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As an MT with 20+ years experience,I am finding another career...I can't imagine just starting out in this field, as those of us who have been here for a long time do not get treated fairly anymore...you can't make money, very few online companies appreciate anything that you do.  Like I tell my daughters who are all under 21 years of age, get a degree in something and then if they want to do this type of work, do it as a side job, but don't count on it to make a living...it just can't be done anymore.

Good Luck! 

So I should get a hobby so I won't care, like you?  A hobby isn't going to pay the bills.  I can't afford a hobby because in addition to working for a living, I also have to study in a different career field in my spare for fear that eventually transcription will be strictly an offshore operation!

This is old, but has anyone read this??  I must research further what the final outcome was.  While I totally agree with what they are doing and why, I totally DISAGREE with their final recommendation for standardizing line counts. VBC is not the way to do it.  

About three weeks ago I began a position with a local health care company (transcribing for local acute care hospitals but part of a national chain).

We are not really transcribing, at least not by my definition (21 years of experience).  Rather, we are recording medical ShortHand (abbreviations [even in DIAGNOSES section], shortened medication names, slang, contractions, etc.).  On the one hand, they claim they want you to type it verbatim (no expansions, additions, etc.), yet OTOH they say to delete redundancies, repetitions, etc., which is hardly verbatim. We are not allowed to expand, add to, or correct ANYTHING except number and tense dictated by ESL docs, who comprise about 60% of the dictators.  In addition, certain dictated terms are to be abbreviated (e.g., "emergency room" transcribed as "ER").

The supervisor had the gall to look me right in the eye and deliver a harangue about how these are "legal documents, and we have to transcribe EXACTLY what they say."  (Conveniently disregarding the bit about deleting redundancies and the other "allowed" changes.)  So ALL of my previous employers, AAMT, etc. did it wrong, and THEIR crackerjack legal department is smarter than everyone else?!     Don't think so.  Cutting costs is the game they're playing; everyone can see that.

Excerpt from a typical report looks like this:  Wrote scrip for vanco 100, patient also to take aspirin 81 and will return next week. I don't think .... [blah blah blah]

AAMT taught me to create a complete, coherent, grammatically correct document that doesn't look like alphabet soup.  Needless to say, I don't feel good about what I am creating and HATE THIS JOB!!

I'm just curious if this is happening elsewhere.  With all of the emphasis on "cutting costs,"  I have to think that it is.

Thanks for listening to my splenic venting.

I'm an independent contractor and have just lost an orthopaedic clinic account to EMR.  Also, I've been sending out hundreds of letters for new accounts, and I'm hearing nothing back! 

Is our profession (clinic work) drying up?  This is getting very scary!

Could someone either (1) comfort me with "it's not true" news and there's more than enough clinic work out there to go around, or if you find that it is, indeed, drying up, write back and tell me of your experience.

Thank you `` Nancy in Alpharetta, Georgia

I don't agree with you.  I'm betting that MT is good for MAYBE 5 more years.  Maybe.  Thinking they won't perfect VR is only fooling ourselves....they will.  I wouldn't recommend MT to anyone looking to enter the field.  Money better spent on something with a better future but what that would be, I don't know.  Seems everything that can possibly be offshored is being offshored.  Maybe we should move to China   Then we can be sure to have jobs seeing nearly everything in the U.S. comes from there anyway.  Or maybe, the way things are going we had all better learn to like rice, cuz that's probably all we'll be eating before long.

criteria for a profession are extensive college required, also person's work autonomous. Separate body of knowledge required for work. Think of lawyers. Extensive college, they work independently, i.e. they don't have supervisors, editors, etc., and law has its own body of knowledge. Even nursing is on the edge as far as being a profession, not quite autonomous enough. MT certainly doesn't fit the definition of profession.

For some reason, some MTs think since they work from home they can do the job "their way."  This in turn, has caused the MTSO to impose such strict requirements regarding TAT, daily line counts, etc.  Remember - they DO have to meet the obligations of their clients. 

There are truly some great MTs that really require a flexible schedule, etc, but these "no-show, no-brain" MTs are ruining  a good profession for the rest of us.  I admit, it is hard to test for MT companies especially when the tests are long, but I can't blame them a bit - at least it weeds out some of the airheads. 

I am not a MTSO and never have been.  But, because of this situation it is hard for me to find a decent job because of the need for a flexible schedule and because I am not a fast/high line producer. 

I know there was a post about this yesterday, but I did not want to taker hers over.  I am just wondering if I can really do this.  I have been doing this 3 years and have been at the same company.  I just got back 5 reports this morning that just have me almost in tears.  Granted, some of my mistakes were stupid and should not have been made.  But, others that were sent back to me I really have issues with.  Some of the "mistakes" were not typing "Jane Doe" in the report instead of typing "the patient," which directly goes against my account instructions.  Also, was told not to expand an abbreviation in the diagnosis section because my account is verbatim.  I just do not agree with this!!!!  Plus, had different instructions on the same thing.  The QA is totally inconsistent, and let the QA manager know what I thought of some of their changes. 

I do think that I am a good MT.  I have a new position starting with a great company soon, and I just want to know that I really can do this!!!  Any advice??

In the US, transcription will morph over time, and ultimately, transcription as we know it now will be thought of as an archaic, cumbersome, expensive, inefficient, and inadequate part of the healthcare documentation process. How long will this take? Probably decades more, but within the next decade there will be increasing evidence of its decline.

The decline in medical transcription will not be seen immediately through dramatic changes in the numbers of MTs, or the money spent in the industry, or the number of reports transcribed. Rather, the initial evidence will be the increasing interest in and adoption of new technologies that offer direct, real-time, point-of-care documentation methods; this has already begun. The handwriting is on the wall, and anyone who has analyzed it will have to take notice: it is not speech recognition, but the opportunities that mobile health care brings to practitioners that will be the biggest threat to transcription. Although mobile health care is in its infancy, it seems clear that, in the future, practitioners will capture information at the point of care and largely without transcription.

At first, these changes will be enhanced by transcription, but more and more they will be facilitated by structured interactive dialogs, decision-support tools, speech recognition, and natural language processing, as well as XML-based processing tools. There will be no dramatic date on which history will look back and say, this is when transcription died. Rather, it will be a slow process. Some might call it an insidious process, but that implies intent, and I don’t believe the intent is any longer there, though it certainly was in the past.

Jerk you around, simply because you are remote and cannot do much about it and they do not have to deal with face to face combat.  Blow a lot of hot air in your face to get you through the door, once you are there and the door shuts, whole different ball game, am I right ladies?  Its FRIGHTENING to start at another MT job, i've gotten severely panicked over it, and while you are getting jerked around by your new manager, the phone bill, car bill, etc., do not stop coming.  I like knowing I have a steady PAYCHECK without a doubt, rather than chance it and jump around and get behind on bills because yet another co was not honest.  I'm at the top pay scale at MQ, would never give that up unless I found something I couldnt refuse, i.e. editor, paid hourly 18+ , full benefits, RESPECT.  ha! maybe at the end of the rainbow.