Before I started my own business, worked in a hospital in-house with taxes taken out & then went hom
Posted By: CatNap on 2006-07-20
In Reply to: in-house hospital pay? - kms
was getting with shift differential 23.80 when I left. Your pay seems extremely low, you could make more as an IC seriously.
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- in-house hospital pay? - kms
- Before I started my own business, worked in a hospital in-house with taxes taken out & then went hom - CatNap
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Started in-house at a hospital, medical records department, on a typewriter in
1983, earning $6.00/hour, eventually moving up after 7 years to $10.00/hour. All hospital work was then outsourced to a national service in 1986 (beginning of our downfall), went to work for the service and made $2.10/page. Service was bought out by another service, rate changed to $1.90/page. Rates changed again to $0.08/cpl. After many years of experience in all services, found my first account in 1992, charged $.09/cpl/gross lines but blank lines not counted. Business has grown steadily through the years through word of mouth. Now charging $.16/cpl or $25.00/hour or $6.00/page, and having to turn down work at this point. If you have the experience and are detail-oriented, you can find your own accounts eventually like I did. But you have to pay your dues first and be able to transcribe all ESLs accurately. If you learn how to transcribe ESLs well, those doctors are the ones to target for work. I do work an ungodly number of hours, only because I am trying to save at a faster pace for retirement because of all the uncertainty in this line of work.
Taxes (schedule C for SE): What business
x
I've never done my house in taxes because
I've heard that it's a hassle if you decide to sell the house and business part of it, etc. It's easier for me to just stay away from that too.
Anybody started their 2005 taxes yet? How many W-2s or 1099s
will you be getting? Seven for me. I hope they're all here within a reasonable amount of time. My taxes are going to be difficult to do this year as we have a lot of itemized deductions we can take.
purchasing mt equipment/filing taxes...& getting started, Help?
Thank you; I live somewhat remote so I appreciate your help! I am excited at the opportunity to get started in this business. I am just a bit concerned that I would make this huge financial investment up front, but its a risk I guess worth taking, because I want to do this. Can I ask, what tax form do you file, and do you find that the business balances itself out; in other words, do you have to end up paying a lot in taxes, or do the expenses balance it out? Also, anyone: advice for a newbie: how do you recommend starting out, when it is so slow in the beginning due to programming macros, auto texting, and looking up every other word when you're first starting out??
Well, I started getting the screw in-house in 1992 (sm)
So can you honestly say you are seeing the same jobs and the same pay you saw then?
I always check these boards now when looking for a new account. If other MTs say it is a bad company, I don't apply.
Know what - OSI will house clean QA starting from the top if they want to stay in business
x
When I started at the hospital
in high school, I was offered $3.00 more per hour to be a transcriptionist. I learned so much. The ones who have been in this field a long time has seen it decline. I do have my own accounts now after 19 years and have had them for a while, but it is hard for someone new to network unless they work on-site and are "noticed" so to speak.
These nationals and small MTSOs (paying cheap labor), which most I have tried just for extra cash do, have put a damper on this profession. What was once a high-paying job is not any longer due to these types of businesses. The docs don't seem to mind paying a low rate to an offshore company because they see it as good business sense. They don't really look at it like they are putting American MTs out of work. JMO.
I try not to complain because I love what I do. I'd switch in a minute and I'm young enough, but right now my CHILDREN come first. I also can't see where I'd make as much hourly on-site that I make now working as an IC.
I will pursue something else sooner or later, but probably at that point won't be looking for more per hour, but maybe just a nice retirement plan where I can put in 20 years. I think I'll be ready for some people contact by then, as I love people. I will give this another 5 years tops, and then I'll be back on-site! 
I did comm. college and started in-house 2 months after I was done....
try any local hospitals if you have some in your area. The hospital I worked at was the first and only place I applied and they hired me right away. I worked in-house for 3 years and have been at home for 3 years now. In-house taught me the ropes and then I decided to try at home, which has worked out well, even thought my supervisor said I would hate it. She was dead wrong! Keep trying... You can't expect to begin at home, it may take working outside first, such as I did...and I am glad for the in-house experience.
In-house In-hospital
Ive been in medical records when someone tried to force us to release records to them (not the patient.) I am saying people are sneaky when they want information.
in-house hospital pay?
