Excellent informative post!

• Interesting article but very long. - busyMT
  • Chilling. - Margaret
    • My hosp. kept assuring the MTs they were NOT offshoring - but in reality it was going to S. Africa.
      • PS: They kept telling us it "wasn't going to INDIA!" - so I guess in their view it wasn't a lie...
  • Please do not use my moniker. - Busy MT'ing
    • I can easily see the difference. - They don't look the same at all.
    • ???? She didn't! We can easily see the difference. - Fugetaboudit
  • They are starting to be - Offshored also (sm)
  • That's an eye-opening article - - sm
  • Too bad there wasn't - MT4eight
    • They'll figure it out as the cost of living in India rises - sm
    • it's GREAT pay for India, annual income...sm - India's annual average income is $500!!! sm
      • And at least some of those college-grads went to school - in America - sm
      • Overseas outsourcing is here to stay - AnotherOldTimerMT
        • BRAVO! BRAVO! So true, and so well-said! - nm
  • Ten years ago work was being - outsourced to India.
    • Seems like everything in this country is for sale - sm
      • Including, unfortunately, our government. nm - Margaret
    • I remember early to mid 1990s..nm - USA MT work outsourced since 1990s
      • That's about the time my hospital started treating its -nm - MTs like pond scum!
    • Excellent informative post! - anon
  • India - mt
  • Don't know what to make of this - Cardiology MT
    • yep - I too feel very sad........nm - India's annual average income is $500!!! sm
    • Agree....sad. We'll soon be outnumbered. nm - Almost ready to retire

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It seems that now getting your own accounts is the only way to go (at least for the time being until the pervasive mood of the industry corrupts even in that area).  My curiosity though lies in how those who are claiming that they work for services are able to do this. 

Also, congratulations to you for your success in getting your own accounts, and thank you for sharing your insight in a manner that doesn't imply that you're trying to belittle those who don't have their own accounts like I've seen others do on this board.

P.S.  On the matter of panhandlers, in the area of the country where I live an investigative reporter did a feature on just this subject a couple of years ago.  Believe it or not, it was estimated that panhandlers in this area average approximately $120K per year.  I tell you, I'm in the wrong profession ...

I think sometimes, in our zeal to get hired, we throw everything into the pot.  We declare that we possess every skill that might help us to make the cut over other applicants.   We're a nurse, we transcribe, we can make coffee, can get grease spots out of a Brooks Brothers suit, drop his kids at day care on the way to work - no!  it's no trouble at all, really! - whatever.  In this case, having your office nurse also be your Transcriptionist probably seemed an attractive prospect, until the doctor's wife figured they were paying twice for what she thought they should be paying for only once. Now these very skills have been turned against the worker.  So your points 1, 2 and 3 are particularly valid. 

I have seen ads for MTs in local papers and the description of duties sometimes says, 'medical transcription, reception duties, appointments, filing, other duties as needed.'  Then I know I don't even want to apply for the position, as I have no idea how I could be MT as well as receptionist.  How frustrating it would be to have my concentration constantly interrupted!  This practice wants a secretary/receptionist they can make transcribe as well.  Lots of luck getting someone who can do both well. 

Any professional should balk at being told that a salary covers 'anything the boss expects' them to do.  Especially if this throws out an established arrangement and doubles someone's work load.  While we all like to be team players, if only the  owner gets a tropy this diminishes our team spirit considerably.

I'm of two minds on this.  I would either agree and simply not bust my butt getting the transcription done until it was piled so high SOMETHING had to change.  Certainly there is a limit to how backed up this practice will allow its reports to become?  Meanwhile I'd be looking for new employment.  Of course, as the reports piled up, you have to know the office manager would be timing your trips to the bathroom with a stop watch and accusing you of wasting time on her dime (as seems to be her nature) but I'm sure you could perform all your usual nursing duties with just a bit less alacrity in order not to appear idle.  Or I would simply call their bluff and refuse to go along (which might be shooting myself in the foot unless I had another job to go to. )

I would like to bring up the new technology of VR where the use of word Expanders no longer has the impact that they have with straight typing. 

