so many what? you need to place post properly (NM)

• no idea there were so many, thanks!! - nm
  • WHOOPS, referring to companies who do not offshore. - nm (sorry)
  • so many what? you need to place post properly (NM) - anon

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for explaining about accepting 7 cpl for pay.  Those of us old timers remember when the MTs ruled supreme.  We were in great demand and the demand would often result in a bidding war for our services.  An MT would get an offer of maybe a cent more per line, give notice,  and the company he/she worked for would quickly up the ante.  That was in the days when MTSOs knew that the only commodity they had was their MTs.  We had benefits too, company paid insurance, vacations, sick pay, holidays and no one worked weekends unless they wanted to.  Along came the work-at-home privilege and there went all of the above benefits right out the window. I can't even remember when I last had benefits, back in the late 80s maybe?   Then came the MT schools promising the moon while working at home in your jammies and kicking out 100s of wantabe MTs every week.  So what we have is an over saturated market.  Just look at the jobs board.  There are hundreds and hundreds of views on each and every ad.  It's a jolly wonder anyone ever gets hired.  Years of experience most likely isn't an asset in this day and time either.  If by chance the recruiter actually gets to a resume with 20 or 30 years experience, it wouldn't surprise me if they would pass right on over it for fear that MT might actually ask for and expect a living wage.  Back in the day when we were paid on gross lines one could make a very good living at 6-7 cpl but with a 65-character, no headers, no footers, free demographic typing, etc. there is no way anyone is going to make a living unless they have the best of the best dictators.  I don't know about VR but I don't personally know anyone (and I know a LOT of MTs) who is making a living at 4 cpl.  I believe them, they have no reason to lie to me.  I've done Q.A. which I hate, but being a fast typist, I could type a report faster than I could do a full listen Q.A. so VR would seem about the same to me.

I think that MT may evolve into something different with VR and EMR but I think there will be jobs in the foreseeable future.  Likely those jobs are going to require a college education in the not distant future.  An RN degree might be worth pursuing. The problem is the pay.  Most people need to be able to count on X amount of dollars during a month.  I've said before and I say again, MT needs to go back under the DIRECT control of the hospitals.  With available technology, there is no need for MTSOs anymore.  They used to serve a purpose, not anymore except to provide really good paying jobs for the top brass.  Hospitals could not possibly be saving money by outsourcing their MT and there is certainly no excuse for offshoring when there are AMERICANS begging to work and some will work for almost nothing and with the current trend nothing is what they are going to be working for, 2-3 CPL would not support one person let alone a family. 

I am doing what I can to help as I feel I owe something to those who come along after me but who are far less fortunate.  I'm an old MT with nothing to do but work to try to make life better for others in other areas as well as MT.   I have discussed the issue of MT as it relates to health care costs with my Congressman who happens to be a friend and coincidentally is also a physician.  He has promised to discuss it with another physician colleague and promised to bring this matter up in Congress.  I feel sure he would like to hear other MT stories.  I don't know if it would be proper to post his contact information on this board but if anyone would like to email their story and their thoughts to me I would be more than happy to forward them to him or you can find him by researching for the Representative for the Third District of Arkansas.  Don't forget to write your own Senator and Congressman!  Write and write again until they listen!  I know it is hard to trust anyone these days but I assure you I am trustworthy and I would like to help all of you.  Sometimes one has to stand up and be counted in order to bring about any kind of change for anything.  I could just go away (as some have suggested) and paint my gourds but I really do have a caring heart. 

review it.  This way, requests for post deletions won't appear in the newsletter.

Thanks,

Administrator
MTStars

It really depends on what you are looking for in a company.  This is a very different company to work for.  For example, you don't work in pools, you are not constantly being bumped around, and there always has been plenty of work, even around holidays where everyone else is fighting for work because there is none.  I was so shocked that after Christmas there wasn't a major slow-down.  It's mostly clinic accounts, so you if your work is caught up, you don't have to work holidays.  There is no deciding which holiday you want off or which you have to work because if you just do your work, you get off.  Of course, if you want to work the holiday, there is always something to work on if you speak up.

Anyway, I have worked for just about all of the nationals.  I have been with Wordzxpressed for over a year now and plan on staying.

I had a 30-second interview and was told my team leader would be contacting me.  He never did.  It took me DAYS to get somebody to send me the account specifics, samples, etc., and it was never management who did it, it was a lady I met on here who faxed me what she had.   They throw you in there head first without the information you need.  They promise bonuses if you don't take a day off and make production...well I never ever saw it EVER.  Right before I left they sent out an email saying there would be none for that particular period because they didn't make enough profit.  The account managers get paid based on how many lines we do and if the account stays current, so expect constant emails from them saying how they didn't make anything this pay period and there are bills to pay, etc. 

