The reason for staying

• Re: Below D&L post - tired MT
  • The reason for staying - Sad
    • Have never had new job check ref. and if you have pay - stub etc, you have proof of work history. Tell ne
      • Don't need references - Me
      • tell new job where you work and situation, am sure will - have no problem with new job. No reason to stay.

The messages you are viewing are archived/old.
To view latest messages and participate in discussions, select the boards given in left menu

I went into this job KNOWING I was not getting paid for headers and footers. I don't know any company that does pay for them, so it's no big deal to me.

I am also disappointed in the insurance hikes and am waiting to hear something, BUT the costs are still LOWER than the insurance I have now and with very low deductibles. I would only be saving $100 a month by going with TT's insurance as it stands now, but a $500 deductible is way better than $2000 we have now.

BTW, I also must foot the bill for this insurance. I am not sole provider for my family but pretty close to it, at least for 6 months out of the year. I don't think the grass is greener anywhere else and I'm staying.

Too many MTs look for the perfect job. There is no such animal. So, all you guys that are leaving just because of the above 2 reasons, go right ahead. It just means more work and $$ for me, and I appreciate it.

It doesn't seem there's any more guarantee of stable work from local MTSOs than the national ones.

If you do want to stay local but work at home, also try Southern Transcription Services, located in Taylorsville, I think.  They have a good reputation. Google them for their web site. 

Every OTHER medical field, nursing, therapists, techs, etc. are all experiencing the yearly salaries going up.  Transcription compensation is not increasing. 

While they may increase the RATES the ability to make the more money is not there because of VR, taking away the header allowances, more difficult accounts, more ESLs, stricter QA, etc., etc. slow platforms that require information inserted that you don't get paid for and anything else that lowers your salary.  If hospitals are looking to slash their transcription budget, they are going to pass that onto the service and the service will pass that onto to the employee. 

I know transcriptionists that were making 45-50K in 1987 working 40 hours and now they are making 35K and often times working more than 40 hours to make that lower amount.  Or I hear people say I can make the same money but I must work much harder and longer hours.  I think wow...you have to work harder and longer to make what you made in the 1980s. 

Other occupations have gotten consistent raises without the need for more hours and I don't think employees would put with up it.  Imagine a well qualified R.N. being offered a 1987 salary?  The hospital would have a hard time hiring nurses.  But the transcription service environment is so competative if they can offer the work cheaper and cheaper while guaranting accuracy they will get that contract.  So in order to stay in business they have to find a way to pay the Transcriptionist the least amount of money to see their profits which they need to stay in business. 

Of course if transcription is all you know and you don't to work in an office or get a job at Starbucks you keep going and accept the pay because we really have no control.  You have to work with what they offer you. 

I just wondered what it would take to make that kind of money per line. 

I have close to 20 years experience in acute care and I was not offered even close to that, with only a half cent raise after the 2 week period, which still does not get me to what you are getting.  How many years have you been with them? 

Here is a reason, the owner of Omniscribe goes back on her word.  She will tell you one thing, then do another when the mood suites her with no thought to you as an MT whatsoever.  Is that a good reason for ya?  BTW do u work for her?  Why do you need a reason when someone tells you to beware of a company?  Isn't that reason enough? 

I have done this for 25+ years.  If I was choosing a career at this point, I don't know if I would choose MT - it has changed drastically in my lifetime.  However, I would like to tell you why it is chosen and why we do continue.

When I first started doing this, I had no clue regarding the enormous amount of information I would be required to learn.  I did not know that it would be an ongoing and never-ending process of learning.  I just thought it would be cool to type medical reports and wondered how hard it could be to listen to someone talk and type what they said!  When I started getting a clue it became a challenge.  I was already hooked, learning new things every day, feeling important because I had doctors talking into my ears, and knowing things about health/medicine that I had not known before.  After a few years of striving to learn medical terminolog and hours and of hours of research in books and online trying to make sense of what I was hearing, I decided I had invested too much time/effort to do anything else.

For every medical report that is typed, someone behind the keys has had to learn terminology, lab values, physiology, anatomy, medications, proper style/grammar, and do it all quickly. 

It is not the companies or the nickel/dime antics they play that keep us doing this.  It is a geniune love for what we do - at least for me.  I don't feel superior because of the knowlege I have gained over 25 years; however, I have worked hard to learn the things that make me a good medical transcriptionist.  I am happy with my job/life because I choose to be.  I could complain about the companies, MTSOs, etc., but I have worked at other jobs and had complaints.  If it was not a job, I would not get a paycheck. 

I love the field.  I enjoy typing medical reports.  I enjoy the research.  I am good at what I do.  By the way, if you ever find yourself on the receiving end of our work (in a hospital bed), think of your chart as the medical transcriptionist's gift to you - hopefully it will be typed by an experienced MT who stayed in the profession and knows how to do it right. 

It used to be that the only abbreviation anything you could use with Lotus was what you could enter in MS-Word...no abbreviation Expander was compatible (for a lot of reasons I'm not going into just now).  In any event, there was a compatibility problem with Lotus not counting all the characters expanded by abbreviation programs and the transcription manager was having to go in and manually count the characters to give the MT the proper pay.  You can imagine that was a nightmare!

They have finally found a compatible abbreviation program that is fully compatible with Lotus...it is the only one compatible.  Good company, honest people...They WANT you to succeed.