I am doing editing and when I talk to others they were doing 300-400 lines with straight typing and word expanders.  Now they are editing that same work and perhaps doing an average of  400 lph and yet making half as much money.   It is an entirely different skill set learning to navigate quickly and get the work edited for speed, something which I am struggling with.  I would love it if editors would share their speed tips but usually all the posts I get go something like this:  I do 500 lines and hour and make more money editing OR I had to take a pay cut editing but no specifics as to why or how to build speed.  So that is not really helpful as to why there is more or less $ with editing.  I use my keyboar and not my mouse.  I am working as hard as I can but I only can do maybe 100 more lines tops with editing than I can with straight typing but my pay has dropped by 50%.  I don't see editing going away so to that end it seems as if the pay is dropping in transcription.  Does anyone else see where I am coming from????

like you think the MT's control the pay in the MT world? Either you need the job and you take it for the pay or you have another option. MT's without another option will take the job at 6 cpl, or 4 cpl or whatever. When working at McDonald's becomes an option that is equivalent to MT work, then MT's will choose McDonald's. 

The Transcriptionist is just ONE cog in the wheel of the whole industry. If people continue to look at only the MT's part, they miss the big picture. If all it took were people saying Let's all stand up together and demand better wages, then why couldn't the cashiers at the grocery stores across the US do the same thing? They can't. Because it they don't cashier for $8 an hour, there's somebody else who will. Same thing has happened with transcription. If you don't take the job at 6 cpl, somebody else will. It might be somebody from India (which you so quickly discounted) but I'll let you in on a little secret. The people from India who are doing MT typically have 2 master's degrees. They are hungry for work. They are intelligent, competent individuals, willing to work hard. They might have a little bit of a quality issue right now because of the language barrier, but it won't be long before you have lots and lots of Indian MT's with 2 years experience, who have learned from their mistakes, who have learned American idioms... and then you are really going to see the bottom drop of out the market.

All you MTs who are wondering why it's so hard to get work and decent pay check out these websites:   Spheris India Pvt Ltd  and Indiadaily.com

Spheris says it doesn't outsource to India but guess where a lot of the old accounts have disappeared to.  When they say there is no work, they mean for USA MTs.

Here is an important post from 2005.  It is lengthy and I have edited it to make it more concise…

Posted By: n on January 05, 2005 at 21:35:45:

In Reply to: offshore posted by beth on January 05, 2005 at 19:58:08:

Offshore medical transcription is a large enterprise financed with capital. The Soros money is in the Spheris deals. Look for more and more to go overseas.

From GeBBS Health Care Solutions http://www.gebbs.com/pressrelease062004.htm  : In a world of steadily rising medical costs, Nitin Thakor thinks he has a cure. It works like this: A doctor treats a patient and sends the medical record to Thakor's company, GeBBS HealthCare Solutions of Englewood Cliffs. The company ships the records electronically to India, where employees - earning about one-tenth of what they would get in the United States - process a bill for the patient's treatment, create a claim, and send it electronically to the insurance company. The process costs the doctor about half what he would pay in the United States, Thakor says. "It's faster. The quality is better," he says, brimming with confidence. "It makes perfect sense." It's also part of a growing trend in the health-care administration industry: sending work to low-wage countries - mainly India - in the same way that offshore outsourcing has sent U.S.-based IT, call center, and other jobs around the world.

The health-care work ranges from simple tasks - such as transcribing notes dictated by the doctor - to more complex processes, such as assigning a treatment code and filling in forms that doctors submit to insurance companies for reimbursement. In North Jersey, GeBBS, Allserve Systems of New Brunswick, and ClaimPower Inc. of Fair Lawn do work in India. Marlton-based Medquist, one of the largest transcription company's in the United States, also sends work offshore. Other players across the country include Perot Systems Corp. in Texas, HealthScribe Inc. of Virginia, and Alpha Thought of Chicago. "There is not a lot of offshoring yet," said Barbara J. Cobuzzi, president of Cash Flow Solutions Inc. of Brick, which does billing, coding, and collection. "But they [offshore companies] are going after it. ... They are approaching companies like mine and saying, 'Get rid of your staff and use us.

