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depends on what you consider to be good

Posted By: tried them on 2006-05-15
In Reply to: nice quarterly bonus makes up a lot - anon

I did excellently on the tests for MT and QA and was offered what they said was their top tiring rates and it is an INSULT to those of us who have been in this industry for years. Bonuses are NOT something to count on (no certainty) but the bills that have to be paid are (and that IS a certainty).


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Personally, DSG is a good fit for me. Pay is good and on time, sound quality depends on the account
and I like the platform. There is not much weekend work, although sometimes is available.  I get along well with the management, no major complaints.  There is pay incentive once you get over a certain number of lines in a pay period.  I work as an IC, so can't help with benefits, insurance questions, etc.
A lot of it depends on the account, but a good

It is like a Word-based program, but a lot of the functions from Word were not incorporated into BT.  If you have to change large blocks of text, once you highlight it either takes an extremely LONG time for the program to work or it will just freeze up altogether, in which case you have to back out and relog entirely.  Imagine doing this on every 3rd report and then you'll have a good idea of what it is like on some accounts. 


On some accounts the sound quality is so poor it is either all crackles or volume so low you can barely make out a word.  If you're a person who likes to use the keyboard more than the mouse, it has very few function keys and you can't program your keyboard for your own hotkeys.  Autocorrect does not work with it and most Expander programs do not work with it either. 


On my computer we had to reload the whole program several times because they figured it was just a bad download.  So even if you get an account that some people have no problems with, it's hard to tell what the precipitating factor is that will make it freeze up or not work well with other computers.  There is really no rhyme or reason as to why it works well for some and why it doesn't for others.  That's why tech support is having such a hard time.  They don't know the total ins and outs of the software because they didn't develop it.  It was developed by a company called M-Modal and so whenever there is a problem that tech support can't handle, they have to contact M-Modal.  The problem could be hours or days before corrected.  And there is no downtime.  The loss is YOUR loss, not the company's.  It is by far the worst program I have ever worked with in my 15+ years in MT.


Like anything, it depends on the company. Some good, some bad. nm
x
again, depends on what you call good
As with anything in life good and bad is relative - only 3 years ago if you called 8 or 9 cents a line good you would NOT have known what you were talking about. For well educated, hard working people as we are to being accepting less and less money is a CRIME and this industry is getting away with it. For someone with a test score to be offered less than 10 cents a line for day work is a DOWN RIGHT INSULT. Everyone else's salaries go up - and ours go down. We should NOT was accepting this situation.
Both are good companies -- depends upon what you are looking for. sm

With MDI-MD, you are a statutory employee, meaning they take out FICA, but not your state or federal taxes, and there are no benefits.  You do not have to adhere to a rigid schedule.  You make a commitment for x-number of lines per day and have a 24-hour window in which to do those lines.  Every 2 months you submit a calendar telling them which days you will work.  If I recall correctly 2 weekends are required per month.  There is no extra pay for holidays or weekends, but their pay scale is way above average.  Some accounts are internet accounts, and for some you need a C-phone with unlimited long distance.  They use Bayscribe as a platform, which is very easy to use and has a built-in expander.  The liaisons and QA people are quite pleasant and easy to work with, and Dorothy cares about people.


With TransTech, you are an employee, and you are required to work a scheduled shift, Sunday through Thursday or Tuesday through Sunday, I believe.  However, unlike the poster noted below, there IS flexibility -- all you have to do is email management and let them know you need to make a change that day.   You get abou 3.3-something PTO hours per pay period, which amounts to about 11 days a year, which increases the longer you are there.  They have reasonably priced insurance -- medical, dental, vision -- and have just recently added a 401k plan.  The pay scale is a bit lower, but they have a nice incentive tier that is easy to achieve.  They use ExText as the platform, which is Word-based and very easy to use.  QA and management staff are friendly and supportive, and management seems to truly care about the employees.  Again, it is a great company as well.


Hope this helps!


Good luck! 


not as good as typing but depends
I do both VR and straight typing...so much of how productive I am in VR depends on things other than myself: like how easy it is to get through the system, how good/bad the dictators are, how much dead air space there is (that I'm not getting paid for) and how good/bad the starting document is, etc.

That's what's so frustrating to me about VR...my ability to be highly productive is being controlled by more factors out of my control.


