The pay doesn't match the knowledge level required! (s/m)
Posted By: blahblahblahblahblah on 2006-12-12
In Reply to: MTs/QAs/Editors - Survey
It seems like everyone wants years of experience, well-rounded knowledge of various specialties, perfect English & spelling, fast typist, yada-yada-yada. But the pay is a joke. And a regular 8-hour day/40-hour week? Forget it! Being paid on production leaves out the variability factor. (I'm on this board right now because I've been sitting here for an hour waiting for work from my employer!) So to make up the gaps, I put in 12+ hour days, and STILL need a second job. I've been MT-ing for 30 years, yet I can barely pay my rent.
And the problem starts with the hospitals & clinics who only care about the bottom line. They'll gladly pay to overstaff their facility with far too many overpaid, superfluous management personnel, but then get chintzy when it comes to their transcription needs. Yet they want perfectly done transcription, even with ESLs. So the MT companies have to bid low to get the account. And the people actually DOING the work get paid next-to-nothing.
I would like to see MT go back to being a good, solid middle-class job again, instead of the sweatshop labor it has become. Employers need to offer a true living wage in order to attract top MTs and retain them.
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They have a low level 4, high level 4 and level 5.
nm
Level 2 is clinic and level 3
Level 1 is ER work. It's ER, but I get a great line count. Plenty of macros and normals, we are paid for all of them.
but only match 3%.
they actually do match you up with sm
an account that meets your qualifications. don't think they aren't interested, this is normal protocol. I applied and didn't hear anything for about three weeks and then they hired me. They are not blowing you off. Hope that makes you feel better. H ang in there
OSi..4% match, 100% vested
nm
12 months and yes they match.
nm
I used them and am very happy with the match they
made for me. 
they match up ppl with what services
they need...ie filing bankruptcy, they will link you with those resources. Lawyer referrals for what you need, not just a lawyer. If you use those services, you get a discount of one sort or another. Counseling, weight control, other life problems are free. Depends on what you need them for, but they are supposed to be pretty good. The hospital I work for has them for things like child care, elder care, cousneling, life matters, etc. Hope this helps.
I think it's just finding the right match....
I have worked for 3 different companies and currently work for two. On one of the companies I make at least $20 per hour, sometimes closer to $25 and on my second job I make between $30 and $45 an hour. I actually find myself dissapointed when I'm only making $20 and my husband tells me I'm crazy, that is good money to make at home. I don't work 8 hours a day though, neither job even has the work to keep me busy a full 8 hours. I work probably 5 straight typing hours per day.
Wondering about the 401k match - how much
is it acute care or radiology only? I read an ad for clinic - do the benefits only apply to acute care and radiology or do you have full time clinic MTs as well?
I think you and Breitner would be a good match - EOM
are there any companies that match 401k? (nm)
?
My company matches 3%, others match more, but I have
not heard of an MT company that matches 100%. I don't have medical insurance through my company because I don't like the company (BCBS) and the premium for family is nearly $800.00/mo.
As a statutory employee, they take out FICA and match it. sm
Therefore, you do not have to file self-employment tax, like an IC. You are still not an employee per se, in that you set up your own schedule/make your own hours. You tell them how many lines you will do in a day, and every 2 months, you submit a schedule, telling them which days you will work.
You have to have your own PC. You can rent a C-phone from them, and some of the accounts are going to wav files, and I think the company provides the wav pedal for you.
Hope this helps!
i read it again, and exper and job des dont match
/
Could you keep me posted on that. I have yet been able to find anyone to match what I get on Escript
which is 5 cpl for editing. The only ones I hear about her anwhere from 2-4.5 cpl (2-3 by the way is an insult).
They don't match 401K; 3 days PTO 1st year; 10 after that until...sm
5th year (I think, not sure) and then 15 days. NO THEY DO NOT HAVE A STEADY WORKLOAD. They are up to something/contracting work cheaply. We were all on OT last week and now have no work during, as has been said in other posts, peak flu and RSV season. It ain't all the effect of the economy. You can't trust them at all.
I am unsure how the health insurance stacks up, but vision and dental are cheap.
Not to my knowledge...nm
nm
I have some knowledge..
How long have you been there and why are you not happy there?
OSi and knowledge
I think that many of you who challenge the skill level of those working at OSi are full of sour grapes. I think just like any company OSi has a variable learning curve of skills in both MTs and Editors. Everyone comes into their job from a different knowledge base, whether it is formerly working in-house, formerly working on a clinic account or just out of school. I think all of us need to be more tolerant and help others move on an upward curve rather than a downward one. By the way, I love working for OSi and I have been there for almost 4 years now and I have always found everyone to be helpful.
To the best of my knowledge
everyone has been paid. Don't know why no one else has posted this fact. It is notable that no one posted the company's name, which I think suggests a certain loyalty as they have been a very responsible employer.
To the best of my knowledge sm
They have everything traditional on Extext. Some ASR is on eScription, some on Nuance. Standard XP computer is fine and Word 2000 or 2003, and I didn't read the ad, but whatever they said.