Cobuzzi said she spoke from experience: In October, she terminated a contract with a Florida-based company with offices in Chennai, India, to put patient demographic information into a computer. She said the work contained too many errors. "I'm sure the doctors would rather use someone who is not offshoring," Cobuzzi said. "But the doctors have this huge pressure to get their costs down." So, too, do their contractors, said Marilyn Grebin, president and CEO of Silent Type in Fort Lee, which transcribes doctors' notes. Though offshoring has not yet had a big effect on Silent Type's bottom line, the company has lost work, Grebin said. For instance, last week, she said, she lost a $50,000 contract with the John T. Mather Hospital on Long Island. Grebin said the hospital, which had been her company's client for five years, hired a company that will do the job in India. "I went to the client and said, 'What can I possibly do to help you, she said. "And they said, 'No, you can't possibly charge what we are getting - half the price.

On Long Island, hospital vice-president Kevin Murray said the non-profit community facility moved the work offshore in a pilot program - a small part of the facility's $500,000 annual spending on transcription services - to see what the quality of the work is like. "The hospital lost a significant amount of money last month," said Murray, putting the loss at $1 million and noting that many hospitals in New York face similar budgetary problems. "Every month is a struggle. ... This was one of our cost-saving ideas." Thakor knows the scenario well.  With about 85 employees in the United States, GeBBS provides health-care administration services and also develops software for the same field. The company's two centers in Mumbai, India, employ about 180 people, of whom 100 process health claims. Last year, the company had revenue of $12 million, and it expects to make $16 million this year, Thakor said. He reaps the benefit of Indian workers - all of whom have degrees - who earn about $2,800 to $3,300 a year, compared with the $35,000 to $45,000 that U.S.-based employees would make for the same job, he said. "We're making a 45 to 50 percent gross margin," Thakor said of his own company. "A client is seeing a 45 to 50 percent cut on their cost structure. So we're happy. They're happy."

Concerns about patient confidentiality in the offshoring era were heightened last October when a woman in Karachi, Pakistan, threatened to post patient medical records from a San Francisco hospital on the Internet unless she was paid the money owed her for transcribing notes dictated by doctors.

The woman dropped the threat after she was paid. But the incident helped bring the issue to the attention of lawmakers.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., and Rep. Edward J. Markey, D-Mass., have introduced bills that would require companies to notify customers before they send confidential information overseas, giving the customer the right to refuse. Still, industry insiders are concerned. Cobuzzi and others said the main problem is that anyone who violates U.S. patient confidentiality laws abroad would be beyond the reach of U.S. prosecutors. But offshore companies say there is no danger of leaks. Thakor said GeBBS' facilities in India have guards and an electronic security system, along with a full-time privacy officer to ensure the company complies with U.S. confidentiality laws. In addition, the computer system that health-care administration employees work on is sealed, he said: The terminals have no hard drive and no connections to the Internet, floppy disk, or CD writers, or even a printer. They can only open files on the server, change the contents, and close them, he said. "So there is no way - unless you can memorize all the information - that you can take it with you," he said.  

and I don't think the top was *disrespectful* as the other poster said - it is a well-known fact that our current prez cannot form, for the most part, a proper sentence....

and to the ones who don't believe the sentence problems - suggest y'all start watching the news and/or David Letterman's first 10 minutes nightly.....or go to youtube or any other the other free video sites and/or Google some *bushisms* as they have *fondly* became to be known as.....after 6-1/2 yrs in office.  LOL

I have never heard of the other school, so I can't compare the two, but I have nothing but good things to say about M-TEC.  Once you graduate they have pages upon pages of companies that will hire you if you graduate with a good GPA, and that is key, as it is very hard to get a job as a newbie in this field, as many companies require 2 or more years of experience. M-TEC has a great reputation for turning out skilled graduates that many companies will waive their experience requirements.

It's definitely not an easy course, but it prepares you very well for the extremely challenging career of medical transcription.  I have heard that Andrews School is good too but maybe a bit more expensive.

I would recommend checking out the schools' websites if you haven't already to get more info.  M-Tec has a great message board that should answer many of your questions.  Let me know if you have any more questions and good luck in your choice!

p.s. I saw your other post asking if you think it's worth it to get into this field, and only you can answer that, but for me it was.  I paid a relatively small amount of money to go to school, I don't have to pay for gas to and from work, "fancy" work clothes, daycare for my children, and I work the hours I choose in my own home as an independent contractor and therefore have lots of freedom in my day to day life, which has always been a dream of mine.

On the other hand, I am pretty new to the field and find the job really challenging sometimes, and it is extremely difficult for me to get my work done with my 2 kids around, but each month it gets a little easier, and as it gets easier I am slowly making more money too.