Of course, depends on your line rate, but $700.00 is very good for MT right now. I can make over
that if the work is available, and I put in more than 40 hours.  I think to make $1000.00 you need to have lots of expansions and dictators with which you are familiar, IMHO. 
Overall it is a good company. Your paycheck, however, depends on the account SM
you have, and your level. I am currently a level 8 with a high number of ESLs. I like Spheris the company though, but dislike my account.
7 Cents can be good - it all depends how the line is calculated - sm

I see posting all the time saying don't accept 7 cents a line that we are worth at least 9 cents or more.  Well it all depends how the line is calculated.  These national companies usually pay character with or without spaces and some of them have their own counting software where you just have to go with what they say and can't actually verify what is really being counted.  With that said you can be paid 7 cents a line counting Keystrokes (bolding, underline, etc - example the word paid is four characters but if you bold it then it is 8 characters and if you underline too then it is 12 characters) which would usually equal around 9-10 cents or more a line depending on the format of the document.  So it is very misleading when some transcriptionists say 7 cents is insulting when actually it is good if you are getting keystrokes with Abacus and you can actually verify it yourself to make sure the company is paying for all the headers, footers, template, shifts, tabs, spaces, returns, bolding, italic, underling, caps, etc.  You really have to investigate how the line is calculated to be able to compare.  So to all you people that keep saying don't accept it....I bet the ones that have are actually getting paid more than you in the long run!


It depends on if this is editing other MT's work or VR. If VR, that is a good rate. nm
nm
Paid for spaces depends on the account. Good company. nm
x
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.
The best co. ever! Good work, good people, good pay, good bennies.
x
Yes there is! Good pay and good bonuses and good benefits.

Well, it depends on what you need and are looking for - sm
do you want employee status, need benefits, need equipment supplied by company or do you want IC status, your own schedule, no benefits, and a good line rate?

There are many good companies out there, and even Transcend is a good company in some MTs eyes.

What are you looking for?
4.65 to 5.10 cpl. Depends on whether you
get 55% or 60% of your base salary.  You will starve to death only doing 1100 lines a day.  That would be $51.15 to $56.10 a day,.  
Depends.
I've talked with MTs who have said that MQ dumped them immediately upon giving notice, and they're anxious about getting on somewhere else immediately. I've talked to others who have had MQ offer them the moon and all nearby planets, with interest, to stay. I'm not talking 2 or 3 people here, but dozens. I'm not sure what the motivating factor is behind their decisions, because some of the best MTs I've seen have been ousted immediately. Go figure. Might depend on your office and the work load.
Depends
one person will tell you one thing, the next person will tell you another.  I think the company I work for is THE best but then you might not agree.  You kinda just have to find what works for YOU and you won't really know that until you try it.
Depends on what day it is.
I use a lot of "normals" and shortcuts.  I make at least $20 per hour, that is on a regular day.  I have made as much as $65 an hour.  I get $15 an hour for PTO. 
Well, depends
My requirement used to be 4000 lines (Foxboro office). Now I am at Columbus office and requirement is 4000+ lines, but also must work 20 hours a week, so that would put me at over 10000 lines a payperiod.
also depends
it also depends on the accounts, most of the accounts for one small MTSO do not have paragraphs, straight typing thru the complete report.
I'm sure that depends on what one...
has to offer, as it does with most companies.  :)
Depends..
on if you have write offs or not.  I was an IC for years and then went outside the home to work.  When coming back to home base, I found it not to be an advantage anymore because I had no write offs and didn't want to open up Pandora's box with itemizing again.
It just depends..
It depends on what state you are in and how many employees are working in that state to determine if you are eligible for health benefits.  With my state, there are only about 2 employees that work for FutureNet, so I am not eligible for health benefits.  As for incentives, they have great incentives.  You get 15% bonus every weekend, and 17% and 20% holiday bonuses.  So they are fair with what they offer.  Their pay is good; better than other places that I know of.  And, again, they are really great to work for.  You may be in a state that has several employees with them.  I would just ask them.  They are quick to tell you what you need to know.  Hope this helps.
I think it depends.....
If you have a wide-open screen, like MS Word, or WordPerfect, that allows you to set formats, change fonts, etc. I think it will work. It is my understanding that I-chart is a series of different boxes on the screen in different locations, so you are very significantly limited in your text inputting. But then again, IT works with Meditech, should be able to work with I-Chart, shouldn't it?
Depends
Where did she go to school? I know a lot of companies that will hire newbies if they went to one of the big 3 schools.
Depends
I worked for them and they are great to work for but very picky. They would not pay for jobs under 98%. I would be interested to know what they are paying these days too.
Well, that depends on
your level of experience. If you are comfortable with your terminology it will obviously go faster. It is really hard to answer the question of how much time because each company might use a different amount of files and/or the files are of varied lengths. If I was testing, I wouldn't want to waste more than an hour myself, but that is just my opinion.
Depends

If you are unit based (lines) it is 120 days. If hourly, 90 days.  Costs $90 Medical, 12.50 Dental, 3.85 for vision every pay period. I've had only office visits and have had no problems with it so far.


