let the MTSOs step in the MTs shoes - sm

• Ladies...I think we may be making some headway... - MT Revolution
  • Sarah1114 - I was just mandated a huge pay cut! Are you kiddin
    • I'm so flustered, I got my name in the wrong spot LOL nm - Sarah1114
  • If you want the best, you'll have to pay for it. - EmmaMT
  • if you ask me, MTSOs - sm - anonabon
    • Exactly! Get rid of the recruiters, the - Common Sense
      • Sounds like a school district! - catsxoxo
      • In a nutshell, that's what's wrong with our entire - (sm) - Topaz
  • My short story - same experience
  • Hospitals cutting their costs - where do - think they are going to cut first?
    • they already did that going to pruduction - read - anonabon
  • Actually, I'd be happy to work for 80s wages -- I made a lot more then. nm - LTMT
    • So did I! 80's wages were great! nm - nm
      • Hey, wages were even still good 5 years ago, now pretty much gone. nm - molly
  • Yes, the MTSO has to "make THEIR money", but - guess what, so do we! (sm)-Topaz
  • I hear ya'.... - sm
    • Your 1st paragraph should be burned into - all of our brains! (sm) Topaz
      • I'm gonna give it a try..can't hurt! - TravelinMT
        • TravelinMT: I say, go for it. sm - penny
          • Well I got the reporter's name - TravelinMT
          • I've tried to tell people as well - that their medical records are being
  • Agree. I shopped around until I found - sm
  • I agree to some extent, but some of these MTSOs are SM - jazzMT
    • The only accounts you lose in business by charging - what you're worth are the CR@P accounts.
  • "So many" job posting lately? I've seen fewer and fewer. nm - I don't get your logic
    • are you kidding me? - MT Revolution
      • The only thing you are doing is forcing the - Anon
        • We "think" we're worth more? We are! - wacko
        • So are we supposed to just accept low wages? - sm
        • let the MTSOs step in the MTs shoes - sm - no name
          • Exactly! MTSOs need to get a back bone - You sell us ALL short
        • Spoken like a true MTSO! nm - *rolls_eyes*
          • Wrong again! I am NOT an MTSO - just an MT - Anon
        • Oh, that's horse puckey. The reason they - BTDT
      • I would never even apply at a company with - sm
        • Not necessarily true. - Work for "Global" company
      • Inferior? - violetmt

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I guess you've never worked on the inside of an MTSO business, but you wouldn't believe how physicians and hospitals are chipping away at our pay by demanding lower rates from the MTSOs.  Some MTSOs that people on this site complain about offering offshored services to client did it to KEEP from losing their clients.  When it starts with the doctors and hospitals, what choice do the MTSOs have but to pass that on to the MTs?  It really is a vicious circle. 

Some MTSOs team up with schools and offer interships where an MT in training works for free for a period of time to gain experience.  Now trust me, THOSE savings are not passed on to the experienced MTs...that goes directly into the MTSO's pockets and those MTSO push their long-term, higher paid MTs out the door to save a few pennies with no trouble sleeping at night.

So what about a union?  You're right.  More jobs will be offshored.  More experienced MTs will lose their jobs.  Doesn't anyone remember what happened when the air traffic controllers went on strike and the president of our United States canned every single one of them and airports had to hire an entirely new staff of controllers?  Did you see airlines stop flying passengers?  Nope.  Managers worked triple shifts until restaffing occurred, oh, without extra pay since they were salarired.

I don't pretend to know the answers as to how an MTSO should run its business but honest communication, good benefits and wages that have been lost in just a few short years (less than 10) would be nice.  It should stick to its gun and promote keeping jobs in the states for the patients' sakes.  And for the Indian physicians who have organized and created their own MTSO's to keep their families in India employed should be boycotted.  MTs should educate anyone they know who uses a doctor to ask the physician where his/her transcription is done or if s/he even knows and use only physicians with American-based transcription.

Boycotts worked in South Carlolinia and other states to take down the Rebel flag. Why can't we have a similar affect?  Mostly because we are not organized (I did NOT say unionized) and we do not generate the media coverage necessary to affect change.

d~

I am very small MTSO and it still gets hairy with turn around time.  All it takes is for one I/C to say, today I don't want to work -- which they can -- like the one above said, I want to work when  I want to and do as much as I want -- and suddenly she decides not to work, well suddenly that leaves 1000 to 3000 lines to be spread around, times that by 2 and what a mess.  You cannot control what and how much the docs dictate.  I would not hire someone unless they were strictly for overflow without somewhat of a committment whether it be the lines or time that the could do on specific days.  Imagine having 15 people with this attitude.  Like I said walk in my shoes, it is a balancing act.  Too much work, they gripe -- too little they gripe.   But someone that wants to work when they want, how much they want could not budget accounts that way.  It would be strictly overflow and then if you weren't available when the work was you probably would not stick around nor again would I keep you around.   Sure an IC can set their own hours but I expect a certain amount of work done in a certain amount of time to meet my TAT and not be docked because we didn't. 

I had 3 under the age of 5 at home.  I've worked both statutory/IC (the only difference is that statutory means they take out the federal taxes and IC doesn't)and employee positions.  By far, the best for me was statutory.  Even now that my kids are all in school, statutory is still better because of summer vacations.

Some things to remember:  Most employee positions require you to punch a timeclock.  Some companies let you get your work done in a 12-hour window, others require you to work just the shift your scheduled for.  The employee position I had did not give you the window. 