After working at home for approximately 7 years, I decided to apply for an in-house (but work at home) hospital job. No more companies. To my surprise, the starting wage was 10.31. They offered me 12.00 an hour with a very small incentive, maybe 100 dollars every 2 weeks or slightly more. Okay, does that seem extremely low to anyone else? I make 10-11 cents doing IC work (yes, there are plenty of downfalls to IC work that can be made up by getting employee benefits) The insurance is decent and cheap at this hospital for a family and the benefits are excellent, but still, 12 dollars an hour? Is this the going rate? Are they trying to give me the next-to-lowest wage after the 10.31? Help!
Hospital pay was 7.5 cpl when I was in-house sm
and with shift differential, you could make a maximum of 8.375 cpl. When I went to MQ, I was started at 8.75 cpl and now at new company can make up to 10 cpl with shift differential and other incentives. It totally depends on the MTSO/hospital as far as pay. In-house work only would not necessarily make pay better across the board.
When I took a business trip one time, I came home to an immaculate house.
Then during the next few weeks, I couldn't find certain things like clothes, dishes, and items I kept on the counters. DH had decided to put all the dirty stuff out in the garage where the babysitter couldn't see it because he was embarrased by the mess he and the kids had made. There was mold and mildew on everything because he taped it inside boxes or stuffed it inside coolers, and he forgot to tell me about it.
Our hospital has started dabbling with VR...
... and at present it is only marginally useful. Most of the docs using it prefer live MTs. Others think they're doing such a bang-up job of using VR that they sign off their work without ever reading it or sending it to be edited. Now THAT is ANOTHER train-wreck going somewhere to happen. I've read what the VR comes up with, and although the company that built it says it's "100% trainable", it turns out not to be. It just doesn't learn some things, and makes the same mistakes over and over again. Some people in our office believe our MT Dept. will only be there for 3, maybe 5 more years. That may be the case, but not because VR is going to take over the whole hospital. More than likely they will simply send all their more difficult dictation out to an MT company, in order to save themselves the money involved with hiring, training, housing and insuring live MTs. I have no problem with leaving the hospital to be an at-home MT for a national, but will not work for any that doesn't provide the basic benefits: healthcare, PTO, vacation, etc. I've looked into other related fields, one being court reporting, another being closed captioning for TV. Unfortunately, TV is already using MOSTLY VR. (And the results are pretty funny.... I always get a good laugh at reading the captions on our TV sets at the gym!) Live court-reporting still exists for some legal reasons. You can make a good living at it, but it takes YEARS to build speed and learn an entirely different "language" on the stenotype machine. I figure I'm a little too close to retirement to be having to go back to school FULL TIME for 5 or 6 years! (Part-time would take 'WAY too long.) And what would I do -- go back and live with my parents? I don't THINK so!
I think things could get worse before they get better. Offshoring and the so-called promise of VR has lowered the respectibility of the MT profession considerably. (That ol' "out of sight, out of mind" adage!) Others think that if a machine (VR) can transcribe, then those of us who still do it live are nothing less than machines, outselves.
Once again, I think it's impoirtant for PATIENTS to tell they docs they not only don't want their info. going offshore, they ALSO don't want a VR program transcribing their medical notes unless it is fully edited by a professional MT before the doc can sign it. If the doc can't promise that won't happen, then maybe it's a good time to go doc-shopping.
Paralegal and legal secty. are good professions, but a little too formal and rigid for me, and again, there is the amount of time, school, and money involved before embarking on a new career. In MT, I'm at the top of my field & payscale.... with anything else, I'd be starting about again as a newbie, with the added problem of being late middle-aged and having to compete with a bunch of 20 or 30-somethings.
As for people dissing the MT profession: When I was in college, and flunking out of my classes from boredom even tho' I had a high IQ, my friends & relatives thought I was slacking off when I went to a trade school to learn MT. I have friends whose parents didn't allow them to take typing in high school back in the 70's, because they didn't want them to end up in a "dead-end secretarial profession." Well, most of those non-typists today are struggling to learn to use computers, and even when they do learn, they sure do type slowly, some hunt-and-peck. Yikes! AND.... when I see all the friends with MBAs, PhDs, etc. who had the fancy, big-bux jobs in the 80s, who are now either unemployed or doing menial jobs just to survive, it makes me feel a little better that I stuck with the healthcare industry and MT work. Things were looking bad in the late 1990s, the cost of everything was rising so fast that the "little people" like us could hardly afford an apartment in the silicon valley, and many of us were officially members of the "Working Poor" class. Then came the dot-com bust, and all of a sudden, things got better for us. Many of the fancy-job people moved out of state, and rents started to go down. Meanwhile, those of us in MT were still plugging away at it, and getting the occasional raise. Most of my fancy-job siblings don't even have health insurance, and are working lower paying jobs now. So I've been able to catch up to them a little bit. I can also leave the work behind me at the end of the day when I walk out the door - I'm not shackled to a cellphone, a pager, or a blackberry. I'm not on 24-hour call.
