark my word.
Tired excuse... what about fall and after the first of the year...
You constantly hear... work is slower around September through early November because kids are back in school and more moms are typing full days. Or Jan-April is slow because no one is taking any vacation during these months?? There is always some type of excuse for there being lack of work!
Most companies fall short on their promises
either in the interview or in the first few weeks of employment. Just like any small business, things are more likely to go sour in the beginning and not the end (usually). I have been through bait and switch with work and expectations in regards to scheduled time worked because I am an IC. This is my biggest pet peeve.
I've been doing this for 19+ years.
My first SE job: Dangled a job at a time and IM'd me literally to death. I had to give it up. My nerves were frazzled.
My first employee job: Was wonderful, but I had a death in the family and had to give it up during the training phase - couldn't commit. I was executor and decision maker. When I went back a few weeks later to begin training, the company had changed my days to work - so I couldn't commit. So whose fault is that?
My online job I've had for over a year now and is wonderful. They know the true meaning of IC.
I have my own accounts that I've had for 10+ years and one new account that was a physician from an on-site job that I had and liked my work. He's an ESL and begged me even when I really didn't want to have to pick-up tapes.
Another company I have been in contact with through a friend's recommendation is now on the job board needing help, but told me they were only looking for acute care, so.......... Do I go there yet once more? This would be an IC job.
Your post is long, but I can tell you this: You will have a hard time finding companies that pay, are willing to give you a steady stream of work, and come through on what is promised.
As far as the company providing HR and equipment, they should. I test for free, I train for free, and I study and learn new accounts for free until I've built up production. No one is that productive on a new dictator from day one especially mixing that with learning a new platform.
So, yes job-hoppers are there, but what can we call MTSOs that advertise and then not come through in the end for us MTs? I guess there are no names for that......... What do we call an MTSO that treats us like employees, but pay us low wages as an IC?
I love my job! 
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