Depends
for QA or mt?
I believe they pay per line for mt
It depends...

I currently work for Precyse. So far it's been OK. I don't find them to be very flexible about the schedules. And now I'm a bit concerned reading another post here about being denied a schedule change. I'll be needing one in a few months. I'm expecting baby #3 and will need to go part time (also will need a few weeks to recover from birth). I've e-mailed my supervisor twice regarding this and she answered once asking what part time hours I was looking for. I answered her and nothing, so far. I understand prioritizing work matters, but I need to know what's going on before my water breaks. Fortunately that won't be for another 3 months or so.


I'm beginning to understand why so many people here were frustrated with the lack of communication. I guess I will be looking into part time IC work after my son is born.


I think it depends on how they have it set up...sm
I think it depends on how the system is set up.  I have worked on several different systems and they determine the pitch and the margins they want for their reports.
Depends on ..
experience and/or ability.  I mean if you get put on an account that's basically all American and beginner level, you wouldn't make as much as an account that's a mixture.
It depends
do you have enough work or are you just new to the account and haven't had the time to pick up speed, put in expanders, etc. I have worked for them for almost 9 months and it took some time to get enough work, but after about 2-3 months I was fine. They are the best place I have ever worked for, and I have been in the MT field for 35 years! Hope this helps.
It depends on what you are looking for.
If you only want a small amount of work, go for it, but don't believe what they promise. If you are looking for a good amount of work, then stay away, they don't have a lot and they don't care if you sit twiddling your thumbs waiting for work. Not to mention, the owner could use some people skills, and there was a lack of communication.
It Depends
Those contracts were signed with the original company, so it depends on the legal ramifications of the buy-out whether they're obligated to the new entity. Actually, such out-of-the-ashes entities are common in our industry. Someone is going to need us to do the work that the client doesn't want to send overseas.
that all depends, depends upon....sm

I don't think it's a lack of sense of humor. I think it's a sensitive joke and belongs on the comedy board, racist or not racist, that's where it belongs. 


It also depends upon one's history, where they came from, what kind of struggle/oppression their own came from way-back-when, and I think we all need to be a bit more sensitive about things, especially in times of wars...there are about 32 wars ongoing right now all over the world.  People merely need to be kinder.


And yeah, I am really annoyed about off-shoring, but that is not going to make me post anything as sensitive as a possibly racist joke, not even on the comedy board.


Please don't assume these people have no sense of humor - as I think you're way off-base on that.  I think many of these people are very funny in other posts....quick-witted, funny, etc. Not that anyone cares, but my favorite show is one where no (insulting) stone is left unturned...Real Time with Bill Maher, and he insults everybody...is also VERY funny...  And he's where HE belongs, on HBO.  *LOL*  Funniest thing though, I saw him live and two gentlemen sitting next to me were father-son staunch republicans.  (That's even funnier to me!!!  HAHAHAHA)


Have a nice day :)


