Figure what you make per hour doing tapes
Posted By: versus digital. May help decide if do tapes. on 2008-02-15
In Reply to: I do tapes and digital. And I was told if I'm not logged into the digital system, they assume I& - MissouriMT
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I'd figure out an average I make per hour, and charge that. -nm
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figure your lines per hour
You need to figure out how many lines per hour you are doing now or able to do. As poster below says, 250 lines per hour times .08 cents per line equals 20$ an hour. I don't know if that is realistic for radiology reports or not (250 lines per hour). Aren't most of them short? You don't get paid for the time it takes to download, upload, etc. Also DQS does not pay for demo info, footers, headers and seems like that would be a big cut if you work on a lot of short reports. So it would depend on if they paid for that stuff or not.
To figure how many lines you do currently, copy and paste a typical report (or several reports) into Word and go to tools and do a character count. You need to figure out if your Word program is counting spaces or not. Take a short report and manually count characters AND spaces. Then copy into Word and see what the count is there. If the count is way short of your manual count, your Word program is only counting characters not spaces. If so, to figure characters AND spaces, take your word count and add 22% by calculator and that would be the total character and space count. (I have tried this and it always comes out perfectly to the line count I receive from MQ and to my manual count.)
Now take your total characters and spaces, divide by 65 (the length of a 'line') and you have how many lines are in the report. If you do this with several reports, and you know about how many reports you do in a day, you can get a pretty good idea of how many lines per hour you are doing.
Are you pulling out your hair yet? It is really pretty easy to figure, but hard to explain in a note. Sorry.
P.S. Isn't 8 cpl a little low? I do clinic notes as a newbie and receive 7 cpl. seems like you could do better than 8 cpl.
If they make it that difficult to figure out what you are earning, then I would tell them NO.
These companies that cannot seem to want you to know what you are earning are hiding something. Say no. If they can figure out how to use a 65-character line with spaces, tell them to call you.
Really? I make a good living transcribing tapes.
Just because it's not the way you want to receive your work does not mean it is worthy of contempt. As far as I'm concerned, practitioners who are reluctant to give up their familiar dictation methods are less likely to give in to the blandishments of VR or EMR salespeople.
You are free to work your way, and I am free to work as I see fit. If that makes you cringe, well, I guess that's just your problem. It doesn't bother me at all. Cringe away.
I make less than half online than I do transcribing from my old tapes and my WP5.1 with PDR .. :( I
MORE.
I make over $20 an hour
and I do VR work with some text, mostly VR. I live in Georgia but unable to tell you where I work as the last time the company THOUGHT I was recommending, was told in no certain terms they did that. Well, excuse me.....
what do you need to MAKE per hour? take that x 3 and that's your ans. (sm)
When you are an independent contractor, you have to pay ungodly taxes just to start out with.
You have overhead etc.
So say you need to make at least $10 an hour (my gawd you can make $10 an hour at WalMart! running a cash register)....
anyway, if you want to make $10 an hour after taxes and overhead -- then you need to be charging at least $30 an hour.
Now how long it takes for you to produce $30 an hour worth of work is yours to figure out. If it's difficult work, you better charge a lot more than 7.5 cents a line (at 65 characters per line remember!/not 80 or 90 characters)
If its easy clinic work or ER work, then charging something like 12 or 13 cents a line would get you about what you need.
If its difficult work from a medical records in a hospital where you have op notes and tons of docs, you need to charge probably 15 to 20 cents a line.
There are so many hidden costs that docs don't want you to remember.
Those down times when your computer gets fried.
New programs, updates (again down time plus cost of updates)
New computers because everything goes out of date and you can't fix the computer because nothing is compatible anymore.
The updates on the internet costs - faster speed - the increase in costs from the internet company.
You get sick and just can't type - or family is sick. There is no sick time to draw from -- you just hope you have some money saved - which you can't save if you are charging 7.5 cents a line as an IC.