You'll love it, I sure do.
Not to my knowledge, but I don't know everything that goes on. sm
I do know that I have a great account and can get 300 lph, so the money is good. cpl rate is better than most as well.
Doesn't apply if your OSI account doesn't use Ichart.
It is the Ichart only for OSi where you are cheated.
Shannon may have tried to help, but her knowledge
was too limited. The only one I can rely on for help or a half way honest answer is Terri in the office, but I do not know if she is a teamleader or not.
No direct knowledge but
There's a message on the Career Step board by someone who says pay is late and by Paypal. Don't know about the rest but the Paypal payroll would be enough to turn me off.
Not to my knowledge. My account
right now has a backlog, as does a fellow MT's on a different account. I have NO idea what account this person has been on, but I have worked for MDI-MD two different times (took a few years off when I had a baby) and have NEVER run out of work. They're a great place to work, and you can get a secondary account in the off chance that your primary ever runs out of work.
Well... it is common knowledge
that the whole QA department is the laughingstock of the industry. What a joke... unbelievable. They wrote the book on inside politics. You never get promoted with this company unless you are in the right clique. Truly the blind leading the blind. Coordinators aren't even that bad. QA department in a league of its own. Now that I'm gone I can look back and laugh - really laugh. LOL LOL
I don't have any person knowledge of them, but
at least I can't remember hearing a lot of terrible things about them. Give them a try. Might work out great for you.
ANYONE WITH SPHERIS KNOWLEDGE.. PLEASE..
Is there anyone out there who has current working knowledge of Spheris? Hospital just sold off to them, all the employees given little to no information.. they said they only send stuff to India on a third shift basis if needed... Please reply if you have had any current experience with them, either good or bad... such as hours, flexibility, any information would be greatly appreciated.. thanks again all MTs out there... cindy 
Knowledge is power!
I just wanted to thank you all for sharing. Every opinion and every point of view are valuable. The truth really will set us free --eventually.
I work for this company. To my knowledge, my DD's have ... SM
A-L-W-A-Y-S been in the bank on time and usually early, and I have worked for this cmopany for nearly 5 years.
Now, I don't know what happened to affect the DD this time, and I myself have not gotten my check as of noon on the day after payday. However, I do live out of state, and I know for a fact that someone who lives closer to the office that I do has already received hers.
Can we not just give the company the benefit of the cout this one time? Can we not, just this once, accept tha maybe an error occurred, or an emergency, or some other mishap, and wait and see if everything works out to our advantage by the next pay period? Saying that this company should not be in business is really jumping the gun!
I have a feeling that if you have automatic withdrawals that are affected by this situation, if you will talk to management, they will probably work with you with some kind of a reimbursement. They have always been more than fair with me in anything I have ever asked.
I realize that paydays are not to be fooled around with, but come on, haven't they A-L-W-A-Y-S paid us correctly?
Please don't post what you have no first-hand knowledge of. sm
It just makes it difficult to sort through what is true and what is not.
Anyone with knowledge about Doctors Documents?
based in Florida? Pay, workload, good people to work for?
Any info appreciated.
Er, make that personal knowledge (nm)
.
No personal knowledge of this account but (sm)
In the past, I have found that most residents at teaching hospitals are pretty good speakers and dictate painfully long reports. Also, very rarely on ANY hospital, do all the dictators on the doctors' list dictate. If you have a list with 200 names on it, chances are you'll hear about 50 of them - if that.
Lack of knowledge or complacent.....
This is exactly what I posted the other day when another poster accused me of making no sense. A poster was asking about a particular company and I told her this company was overall good, but they were doing the line count for you using their software and then direct depositing your check, all without an invoice beforehand. They then turn around and ask that the IC send in an invoice so they can have it on file; they are trying to cover their behinds by saying the IC sends in an invoice, but of course, I never did because that was a joke. If I couldn't count my own lines, I sure wasn't sending in an invoice. I quit and found something better for me. So, whenever ICs stop the practice of letting companies get by with free work (which is what we are doing when we accept an IC job on their terms, so they do not have to pay SS or Medicare taxes, we are keeping the problem alive). I see all the time companies wanting employee status in certain states only, but other states can only be IC status, BUT they still expect the IC to keep the same hours, shifts, etc., as an employee, which they cannot do.
Like I said earlier, it has become so customary for the IC to just go along with the company's dictating to us, we have lost our IC status but we pay IC status through the nose come tax day.
I figure knowledge is power
I agree with you, I believe that it is to your advantage to be a well rounded employee. But, I also know that when you are depending on this as your only source of income (luckily I do not) you want to make as much as you can and ESLs make that difficult sometimes, especially when you receive different ones all the time.
I also believe that the doctors could have a little more respect and at least TRY to enunciate. Some don't even bother.
So I guess I agree with you, but I understand everyone has different circumstances.