DEPENDS
IT DEPENDS WHERE YOU WORK, I hear through the grapevine that the pay is like 4 cpl for one of the nationals, but maybe thats just them. I would love the name of the company who pays 12 cpl...as I am experienced in escription!!!
Depends
Knowing me I would try it once and see how it goes.   But if it takes you 3 hours to do 1 hour of audio -- that is about $17 an hour.  And if you are like me and cannot stand blanks I listened, relistened, got a copy of the outline for the seminar, etc. Went online to see what they were talking about.  Subject matter is of another concern. If it is a seminar or a speaker on something you have very little knowledge about -- i.e. building a microchip inside a computer, you will not know the lingo and will have to do a lot of research.   There can be a lot of people talking over people, etc.   Again, if you don't try it at least once you will probably always wonder.  You could tell him that if you find that it takes you more than 2 hours to do one hour of audio or if it is poor quality, your price goes up.   Be honest and nice but tell him you have to make at least $25 an hour of typing to make it worth your while.   Every audio will probably be different and on a differnt subject and you won't be able to do any macros, use short cuts or anything, it will definiely be 100% typing.  Good luck, let me know what you do -- again if you don't try at least once you will probably wonder if you passed up your pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. 
Depends
If the demos are filled in for you, it isn't bad.  Kind of a pain if you have to flag anything as you have to do that in a sep window.  It requires its own special footpedal.  If company provides, that isn't a bad deal, but i had to buy one and it took me forever to sell it when i left that company. 
Depends.
It depends on what platform you are working on. I do eScription platforms, pay is 4/8.4, medical is after 90 days, full time is 11,000 lpw, insurance for me and two kids is $70 a week. Very nice and flexible. I work weekends by choice so I'm not sure what they require.
Depends
on what account your are working on insofar as platform...many different ones are used. For radiology they pay per report...not sure of the exact amount, though...seems as though it was $1.10/$1.25 per report.
Depends...
Some MTs average a high hourly rate. I make $16/hr as QA. Some make more than $20/hr and some make as little as $11/hr.
It Depends
Every employer is different. Some will have you transcribe if you run out of QA work. Usually, though, they will have you log out and check back later. I have never worked anyplace where they paid me when there was no work to do.
I think it depends....
from what I understand what account you are on.  I've been with them for about six months.  The work has been steady but comes in sporadically during the day on the account I'm on.  So sometimes I am overwhelmed with work and other days it is slow.  Plus, on my account we all get to help with the stat pool which can be a blessing or a curse depending on how many files you have in your own pool to get out in your TAT.  I see people posting they make $30/hr.  I'd LOVE to know how.  I've been doing MT for 10 years, have all the expanders, macros, et al, and still manage to produce about 1500 lines a day.
Well it all depends.....
Like everywhere else, it depends on the accounts.  There are some heavily with ESL and some with not so much.
Depends
on dictators and length of those reports!
Depends
I am an Editor for MTs from India and I find the MTs that I work with to be very good for the most part. I do find a couple of little things that are from English being their second language, but overall the Indian MTs that I work with are just as good as and in some cases better than US based MTs. I have worked with US MTs that refuse to listen to suggestions and in fact try to argue even though the correction can be seen in black and white in the AAMT BOS or in the doctors' instructions (which of course trumps the AAMT BOS considering the customer is ALWAYS right if you want to keep your docs). I find that the Indian MTs that I work with look at the corrections and make note of them because rarely do they make the same mistakes twice. So like anything in life there are good workers all over and there are lazy or incompetent workers all over US and India.
it depends
Some of the management are good, some are nasty as pitbulls. QA seems to be good. Work - depends on what accounts you are on, can be a lot, many are feast or famine - overhire and too much outsourced. My biggest grip is the VR program which is really not voice recognition but word association program. I have never worked on another VR platform, but this one hears a word like infarct and automatically inserts myocardial infarction or cerebral infarct, sometimes both, and often times more. Same with a lot of other words. Never had so many reports with myocardial infarctions in the lung, but guess medicine is changing rapidly. There should be a way to tell a machine to change cc to mL but obviously this one does not have that capability so we have to change them all manually. It apparently cannot follow formats unless the dictator is very exact in how he/she dictates so you spend a lot of time reformatting everything. At first I thought it was funny, but now, after more than a year, I find it disgusting that management cannot find a better program or get this one better trained. I find it faster just to retype many of the VR reports than to try to correct their mess. But, of course, this is at 60% of what I get for transcribing, but is still faster than that program. The only way to survive on here is if you get a lot more transcribing jobs than editing jobs
depends
Depends on the account. A lot of them run out of work non stop.  Some of them suck as far as dictators.  They absolutely do not pay for downtime either.
it all depends ...
IMHO, it depends a lot on:

how good the company's VR program is ...

the dictators .....

your ability to concentrate, much harder for me to read than transcribe.


I have gotten a few reports I do double my production on but have gotten many, many, many more that take me LONGER than MTing. I average about a 15-20% increase in production, with a 30% decrease in pay ....

and one other thing - some do say it helps their hands/wrists, well, not me ... I use my right pinky for the Ctrl key .. and if I do a lot of ME for a couple of days, I start having trouble with my right wrist.

good luck! :P