Insurance:  The one person doing insurance is something else.   You get a big packet in the mail and you have to figure out yourself which you are eligible for, what percentage for life insurance, etc.   If you email him and ask him about anything, he doesn't answer.   I had been there 5 months and still did not have insurance cards for insurance I had been paying for all along.  I had to go to the top person in the company to get him to email me back.  He just doesn't do anything.

QA:  There were 2 on the accounts I worked on.  One was pretty nice and helpful but extremely overworked.  It was actually her who told me what I needed to know regarding account specifics because the first two months I was there, I never so much as got an email from my account manager.  The other one once sent me an email telling me I needed to go back to school and how STUPID the mistakes were and turns out it wasn't even MY report!!!  I called her on it and told her that is NOT the way to talk to people, especially new hires who have no information to start with.  She was just on a huge power trip and talked to people like dogs.  Had I been the actual person she meant to email and talked to like that, I would have been gone right then and there.

PLATFORM:  It's okay when it works.  When tech support, and I use that term loosely, installed it on my computer, he wiped out my Stedman's that was associated with my MSWord.  Years of adding gone!!  You don't get paid for what you have to fill in on the header page.  It froze up a lot and sometimes would get stuck on all caps.  It was very very slow.  I had to highlight and copy every single report because 2 out of 3 times, it would freeze and I would lose it and the backup retrieval feature didn't work. 

The accounts were very good, best I've had, but a combination of the management, system, etc., just wasn't worth the trouble.   They would tell us the profit margin was low and then send out an email with pictures of them partying somewhere, patting themselves on the back for the work their MTs do.  You never got a thank you for anything.  A bunch of the management members are married and/or related to each other which would be fine if anybody had experience.  Our account was assigned a 21-year-old manager who had never done this type of work before.  I don't think you should manage people if you can't do the work yourself.  I would send her mistakes in the automatic templates, doctors list, etc., and she had no clue what to do with it. 

Getting the required lines was difficult for some reason.  At other jobs I would do a minimum of 1500-1800 per day and with this system, I was lucky to get 900.  I know the system freezing up was part of it, but on the rare occasion when it worked, it was still very difficult.  

They constantly call you to help with this account or that account, which is okay if it's within your time frame to work.  I would get calls an hour before shift start from the secondary account person saying are you working today?   I never missed a single day while I was there and always worked OT, so there was no reason for this and I found it quite annoying.

for the place I'm working for now.  My very first job right out of school was for a woman who owned her own company, and she had a son and a niece working for her.  The niece did more than her fair share, and in fact we became good friends after our dogs started having play dates together on our days off.  Her son, on the other hand, did all the easy psych work with all the templates and then went on to steal the ER work (also only docs with templates), and surpise... he always had the highest line counts of anyone.  Those were the days also when we got paid for headers and footers, patient info, everything, so he was making out like a bandit. 

Also worked for MQ in-house when they had an office here close to my home.  Some people sat there and typed the hardest account we had all day, every day and barely made their minimum lines, and there was this one person who would type nothing but ER notes that had very long templates and ended up being an average of 3 pages each.  Then she had the nerve to brag about how big her checks were with all her bonuses and incentive.  I got a chance to type those two days in a row and I made 1400 lines a day more than I usually did on my main account. 

I say share the fortune, be it good or bad.  The sooner we all get the bad work out, the sooner we can all get to the good work and start making money.  I also had one supervisor tell me that I do the harder work because I make more cpl, but hey, if you are sitting there typing easy stuff all day and using templates, you are making more money in the long run. 

I work for OSi part time as what used to be IC now called statutory. 

When work runs short, my coordinator actually calls me and asks me not to work in order to allow real employees to get their lines.  Work is generally short from now until around mid-January.

You will not get a raise in line rate beyond what you start at.  If you want/need to make more money, be more productive.

You are not eligible for incentives.

Having said all that, with the attitude that ICs get the leftovers, I also take the attitude that OSi gets my leftover time.  I have never had a problem in that regard.  I generally don't call in in advance when I won't be working since they don't call me in advance to tell me there is no work.  I try to make my line count, but I don't lose sleep if I don't. 

I found it very disconcerting that during a full week when I signed in daily to find no work available there was an OSi want advertisement on MT Daily.  That was when I decided that OSi needed to be my backup account.

It works well for me.  Haven't heard a complaint from OSi.

Their quality department is a disaster.  Absolutely no organization, constant e-mails that don't apply to your account, nonsense reviews.  Be a duck and let it roll off.  There is a bonus ($100 savings bond) quarterly/semi-annually for 100% quality reviews.  I get it most of the time, and that's nice.