It takes just as much time & knowledge, and in
many cases can be much more time consuming. The only reason it pays less is so the MTSOs can make a larger profit. It s*cks and is a rip-off for MTs. You have to do basically triple the number of lines to make the same amount of pay as regular, and that's impossible to do. You can't listen to reports at triple speeds, and even if you could, it takes way too long to make all the corrections of that ASR mess.
So, then, you're selling your knowledge
More output for the same pay means nothing more or less than that each line of knowledge (because that's what it is) is going for a lower price.
The value of VR to the client should not be price, but time. When price is the value proposition for VR, knowledge is being offered at a discount. It is positively idiotic for MTSOs to sell VR using price as the value proposition. The appropriate value proposition is TIME because VR should permit shorter turnarounds.
The question is, do MTSO's actually charge less for lines produced by VR? I'm not sure. If they do, they're giving away the store (and forcing the knowledge workers to discount their input).
our fund of knowledge comes into play
with each report we type. If that doesn't justify a decent compensation, I don't know what will.
Should we just hop to the problem parts of the report since we are only getting paid for that part of the report, eschewing the rest, not making sure it makes sense? It's outrageous, and we should all refuse to do it unless we get paid the same as straight typing. Why should technological advances cause us to lose pay? No one else is taking a cut except us, yet we are the glue that holds this profession together. I know it's all been said before, but it's wrong, and if the MTSOs read this board, they will at least know where we stand on it.
We earned our knowledge through blood, sweat and tears over the years, and we should be compensated for it. Why shouldn't we?!
The knowledge thing is right on the money
I never went over to using the so called hot keys, made it this long without so no use in using now. How you like it when they say newbies only like? I think the ones protesting so much don’t want to give up their templates, all their Expanders because then they might have to think about what they are reading and make corrections. Yeh for VR.
VR and straight need the same MTing knowledge...sm
the manual skills differ, but not necessarily always.
You can download to an MT who has never done VR a VR document for editing and she will be able to do it. NO SOPECIAL trainin g is necessary.
When I tested for companies, when VR was introduced, they tested me on editing VR, I had never done it before and I passed.
Basically every MT can do it, bringing up the speed that is the challenge.
Anyone Have Knowledge of Heartland's Mentoring Program??
I have been offered a position with Heartland in their mentoring program. Anyone have experience with them?? I want to hear the good AND the bad before making a decision! I'm hoping this will be better than what I've found so far, which is an apprenticeship and I am NOT making enough to survive lol
thanks
Like I said, I'll take my decade of first-hand knowledge of her over
x
Advanced Transcription - PLEASE, any knowledge you can share anyone?....sm
Offer to do acute care with emphasis on ops, which I love to do; have found nothing in archives or forums, offer came through MTIA....Please, anyone know about them?
Also, knowledge of AAMT BOS, knowing formatting, being able to
transcribe bad/fast/or foreign dictators, your English grammar, spelling, and punctuationk, attention to detail, computer knowlege in many cases...plus just having the ability to test as fully as doing full-on radiology, op, ds, or whatever reports in any specialty...that would take so long orally. As much as I HATE all those test files, it really proves so much more than just a basic knowledge or your ability to look/Google things up.
Not firsthand knowledge, but their recent ad reads...(sm)
Full-Time and Part-Time Options: (Sounds flexible to me)
* Full-time is a minimum of 5,000 lines transcribed per week.
* Part-time is a minimum of 3,500 lines transcribed per week.
Advantages of Working for Oracle Transcription, Inc.
* Work schedule: You may set your own hours.
* Benefits: We have optional benefits for full-time contracts.
* Environment: Our staff is friendly and supportive.
* Training: Training is done in your home, over the phone.
* Quality Assurance/Technical Support: Easy access to our staff by phone or email,
and a quick response time.
* Accounts: We match MTs to accounts suited to their skills.
* Blanks: We do not penalize for any blanks left in reports and give timely feedback.
If it is a court case, then it is public knowledge
x
ASR editing takes just as much time & knowledge, and in
many cases can be much more time consuming. The only reason it pays less is so the MTSOs can make a larger profit. It s*cks and is a rip-off for MTs. You have to do basically triple the number of lines to make the same amount of pay as regular, and that's impossible to do. You can't listen to reports at triple speeds, and even if you could, it takes way too long to make all the corrections of that ASR mess. On ASR, *YOU* are the transcriptionist.
Now, if you're referring to QAing, that's a whole different thing. It's MUCH more stressful than MTing & takes more experience, so I've never really understood myself why the pay is lower.
I had knowledge of VR and pay rates prior to this job search.
When I was in school, all we focused on was straight typing and nothing was ever taught about VR - I graduated earlier this year. In my job search I'm really not seeing much about VR. The place I am now has four or five accounts and all of them are straight typing. As for the shortage of work, I am on the largest account in the company and the shortage is felt across the board. Even the supervisors are aplogizing to us for the shortage.
Oh well, for the meantime I will just see what is out there, test and interview if asked to and go on from there. For right now though I have a job at a place I like - it's better than nothing!
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