Whatever company you work for, you should verify that it counts correctly. sm
Posted By: Lisa on 2007-07-20
In Reply to: I like my new name! Thanks! Nicknames are for - VIPs. From: Ms Smarty
Take the document, cut and paste it into Word, count it that way. No way I would take the word of a company or a program unless I can verify my lines.
I do not work for Keystrokes but had to give my 2 cents, whatever it's worth!
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How do you verify your line counts
I like to see the reports typed so that I can do a check against my list that I write on a tablet for myself. How are you doing this? CTRL I does not give an accurate count, because it shows every line/character in the report, which we do not get paid for.
Please share with us how you double check your handwritten list by the number of jobs/job #'s you get paid for. I have never worked a job where this is not available to the MT.
I want to see a list of reports by job number that I have sent/transcribed showing the number of lines for each individual report.
A company is ONLY supposed to verify that someone worked there, what dates they worked, whether PT o
and last date worked. It opens everyone up to a lawsuit if more is given, so most companies are told by their attorneys and business advisors to verify only.
No one has a right to a reference, only verification of employment.
You mean the T. company's line counts...sm
were not accurate??  (I had considered applying to them before.) 
I know of one company that counts lines 3 different ways
Stats are enabled on one platform, not enabled on a second platform and also not enabled on a third platform. They are all Dictaphone Extext programs and the lines are counted three different ways depending on which account you are assigned to. Hope its not the same company you work for only to get a rude awakening.
Depends upon how your company counts things, I suppose. sm
I like both platforms. Bayscribe is easy to use, and the Expander emulates PRD+, which I was used to. The spellchecker is kind of clumsy -- that could definitely use some tweaking. The thing I liked the most about Bayscribe was at the end of each report, you saw the line count for that report and how much you made, plus a total of lines for all reports and the total number of lines you had made for the day.
I am currently using ExText, and it is also easy to use. I have to go to ichart to view my line count, though, and you cannot get it on a report-to-report basis. The CTRL+I feature is useless to me since my employer does not count headers or footers. I quit using it because I hated to see what a big difference there was at the end of the day. I could do 300 lines per hour on Bayscribe. With the current setup, maybe 250. I can do 300 if I just sit and type as fast as I can with no breaks, but that cannot last for 8 hours solid.
Either platform is okay. I still kinda miss WP51 -- think DOS-based programs were faster -- but you can't hold on to a dinosaur. And, obviously that is just my opinion. Hope it helps. 
I've only been with present company for months and don't have counts where I'd like, otherw
nm
Never mind..See msg below. Apparently the line counts are changing with my company
and I probably wont be doubling anything anymore. Moving on.
I worked for a different company using Vianeta and could never access line counts. Was also told it
:+
I work on Extext and get my own counts.
Feel free to e-mail me.
I work for TT, low line counts on ExText for me. nm
nm
Line counts doing hospital work
Does anyone truly get more than 250-300 lph doing hospital work? If so, where do you work?
Maybe so, her work was bad & she didn't meet line counts
.
I work on that account, NO problems with line counts or the requirements! sm
I have heard of putting the entire team on QA, I have had it happen before. I got released back after 24 hrs because I was fine.
There are issues with a couple of things on that account. It will likely come down to some of the MTs not being allowed to work on that account any longer, which leaves more work for the rest of us. The communication about the issues they are now addressing with 100% QA for all of us have been thorough and when I have not understood something I have asked for clarification. I have one concern that I feel certain they will call me on and that is fine because I can alter my ways and make sure it is right.
I don't know what is wrong with some of you. I suppose there are MTs who don't believe in doing the job 110%. If you are productive AND accurate, you can make very good money at TT, I certainly do. If you think the pay is low, move on...if you are good enough to find another job. TT is a CHOICE for me because when I was looking last fall, I had no fewer than 10 offers and entertained them all, but went to work for TT because I felt I would be happy there. No surprise to me, I am extremely happy.
The 100% QA is not something I am taking personally because it would seem to me that the only way to address the issues at hand is to do this very thing.
Venting- how can you make money or get line counts when all the work is given to someone else!
Nothing seems fair anymore. Does anyone else ever have this happen?
But you do have to verify and look up
ones that are not there.
You'd have to verify
with them, of course, but I know as an IC I let them know how much work/how many hours I will commit to in a day and then the expectation is you will achieve it.
My experience has not been that they insist on 9-5 etc.
I work on Docuscribe (not MQ) and have also worked on Chartscript in the past. My line counts went
down significantly when I went to the DQS platform. Don't know if it is being manipulated or not, just simply stating the facts as I have seen them.