My employee position also required me to produce so many lines per hour, even though I was paid by production not hourly.  Therefore, if you are scheduled 6 hours and had to produce 100 lines per hour, you needed to have 600 lines in by the time you clocked out.  If you got interrupted by 1 of your kids, you had to either clock out and make the time up at the end of your shift (which no one feels like doing) or stay clocked in, try to handle the problem in a few minutes, and hope you make your 100 lines per hour.  Of course, the line requirement was averaged over the week or payperiod (can't remember which now), so I always went with the second option of staying clocked in rather than having to make up time at the end of my shift.  But, anything that took more than a few minutes to handle, you'd better clock out or else Big Brother will report you for stealing from the company.

There are some downsides to statutory.  You do not get benefits.  If you want a day off, you take it, but you don't get paid for it.  You also don't get time and a half.  You work what you work and get paid the same amount, unless you're with a company that pays incentives/bonuses for anything over a certain amount. 

I honestly can't say much else about statutory.  It's my favorite.  The flexibility is just too good to pass by when you have little ones at home. 

I won't comment on companies to work for.  Too many people like to argue when you try to post something positive about a company.  Read the archives, decide on 2 or 3 companies, then ask about those companies.  It's just too broad otherwise.

I feel your pain.  I've worked for a couple of companies that went offshore, also.  In one I was transcribing Social Security disability evaluations.  Those went to the Philippines. 

Picture this:  Your full name, DOB and SSN, as well as details of all your physical and mental disabilities, going to another  country,  potentially to be stolen and used by identity thieves.  The US government contracting to have its work done by a company that sends the work to a foreign country. 

Inconceivable to me at the time.  Still makes no sense, but then I'm obviously not management material. 

Don't be putting down people who like to do VR. I did straight typing for over 15 years and I am making the same, if not more, doing VR now. I was not a very slow typist, and quality is my first priority. I've been doing VR for almost a year now and love it. What makes it easy for me is I never really relied on Expanders to up my line rate since my hospital didn't really allow them, except for autocorrect. I didn't have an Expander until 6 years ago. Doing VR, I can't use the expander I did finally learn, but it's no big deal.

Like some other posters stated, it depends on who else is doing the reports whether or not VR is easy or hard.  Some days, my reports are easy, other days tough. It's the same when doing straight typing. Some dictators are easy, other are tough.

I don't think VR is really made for large companies with hundreds of transcriptionists. It's made for the smaller companies that all conform to the same verbiage.

If you're good/fast/quality-oriented with straight typing without expanders, then VR would be good for you. If you rely on an expander to get those lines, you will have a problem in the beginning, but if you're flexible, it will pan out.

Don't down people because they like VR. You know what they say......try it. You may like it.

Okay.  I think we can agree that in this industry, like every other, there are some bad apples.  There are some bad MTSOs, some bad MTs and even some bad clients.  And there are some good apples, too. 

Unfortunately, even the best MTSOs have to deal with a lot of new realities in this business that limit their options.  Over the past 15 to 20 years, the business has become much more competitive, clients are now being run by bean-counters who squeeze every penny out of contracts that they can, and the investment that an MTSO has to make in technology today has simply skyrocketed - not only the initial investment, but the ongoing investment in tech people, etc. to keep it running.  On top of that, there's been the deteriorating business climate that has actually been going on since 2007, although it didn't attract significant notice until late in 2008. 

And now comes speech rec.  There's a lot of MTSOs who haven't been thrilled about this because it's a huge investment and because they know how crummy SR really is - but clients become sold on the exaggerations in savings that the SR missionaries preach, and start insisting on it.  So you'll do SR or they'll find someone else.

The costs to every business in America for what we call compliance (to all of the jillions of laws that affect business) have also skyrocketed.  You can find plenty of information about this yourself.  These costs include all sorts of insurance and a lot of costs in terms of your operation just to keep yourself out of court or an administrative hearing of some kind.

MTSO's don't run the industry like some people here seem to think.  Clients run the industry.   Technology runs the industry.  Congress and various administrative agencies at every level of government run the industry.  Lawyers run the industry. 

There is one thing that I do criticize many MTSOs for, however, and that is the crappy line rate that many of them are paying for SR editing.  The typical scenario is that they promise you'll be able to edit jillions more lines per hour than you can transcribe,  so you shouldn't mind going from 9 or 10 cpl to 3 or 4 cpl.  Unfortunately, you buy into this and then discover that if you do your editing job properly, you really can't do all that many more lines per hour.  So your next paycheck sucks.  You give it a little longer...and your paycheck still sucks.  A couple more paychecks that suck, and now YOU are the one who is out of options. 

It's no good telling people who get caught in this trap Well, then, get into another field! because by this time they have no money to be trained in anything else.  Their kids are already fighting with the dog to see who gets the food in his bowl. So my criticism is the shameful way that many MTSOs have dealt with their people.

What bothers me the most about this is that every line of an SR document gets edited - even if it doesn't need to be changed.  In other words, there's really no difference in the KNOWLEDGE that an Editor has to bring to a line whether she declares the line to be correct or decides that it needs correction.  That line is correct is PRECISELY THE SAME SORT OF JUDGMENT as saying That line is wrong. 

This is a knowledge business, not a typing business.  There is absolutely no excuse for reducing the line rates so drastically (and little experience to show that people can still earn the same living).  This means, then, that the MTSO is buying knowledge on the cheap - and that's one thing that I can't forgive them for.  That, and the way they sucker people into accepting editing jobs in the first place.

then why is Transcend trying so hard on this board to convince everyone they are not the anti-Christ?  If they were that good, everyone would be beating a path to their door and they wouldn't have to be defending themselves to the degree we are seeing...

but correct me if I'm wrong...