If I'm wrong, and live MTs DO become obsolute in the future, I'm hoping that since right now I'm socking away every dime I can into my 401K, that if MT disappears 5 years before I'd be officially eligible for retirement (although I don't believe any of us under 60 will ever be able to FULLY retire...), that it will take up the slack from whatever low-paying part-time job I may have to take in my old age in order to afford both an apartment AND food to eat!
i work in-house for a hospital and they
did. the bonus was the first to go, then outsource our work so that the 'chosen few' would be the only one to qualify for what little bonus was left. doubled the lines to qualify for bonus but also cut the pay per line of the bonus. they cant keep emps now except the ones that are too close to retirement.
I worked for co. that started doing this and that
x
That daggon Zatarains put Oak Grove Smoke house out of business, the rats!
I can only find 1 place for Oak Grove Smoke House on the 'net now, and their mixes are WAY better and more original (just editorial opinion, there). All the other 'net entries are some lawsuit Zatarains brought. Blrch.
It was the same when I worked in-house
Slow at the beginning of the summer. After the Fourth of July, people started coming in for elective surgery and things like that and work picked up.
It used to be really slow at Christmas, but with high deductibles on most insurance policies, December was fast becoming the busiest month of the year when I left.
ask yourself what you did when you worked outside the house. NM
.
When I worked in-house
at several different hospitals, we would bring a problem dictator to the attention of the supervisor, who then would present it to the HIM manager. Most of the time the problem dictators got better after a discussion with the manager. If it costs the hospitals EXTRA money, believe me they will take corrective action. Money talks!
Sometimes, there are very legitimate reasons for corrections, as we all know, and I don't think Frustrated was upset about the legitimate ones. There is a lot more of this careless dictator crap going on at teaching hospitals, but at least they have an excuse, they are new to dictating and usually feel quite bad for making so many corrections. If they realize this and make an effort to be more careful, I don't have a problem with them, but there's just no excuse for the long-time dictators who carelessly make the MTs jobs more difficult.
While a certain amount of addendums or mind changing does happen, an "abuser" should always be brought to the attention of management. No one knows about these dictators unless an MT brings it to the attention of those in charge. Frustrated has a right to complain! I feel her pain!
I had a dictator (on an account at an MT service) who made 10 different corrections to her reports on a regular basis & I am not exaggerating. I had been instructed to join them altogether (in a time-consuming fashion) and fed up finally, I flagged them ALL separately for QA. The transcription manager gave me a hard time about it, but I fought back. However, when I talked to QA, she told me I did the right thing and that the hospital was having a "discussion" with that particular dictator as there was NUMEROUS complaints. Dictator cleaned up her act a bit after that & I didn't have much more trouble with her. 
Whe I worked in house, we use to have sm
that problem all the time. HR would interview folks and let really GOOD folks go because they didn't know what they were doing. We werent' really interested in typing speed, we just wanted to know about their MT skills. They use to let some really good folks get away. Also where I worked, if HR said you couldn't hire them, I don't care how good they were or how much experience they had, we couldnt hire them.
It has been going on forever that the people in charge are not even MTs!
Where I work now, the supervisors, recruiters, etc are all MTs themselves, so we speak the same language! I think its like that on alot of other jobs, the bosses don't even know the jobs.
As far as referring a friend, everything has gone to computers and there is no "personal touch" anymore either! Very sad.
That's about the time my hospital started treating its -nm
..
Neighbor has indoor woodburning stove, started house on fire twice. sm
He has vinyl siding and installed the outside pipes himself. Apparently he is in over his head. Last year, his siding started on fire and he burnt up his electrical wiring. When heating season started this year, the fire department was back. He did it again. Make sure you have a professional do the work.
in-house hospital is the best learning experience. sm
and is accepted with anyone. at least a year or more. there nothing like having someone right there at hand first time out.
good luck, you'll do fine.