I can absolutely verify this. SM
Awful work. The worst of the worst dictators. Yes, the platform is great, but that doesn't help much when you have nearly 100% ESL dictators and the WORST ESLs I have ever heard. QA is definitely very rude and if you like getting 9000 e-mails a day begging people to work, then it is your cup of tea. I live in the Midwest and I was not offered employee status ever. I have to pay to get my check sent to me overnight. No direct deposit and no bennies. Nada. So in other words, decent pay, 10 cents a line, for crap work and no bennies. That about sums it up.
you verify what I said, experience=8 cpl or
Of course they're going to try to make you feel grateful for being offered 9 cpl. What's the alternative? We know it's low for your level of expertise, but we're not willing to give you more. Again, MOST companies will pay 8 cpl or above if you have enough experience and/or negotiate well. I didn't say it was a great wage, just answering the OP's question.
Softscript will pay you 10 cpl if you can verify that now.
You'll have to get through QA and meet minimum line expectations, but they'd be glad to pay you that if you deserve it!
I would verify these things - sm
Did you ask when you were hired what the company definition of a line was? Are you paid for spaces, headers, footers, demographics? The DQS platform can only do what people have programmed it to do and nothing more. I worked on the back end with this platform for nearly 10 years. You can break down every single key stroke and assign it various values, i.e., you can make the letter *a* count for 2 strokes if you want and *?* count for nothing. Those are just examples. If you are on different accounts the lines may also be counted differently. So many variables, but look at the suggestions above. 
Here is the story I was given but no way to verify
Here’s the line we got from one of the smaller MTSOs I worked for. A lot of MTSOs have in their contracts with some hospitals that there is a minimum amount of minutes/jobs per year that the hospital promises to send to the MTSO and the hospital had to pay the entire contract even if they did not send that many minutes/jobs. That is so the MTSO has a better idea of how many MTs they will need for the year (like that ever worked !!! They were always overstaffed or understaffed). But I digress. So come the end of the year (usually November or December) we would get slammed with old dictation and a lot of it was work types we usually did not get. So, we were told that the hospital “found” some old dictation. The MTs figured that we were not the only MTSO that that particular hospital used or they still had in-house MTs, and what really happened was instead of being charged for jobs they did not have us type, they cleaned out their in-house dictations and sent everything they had to us. Some hospitals do not have a time limit on discharge summaries and letters so they can be a couple of weeks old without anyone worrying about it.
Some of the hospitals had all their dictations go through their in-house dictating system, and then the hospital would transmit jobs to us in batches. So, another time we got slammed, they told us the hospital was having problems because their in-house system had crashed or something, and they just “found” all these old dictations that had gotten “stuck” in their system and just popped up when they rebooted.
Do not know if either explanation is true, but that was their story. Guess they sounded plausible, because we never asked again where all those jobs came from after the first couple of years. LOL
Low line counts; paying long distance; getting crap work skipped by others.
xx
C-phone accounts aren't any better, not enough work to make line counts there either. Sigh
nm
Could you verify this and let us know, because I haven't seen a word about this...
thanks.
Yup. I can sure verify that story! Disgusting. nm
nm
Verify line count
A long time ago I read on this board that an employer had to clearly define a line telling you exactly how they figured it and how they counted it. The poster said it was a requirement by US DOL. They also said the person being paid by the line had to be able to verify their lines. I have tried to find this post and cannot. Does anyone know about this. Can your employer send you home to work, pay you by the line, and not clearly define what they use to determine a line and how it is counted? Human Resources said it is up to the Department head and they will not interfere. Their attitude is if you don't like it you can quit. Now, they haven't done this to me yet, but the two people they did it to have quit. They paid them 8 cents a line, no headers or footers, in fact, they paid only for the body of the report, and did not even count paragraph headings, even though we almost always have to either take one out because it is not dictated, or draw them together because they are dictated all in one paragraph. We get no pay for anything already on the page, except 2 lines added to each report for numbers we have to type such as job number, dates and times of dictation and transcription. Nothing else is paid for. They say we get paid for auto correct and auto text but they can't show us. There are just two of us left, and only one of us is going to be paid by the hour, and I am low man on the totem pole. If they tell me they will pay be by the line, what are my recourses, other than quitting, for proving to Human Resources that they really do HAVE to define a line and how it is counted, and I really do HAVE the right to check their figures against my own. Please help as the axe is about to fall about this and I am scratching on glass trying to get info about my rights, if any. Thanks.
