True! I just hope the wrong person doesn't

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But, try to look at it this way.  You are in a healthcare profession, part of the team that takes care of that patient, even though not IN the hospital.  That means nights, weekends, holidays, etc., someone from the healthcare team has to be available for transcription.

I don't know anything specifically about this company, but from a manager's standpoint, I just wanted you to realize WHY some companies are specifically looking for nights, weekends, and holiday help.  It's tough--everyone wants to be off on weekends, be off on holidays, etc., but the reality is that MT just like nurses, doctors, and other allied health professionals are needed when the patient is an inpatient.  :(

from someone asking if was me posting here tonight, so I came to look.   I agree with a lot that the poster has to say but I post my name when I post.  Anyone who knows me or of me knows this.  I do not have to post behind anonymous names nor do I. 

I do disagree with some of what this poster says though and will take a moment to tell her/him something:  You chose to run a service and knew or should have known what you were getting into.  If you are doing all that, you should either hire more people or hire different people.  The best move I ever made as a service owner was learning to delegate and hiring the right people including Human Resources, Accounting, Operations, QA, Recruiting and IS.  (The second best move I ever made was to stop letting the posts on the MTStars and others affect me).  Best advice I could give a service owner is to cough up the money for a good staff; it is worth it in the long wrong although hard in the short term.

While not everyone agrees with me or likes me or wants to work with Keystrokes, I do not feel a need to hide behind the anonymous nature of these boards and would rather have people know where I stand than wonder.

You would also know that I value our transcriptionists and know that as a company, Keystrokes constantly tries to improve.  If you know me at all or anything about Keystrokes, you would also know that our rates are going up not down and we do not undercut prices to beat our competitors. 

If anyone has anything to say to me directly, please use my email.  I do not visit here often anymore and do not plan on starting again as it gets a bit addicting :)

Let me tell what this ONE person achieved on her own and then you can imagine what many of us can do if we stand together.

Two years ago, I was working as an MT for a local hospital.  One day, we were told that our overflow was going to be outsourced to one of the nationals, just the discharge summaries and not even all of those.  Two months after they told us that lie, they called is in one by one and fired us because they were outsourcing the entire dept because it was cost effective.  The service they were using was a very large national who I happened to know had a reputation of offshoring.  And I just knew because our little hospital had easy as pie dictators with maybe 4 out of a staff of 200 that were ESL, our work would most definitely be one of the accounts offshored.

I was angry!  Oh, they offered us jobs at the service and told us we would definitely be working on our hospital, but I'm no fool and I knew it would be a matter of time before we were forced to take secondary accounts which would eventually become our primary accounts and our little hospital would just disappear from our queues. 

I refused the job with the service on moral grounds.  I refused to work for a company that offshored.  And then I decided to channel my anger and outrage into something proactive.  I wrote letters to every newspaper in my area.  Every small farming community newspaper this hospital served, and the big city newspaper in the big city close by.  I never dreamed that anyone would pay attention at one woman's rantings.  But a funny thing happened.  My letter was printed in more than one of the papers I sent it to, and reporter from one of the larger newspapers called me and asked if I would do an interview.  I said absolutely.

Long story short, they did the interview and then interviewed the administrator of the hospital.  They put him in the hot seat and asked him about offshoring health information to India.  He had no definitive answers to give except that he would have to look at the contract and make sure that it was stipulated that his hospital's work was not sent over seas.

It was a small triumph, but I took some satisfaction in it.  Two weeks after that and just when I thought all the hoopla had died on my little letter, another letter appeared in the newspaper -- from an HIM director at another local hospital who said as a result of reading my letter and interview, that she had received a number of calls from concerned people asking if their medical information was being sent and transcribed overseas.  She wanted to write the letter just to set the record straight that her hospital employed their own MTs and did not outsource to a service nor did they offshore any of their work to third-world countries.

And I'm still not done.  Still a few weeks later another letter in the big city paper was printed from another HIM director assuring the community that her hospital employed its own American MTs and did not outsource or offshore.

Now, everything has quieted down since then, but I managed to ruffle some feathers and make a point, and if I (one person, one middle-aged work-at-home mother of two) can cause that much ruckus -- think what a whole bunch of us can do.

I think we, as a group, need to take control of our industry and our career destiny and do something.  Maybe march on Washington DC protesting the offshoring of American jobs -- not just ours, but ALL American jobs that are being offshored.  There are more Americans out of work and losing work to third-world countries and corporate greed than just MTs!  Our government needs to hear our voices!  We need to MAKE ourselves be heard! 

Instead of sitting back and pasting little smiley faces in our posts and saying good luck with that we need to come together.  There is no room for MTs willing to accept lower wages, no room for MTs whose hearts bleed for our third-world counterparts, and no room for MTs who want to sit back and do nothing, but reap the benefits when the strong win the battle.  We've reached a critical turning point and it's time to take up the cause and change the future. 

t

I worked for an offshore owned company where it was all about quantity.  Company even kept a HORRIBLE MT just because she cranked out the lines.  Didn't matter her quality was crap and was considered a joke by middle managment.  India did most typing but with US edit.  Typists changed regularly so it wasn't like they learned to do better.  Quality would improve slightly and then would notice, after couple of months, that quality was crap again so we knew we were dealing with a new batch of typists. Even so, the push was always on to get the jobs off US edit and send Indian work straight to client.  Of course, the clients never knew they were not getting US editing anymore, as they got no price reduction when they no longer had that level of work being done on their jobs.  The problem is the facilities accept the crap work so why should the companies change.  It took a while but I finally found a US owned company where quality matters.  Now one of the first questions I would ask a prospective employer is if they are US owned.