Yuppers. When I worked in-house in an ER, you
would NOT believe the stuff we saw. Hamsters were common, though gerbils were preferred due to their tail. At the doctor's loung in the ER, the docs kept a list of the top 10 most outrageous cases. They wouldn't go into detail - just post a list of top 10 weird things, no names, just 1. Hamster. 2. Harmonica. 3. Pea., etc. Hamsters/gerbils were always up there, and a baked potato wrapped in foil held the #1 slot for a long time. Mother and fiancee came in with the guy, and none offered a word of explanation or an ounce of embarassment. The guy just needed help with a baked potato. That stayed at #1 for a while til I left. I can only imagine what the list says now...
I worked in house for 2 years
and when I went on Maternity leave they set me up from home. I started working for a national in January. My other at home position went VR and they brought all the jobs back in house. I couldn't go back into the office as I have two little ones and the cost of daycare is outrageous. What's the sense of working then?
Hi Janna..when I worked in-house SM
We got paid hourly plus incentive pay. Anything over 1100 lines a day was paid an incentive rate of 5 cents per line (plus your normal hourly wage).
So, if I typed 2000 lines in an 8-hour shift I would make:
$16.50 x 8 hours = $132
900 lines (1100 to 2000 lines) x 0.05 cpl = $45
Total for the day = 132 + 45 = $177.
We had a maximum of $1000 a month that we were allowed to earn in incentive pay.
Hope this helps you!
Chickadee
When I worked in house and used Meditech sm
only the person with administrative access, the lead MT or the supervisor could do that. They had access to all functions in corrections, the MT did not. Could be different where you work.
I've been in MT for 20 years. Started out in the office at a hospital.
Switched to working for services from home for a while and now I work for the same hospital I started out at, but I work from home now. So I guess you can say I've come full circle and now I'm back where I started. I much prefer being an employee of a hospital versus an IC or employee of an MTSO.
It may be that your user profile in EXText is not set up to allow you to add normals. I've found with services they don't give their MTs a whole lot of freedom with their software. 
How do I find out if a local hospital's transcription is done in-house or not?
Can someone please give me some advice? I am trying to find out if one of our local hospitals has in-house transcription or what company they use for their transcription. I called the MR Dept. and the lady acted like she did not want to tell me anything. She said some was done in-house but most of it was done electronically and would not elaborate as to what company they used. How can I go about finding out who does their transcription for them. I never see any actual job opening in the MR Dept. or for transcription for them, so I am assuming they outsource most to a transcription company.
I started using it when I worked for Rodeer. They had used PRD at one time
I like the simplicity of it, and the fact that's it's fast compared to others I've used. I'm not sure why that is.
It doesn't have any prompt that reminds you of your expansion, so you have to have a system of remembering, which is another thing I prefer. The reminders only get in my way and slow down my production.
Started in 1979 when I was 18, worked in office at MQ while it was still
.
I've worked in-house and at home ....
I find that even when you're in-house, with the nature of the job, there's no time for chit-chat. When I worked in-house we had production minimums and there was incentive to earn if you produced, so who has time to talk? I'm with you. I'm happy being here in my comfy clothing without all that aggravation. Let is snow, I don't have to drive in it!
Never worked in my house RadGuy w/5 brothers
I still crack up at the time my dad came home from work to find my 2 eldest brothers room a shambles with clothes strewn all over the place. Being a senior and junior in high school their clothes WERE prize possesions..until that day when they got pitched out the window into the backyard full of mud from all the spring rain.
Now that one worked as they never ever let a pair of shorts even touch anything but their dirty clothes basket. Now, I'm using the same standard on my boys and just the uncles telling that story keeps them in line
in-house great idea & worked
When I was working in-house our hospital imposed for $50 fine on the docs for EACH delinquent chart. You can bet that got them to dictate on time. I think more hospitals should follow that example. it is better for everyone involved but mostly for the patient, who has info on their chart needed for continuing care.
I worked in house in a doctor's office and it was the same for me...
and I had to answer phones, make copies, et cetera, basically was an MT/secretary...and I hated it...I am making much more money now working at home part-time...
No, I've worked in doctor's business office.
That is what the insurance company allows, not what they dictate. Who is to tell the doctor how long he can sit and talk with his patient. It is up to him. True insurance companies get together to decide what is the appropriate amount for the doctor to "charge" for a service but I've literally seen where the doctor sees the patient all of 2 minutes after patient is worked up by techs, but they still get paid for that visit.
It almost sees like they are charging you as if you were a business. I thought if you worked out of
your own home you were not considered a business.