I can verify my lines at Spheris, but not all
xx
Newbie, mind sharing your name so I can verify this?
nm
It is easy enough to verify by doing a Google search
it is not unfounded rumors.
tell me how you verify your line count with TransTech
I had that problem as well and I was not anonymous about it and I came here and was called a liar and was told I was paranoid. I eventually found employment elsewhere and they also use Ex-Text and I-Chart. I was told by them that I would be paid on a 65-character line that includes black characters, spaces, and hard returns but no headers or footers which was the exact same thing I was told by TransTech. On the whole right now I am making less cents per line but my paychecks are bigger with them because unlike Transtech I am actually paid on a 65-character line that includes black characters, spaces, and hard returns but no headers or footers; and this is a true story.
Keystrokes Can verify up to the minute via cntr I
report by report
Did you call WebMedx to verify that they have the account? NM
NM
I've easily done 600, but it depends on the way a company counts lines and it depends on the
dictators. Obviously, if you have a good share of ESL, there is no way you could ever do 600 or 700. On really difficult ones, I usually run around 400 lines an hour and I have been working on this platform for 3 years.
how do we work it? Easy answer - work for another company. That happened with the company
I was working for. I would wake up at 4 a.m. AND ON THE WEEKENDS TOO because they needed "coverage" supposedly and I would sit until 9:30 or noon without any work. Sorry, but my rent of $1450/month could not be paid with only $57/day. So I got another job and when I got the equipment and everything, then I quit for the other employer.
Am I seeing correctly, already doing VR and
they are cutting your pay from an already low to a lower rate??
Around $300-$350 for both of you, if I remember correctly -
I've only been there 1-1/2 months. You have to wait 3 months before you're eligible for insurance, but your PTO they say you can use anytime. I'm so surprised how fast it adds up. I already have about $200 PTO.
Hope that helps. Good luck.
If I remember correctly, the pay is about 3-5 cpl and
they use a system I was unfamiliar with. I declined their offer.
But hey, if it suits you, go for it.
Yes, you read it correctly - sm
The platform is fairly basic.
They have made some huge improvements in it since I started editing on it but there is still some room to improve.
As with any other program, you can expect a learning curve so it's really about finding a way to make it work for you.
I have been seeing some improvement in my production (baby steps) but it would be really nice if I was at least making what I was before with just transcribing. I'm not, in case that wasn't clear.
Not to put the entire blame on the platform, I need to readjust my thinking and approach to getting my work done. It's different.
I have been very happy with Transcend for a long time. They are listening, even if sometimes they don't appear to be. It just takes a little time for them to figure out what needs to be changed in order for us (MLSs) to get our jobs done faster and easier.
Like I said, I'm trying to be patient because the last platform switch (when we went to VoiceScribe) was kind of a mess for about a year before it was really working smoothly but it turned out pretty darn good too. I still have hope for editing on this BT platform.
Spell correctly.
Maybe their line rate was low because you couldn't type well. It is atrocious
or get paid correctly. nm
x
Not paid correctly
One of the companies I have worked for for almost a year has never paid me correctly. Sometimes, it is only by a few dollars, but others, it is quite a bit. I asked them about it a few months ago and was told something like all the work you do doesn't always get over to us. I didn't really understand this, but for some reason, just blew it off at the time. Well, my last check was a little over $100 short from what the system said it should have been. When I tried to confront them about it, they won't answer my emails or the person I need to talk to is always out of the office or not able to talk. This just really makes me mad and just wanted to know if anyone else has had this problem.
Yes, CORRECTLY. Redundant.
nm
If I am understanding you correctly,
companies have no business wanting an accurate report?? There is nothing wrong with requiring 98% quality in a report. If you are a good MT, it doesn't matter how long or short the report is, it will be accurate and meet the standards for you company or facility, that is, if you want to keep a job anywhere.
If I recall correctly...
We ran out of work once while I was on that account, and they paid for no work downtime at an hourly rate. If anyone is really interested, I would speak with the recruiter because I believe they do pay for no work available and technical downtime.
you said it correctly. In this business sm
you work when the work is there or you don't work. Its a part of the job. I never liked the weekends either but hubby and I worked around them and adjusted things so one of us was always with the kids.
Sounds like MTs now want tons of money, the 9-5 shift and nothing to enter their little world. That is great but it is not the profession. I wouldn't expect a nurse or a doctor to say they don't want to work weekends or any other medical professional so what makes us any better? If the work is there at odd hours and you work on production then you work when the work si there or don't work!
If you need benefits, you chose correctly.
z
In their defense, if I remember correctly, their name
was very similar to at least 1 other and possibly 2 other transcription companies. I don't know if that was the reason for the change or not.
Funny, I missed that one. At least she used it correctly once, LOL. nm
s
Then spell stupid correctly.
x
Wait, am I understanding you correctly? ... sm
Are you saying that the work flow is up and down like this a lot? I'm a relative newbie to the company and I was told that they always had an abundance of work. I'm a little in shock right now.
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