Getting the picture yet?
Then there is the fax machine you probably need to be a proper business and the cell phone for when they just have to contact you.
The heat and a/c to keep you going at home that would not be running if you were at an office all day.
I tell them they might make $25 to $30 in 8-hour day...
...when first starting out. I used to get asked, often by the same people several times, until I started breaking it down into financial specifics. Nobody wants to hear that and they don't ask again. Most people ask me about transcription to "make a little extra money". I tell them that I had to look at my first MT job as an internship, making less than minimum wage to get experience while being home with my daughter (we were stationed in Hawaii when she was an infant/toddler - admin jobs paid $6 an hour and daycare, like everything else there, was outrageously expensive unless you could get on the base waiting list so working out of the home was not feasible). I explain that entry level pay for many companies is 6 cents a line. I tell them that training programs give basics, real learning is acquired on the job and much of their day will be consumed looking up unfamiliar words, drugs/capitalization, etc. I explain that many doctors are foreign, have tough accents and/or speak quickly which also hampers production. Once they get the picture that 10 years' experience is what allows me to pay the bills, I no longer get repeated questions from the preacher or fireman who may think that typing fast enough to keep up an IM converasation and having WebMD in your favorites are all skills and resources you need to do this job.
At 18 cpl, yes, I make sometimes $50 an hour. nm
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Please tell me where I can make $20 an hour!
I left QA a couple of years ago because the company I worked for started paying per line for QA and then I noticed a lot of MTSOs following suit. I would love to be paid $20 an hour for doing QA. And I'm not talking SR editing, I'm talking QA, editing the MT for quality. A lot MTSOs don't know the difference!
I can make up to $40 per hour....
But the keyword is CAN. I don't always make that, but when I'm in a pool of one GOOD dictator, it is easily done. I love those days. If I could do that all the time I would be in business. I think there are too many variants to determine an exact hourly wage.
I make $43.50/hour and my doc knows that it takes me - sm
three hours to do his tape from transcribing to printing.
If I even went to him and said "I want to charge for the copies," you can bet he would be looking for a new transcriptionist. He has had plenty of offers from other transcriptionists to do his work at a lower rate, but he likes my work, and I will not jeopardize that whatsoever.
My ink costs me $32/month, which is an expense write off.
350 lph when when a majority of us don't even make $10 an hour out here?! What are you asking us
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I do MT and make about $35-40 an hour. It can be done and is out there. Keep the faith! nm
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Per line - could never make much per hour.
I do 350-400 lph at 12 cpl - no one will pay me what I make by the hour! Per line is the way to go, plus keep your flexibility.
It varies but make between $12 and $16 an hour - nm
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Wow, I make $15 an hour as an editor and ...sm
thought I was doing pretty good. I can make more per hour line wise, but I get easily distracted, which causes me after 8 hours to do very badly. ;o(
If I worked an 8 hour day I could make that much
money. I only work about 5 hours day and make good money, but I have a good platform, paid for gross lines, fairly easy to get lines, etc. I am an employee too.
You are pathetic. I make $35 an hour with
you would make some money. Instead you want to stir up trouble and complain. Why not look at what you DO have instead of what you DON'T have? The reason I am in MT is because I make $35 an hour and I can't make that anywhere else. If you don't believe it, I don't care. I'll go back to my work now and make some money, and you can sit on this board and b*tch and make nothing. And it's your own fault!
I agree. I make 8 cpl and get $29.00/hour
you have to stay in one place long enuf to get used to the dictators, then you can make good money wiht them
I am a sub bus driver and make $15 an hour - sm
doing that, though I never know when I am working, waiting on a route....when that happens I will bring home about $1200 a month which will be nice on top of any MT work I do (still plan to do this but cut back some when I do finally get a route). So for now $60 for working 4 hours subbing for another driver, I can live with. Makes my life a little easier.
Although I would love to make $72 an hour...