Ive worked Sundays since I started transcribing 18 years ago!
..but i know that they always need to be covered and people keep getting sick and having operations... holidays too. we are in one of those kind of jobs. i love having time off during the week to get things done though.
The hospital that I worked for would
not accept any applicants with online nursing programs because they did not have the required clinical hours during training.
When I worked in the hospital sm
the only ones who had Oxycontin were mostly cancer and back surgery and cardiac patients. Knee replacement patients got morphine the first 1-2 days and then switched to Vicodin. The majority of patients reduced to Tylenol after they went home. Never heard of OxyContin being used for knee replacements but your husband may have a very low pain threshold, too, or other factors necessitating to the use of OxyContin. I'd look at the whole issue of his pain control a little more closely. Can you discuss it with the doctor?
I once worked at a hospital (sm)
doing radiology where referring physicians could had the option of listening to dictation of their patient's report if it wasn't transcribed and signed quick enough for them. They did this through a supervisor in radiology, and inevitably they would exclaim that they had NO IDEA what the radiologist said, and would wait for the report. We always had to chuckle.
I worked at a hospital that did that. Had to do
with them not wanting people on e bay all day. Since I left that job when they downsized, everywhere else allowed it so I became dependent on the I-net for research. Made my quality better. Regarding production: Yep, it broke it down. Surf too much, wayyy too much. I tried to break the habit but our job is so isolating and numbing, I need to surf to wake myself up. That is no excuse however. I guess I want contact with the outside world. Too bad the hospital can't block the net, but let you have e mail and research sites or at least just block certain sites. I think they can do that. I know it must drive you nuts, because if I had to use books again, well. Forget that option. LOL.
When I worked in a hospital, I had a
doctor actually sit on my desk and dictate while I did a stat for him. The system was working, he just wanted to actually see one of us in action.
I worked for a hospital like this
We went to the supe about it and she told us that if we had time to eyeball the job lister, we must not be doing our work so...she took our job lister away.
When I worked in a hospital, we had
access to all patient records, if for nothing else to help with current dictation.
When I worked in a hospital, there were
times we had no work or was very low on work, therefore our overflow service did not have work to give their people became we kept it inhouse. It is the nature of hte job. However, I do not agree with companies that if you do run out, you are REQUIRED to make it up on weekends or ungodly hours. Sure, it hurts your paycheck with you don't, but 90% of the time it is out of the MTSO's hands, if there is no work, there is no work.
Downtime is a whole different story. If you can not work because of computer/server problems on their end, then you should be compensated.
when I worked in house learning MT the first shifters were just like the mean folks here
x
Same situation here. When worked in-house or for physicians offices,
never as much as a single episode of no work available. Much to my dismay, I have found out that MTing from home for a nation is so unpredictable, in so far as what your paycheck is going to be every week or 2. They all say "there is plenty of work," which is probably factual. However, the nationals are primarily interested in pleasing the client with their promised swift turn-around-times. What they forget is that if it weren't for the MTs, there would be no turn-around-time whatsoever. It's really very discouraging and quite unfair. Most people try to adhere to their monthly budget, which is impossible when one never knows how much they are going to make from one week to the next. We ARE the providers, not peeons, and resent being treated as such.
And I disagree with that. I've worked home and in-house,
Everyone is different and some people don't rely on jobs to provide social interaction. When it comes to my job, I prefer being at home working independently without a lot of interruptions and enjoy the freedom of working from home. If I were stuck in an office with rigid hours, then I'd be resentful. Personally, I loathe being stuck in an office full of catty backstabbers and love the solitude of home. When I want to socialize, I call one of my friends.
You also have to be able to let QA remarks roll off your back a little, but that only works if you don't have the threat of being docked or terminated as a result of those QA remarks. Find an MTSO that doesn't hold those things over your head (yes, they do exist).
I do think the key IS where you work, but not home versus office - it's finding a company that values MTs, not sees them as mere production machines. They are few and far between, but they're out there. I lived through my share of bad apples in this biz before finding the good ones, so I speak from experience.
I started in the file room of the urology office I worked. And I was not
going to be a file clerk for the rest of my life. I only had 2 semesters of terminology, no other professional schooling. They had a fresh from a Mayo Fellowship peds urologist coming in and needed somebody to help with the typing. First it was half file-room and half transcription. Finally he was so busy, I became full time. I was there from 1990 until 2003. I then left to free-lance and start my own business. He has since moved to Arizona and I still type for him after all these years.
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