I have to admit that is a bit over the top. But my point was that unions are there to protect the workers and make sure they get a fair and decent wage for the work they do. If workers aren't protected, corporates would have everyone working for slave labor kind of like MT is now. Yes, MT is production paid and we all knew this when we signed on but we aren't protected and our pay keeps getting driven down by corporate. At least unions have negotiations with corporates - give a little, get a little. Compromise. We MTs have NOTHING. We have no say in decisions being made, even when those decisions negatively impact our jobs. I know as an MT I would never agree to ILP or ASR as those two decisions are the downfall of our industry, only my opinion of course. Corporate keeps making these decisions that will only benefit them and their own pocketbooks. They are not looking out in the best interest of MTs because they don't have to. As I said in my previous post, they keep chipping away at our jobs little by little because nobody is stopping them. But if we as a whole had some sort of organized leadership negotiating on our behalf, then maybe we could stop ASR and ILP from taking all our jobs and the MT industry could once again be a respected profession that we could actually make a decent living at like it used to be.
A lot of us here still don't make $10 an hour. You're lucky. nm
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I teach and I make 20.00 per hour. Not that great
but nothing to sneeze at either. I teach community service classes (medical transcription, anatomy physiology and medical terminology) at a local college.
To start expect to make about $6 an hour - sm
If you are good, meaning not having to look up a billion things and a quick and accurate typist then you can make more, $16+ depending on the type of work you do. I am not a fast typist, though I do not have to look up much (except for address which slows me WAAAAAAY down), and I currently make about $12 an hour with 4 years experience. So this is no huge money maker. As you are only looking to supplement, you could probably expect to make an extra $30 a week to start, presuming you can find someone to take you on for so litte work. In time you may get that up to $60 a week, but still it is not a fortune.
but VR usually pays by the hour. A fast MT will make less $
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Depends - one account I make 40 an hour, other - s/m
I grunt it out to make 10 bucks an hour. If I worked just the ER account, I would definitely make full time money for part time hours.
Durn second account. :}
You make 25-30 an hour by letting the editor do your job for you dumba$$!
You will get yours in the end sweetie. Having someone else do your job shows you are lazy!!
Even if they pass, how can they do the work? They will make pennies an hour and
zzzzzz
If you are paid by the line and make over $25 an hour, then I hate to say it
but I am wondering if you are doing full QA. By the line is NOT fair pay for QA. I know I mentor new MTs on a very difficult account and there is no way you could earn a decent wage on any amount of line pay, no way!
Don't go telling someone they could do better if they are paid by the line. Quality specialists MUST have ethics in their work. You can do a decent amount of reports a day and give feedback and mentoring, but you certainly would not be earning $25 an hour on line pay that I have seen....just no way! The most I have seen QA paid is 7 cents a line and still those women do not average that amount.
Now, I don't know what you do or if you listen 100%, but most QA positions I have had have had megablanks, 100% listen as well as 100% feedback and you just cannot produce that much doing your job in a proper manner.
Hospital MTs around my neck of the woods make $24 per hour +. sm
The jobs are out there, you have to find them.
make $20 an hour plus 4 cents gross line
nm
No - not worth 12 bucks an hour when you can make triple that by the line, sm
but that all depends on what company and VR platform you are talking about.
Do you LPN's on-call make around $50-60 an hour?!! Nice chunk of change! nm
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not a liar, not an old person, I make waaaaay over $20/hour, probably double (CA, .15-.17 line) sm
I have two accounts of my own and do vacation coverage for a few other MTs as well as occassional work for a lawyer and a psychologist. I charge .15 for one clinic and .17 for the other clinic... clinic #2 is a husband/wife neurologist team, and the husband was a major A&& at first... with a very strong accent and every possible bad dictator habit you can imagine. I told wife I would transcribe for her, but not for him, I had plenty of business. She said charge whatever you want, have whatever turnaround time you want, just please don't leave. At the time they were at .12... so I upped them to .17. That was 5 years ago and now after having gotten to know him and his *quirks* I adore them both. I am an IC, but they give me very large gift cards for Christmas, kind of in lieu of a bonus, I guess.
Clinic #2... just this week took on another physician and I told them point blank it was too much for me to provide quick service and they may want to consider a service. They said no way, we changed the turnaround time to one week with stats as needed. I even asked them if they considered voice recognition and the office manager laughed and laughed.
I am just now putting both clinics on digital, and after the initial cost, this will increase my estimated hourly wage as it will take away my delivery time and cost, and my paper and ink printing cost and time. Though I still plan to visit each office on a regular basis for customer service and because I know my customer service is what got me here in the first place.
For the *occasional* work, the lawyer and pysch I charge $50/transcription hour.
I know you will all doubt me. But I work extremely hard, have put in my time with my education - not just learning MT but learning the ropes of running a business and how to do everything smarter, faster, and in the most efficient and sensible way possible. I also have another business I do in a totally different field! I am very blessed. Well, I also know the fields I have chosen were perfect for me, and also I've had good luck. You know what I think though? I think my sense of humor and just being as honest and open and observant as possible has made this possible.
RE: I totally agree!! I work at home can came make upwards or $25+ per hour (sm)
Where outside of my home could I make that money, not have to pay gas, buy extra clothes, etc. I am very happy right where I'm at.
Why the stupid idiots called everyone to work on the holiday to make sure they meet their 1 hour TAT
time.
Working 6/hour days, 5 days/week I make
$42,000.00, but the work is there to make more if I want to. I'm in the southeast.
Depends on the pay and account. My lowest average is $15.52 an hour (roughly 182.6 lines an hour) w
;'
1850 lines per 8 hour shift. 15.00 hour - no real requirement
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if it is feasable, split that 6-hour shift into two 3-hour shifts. sm
i work a split shift and find that i am much better able to stay focused and get more work done that way. also, being 3 months pregnant you have gone through the very tiring time of pregnancy and you should start seeing an energy perk before long.
I start an hour or 2 early and then take an hour or 2 for dinner -nm
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At 200 lines a day for 6 cents, you are making $1.20 a day or 0.15 hour for an 8 hour day!!!--cm
Did you mean 2,000? Even then you would only be making $1.50 if you work 8 hours a day.
$32/hour? You said $36/hour on an earlier post. Either way would be great. n/m
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10 reports/hour or 25 markers/hour
NM
I appreciate your responses. I had an option of line vs hour ($14/hour) but if line pays more...nm
nm
65 to 75 an hour comes to $15 an hour if u are fast
nm
this is how I figure it
I took the work I did from Sept 1-15.
With spaces ... 16,492 lines x 0.095 = $1,566.74
Without spaces ... 13,967 lines x 0.095 = $1,326.87
Divide the high lines into the low dollar:
$1,326.87 / 16,492 = $0.084553
To answer your question ... just over 8 cpl. 
I figure it this way
My word processor is Works, which only counts characters. I then manually counted the spaces and found that apx 22% of the report was spaces. Take your 9.5 cpl and subtract 22% and you come up with the equivalent of 7.4 CPL. I work for MQ and, as far as I can tell, DO get paid for spaces because their line count is always about 22% more than my 'Works' count.
you and me both! I figure by then sm
there will be some kind of "robot" like thing I can program to do all that massaging, IV fluids and Foley for me. That along with putting on my support hose, hearing aid, denture cream, getting my pills, etc!
One way to figure this out is to
"switch places". Pretend he's working at home, and you come home at the end of the day. The important thing is - he's there and you're there. You share a home and probably lots of other wonderful stuff. It's hard, but sometimes you have to give a little even if you don't think it's fair. I don't mean - be a doormat- just act out of love. It seems like when you do that, it comes back to you.
Anyway, good luck and Happy Holidays to you and hubby. 
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