Had this exact same conversation here in 2005 - see message

• The problem with this field today is that those in charge are clueless. - MSMT
  • Had this exact same conversation here in 2005 - see message - dinosaur?
    • You are SOOOOO correct! (sm) - Typingperson
    • Yep, yep, and yep. - tnmt
  • clueless - sue
    • Hi SUE! - dinosaur?
  • MT Workplace Issues - AnnieM!AnnieM!
    • You don't sound old... - you sound wise...sm
    • Heh. Same age as I am! - Unhappy Camper
  • The main problem with this field is it is dying - Unhappy Camper
    • so when are we going to go on strike? - taxydeer
      • Question to ask first - see message
        • So what new career did you go into? - Melissa Griffith
          • Questions to ask first ... response - see inside
        • I was with you until you started lecturing - Animal Freak
        • Striking - Unhappy Camper
      • someone must know someone in legal field - who can help us do this- no message
  • When you figure out ..... - taxydeer
    • New coders have the same problem as new MTs....no experience, no job. nm - wow
      • Coding - taxydeer
        • We had a local program like that but now it is struggling - tnmt
  • It's not just with at-home transcription - Frustrated MT
    • My inhouse experience was almost identical! (nm) - Another Raddie
      • Maybe we should form a support group - Frustrated
        • I think we should form a group alright, but no support group!! - lynbelbel
          • A Great Idea - NorthMT
          • Okay, I'm for that, lynbelbel. - nm
          • Let's start with a blog to unite - Animal Freak
            • Yes - sm
            • I am dead serious. - lynbelbel
              • Well going up against corporate suits - Animal Freak
                • Sad state of affairs..... - lynbelbel
                • Let's start with a one-day strike! - MTPockets
                  • Dont want to burst a bubble - Animal Freak
                  • I'm in for a 1 day strike - taxydeer
                    • let's do it, pick a day, nobody works, pick a busy day - like Thursday or Friday - no message
                      • I would advise a little caution - Frustrated
    • So sorry - lynbel
      • Thank you! - Frustrated
    • Do you understand what they were trying to - tell you?
      • its the employer's fault.....you are wrong or delusional - Yankee
      • I blame my employer... - Frustrated
        • But you know, they are only hurting themselves (sm) - tnmt
        • Right ON! Who wants to be just another (nm) - COG IN THE WHEEL?
        • Sounds like down-sizing and you were let go cause you - didn't fit in. JMO. nm
          • They are still advertising the jobs on their website and in the newspaper - Frustrated
            • Newspaper ad - Frustrated
          • With a statement like that, hope it never - happens to you. Not frustrated...
            • Thank you!! - Frustrated
              • agree 2 this could have been the case - ditto
                • EXACTLY! Or because you speak the truth & the supes (nm) - speak with forked tongues!
                • You know, I felt exactly like I had been "thrown off the island" - Frustrated
                  • castout - htmt
                    • In retrospect, it was the best thing that could have happened to me - Frustrated
                      • Just Say No: Five Reasons to Turn Down a Job Offer - Red Sox
                        • Or.... how about the famous line "we're growing!!!" - anon
                  • not everyone out for themselves - businessmind
                    • But MTs who 'keep their mouths shut' are part of -sm - NOT just a typing-machine!
                      • This is what I will suggest so we can all speak up. - MSMT
        • P.S. Those dates should be 2006, not 2005 nm - Frustrated
    • Bravo - say it louder! - I have walked in your shoes. sm
  • A large part of the problem is pressure to cut costs (sm) - tnmt
  • I doubt all is well with their world, but if you - can't beat 'em, joint 'em. sm
    • Better answers would come through if they - Yada, yada
      • Well, and there's the rub - some co's even have MT mgrs and (sm) - tnmt
        • Exactly. - sm
      • middle managers/acct managers - anon
      • And that's my point. sm - MSMT
        • ! - Yankee
        • Managers are just that - managers - anon

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to go after them to get any results. I would appreciate any recommendations you may have on this because it needs to be addressed.

On page 146 that those are legit but it looks like q.4h is typed out in the book as q.4 h. (with a space in between the 4 and the h). 

There is a list of abbreviations that have been since classified as dangerous and q.d. was one of them and is now supposed to be typed as "daily."  You can do a search on that thread, I think, and it should come up. 

The BOS book says to find dangerous abbreviations in the list from "Institute for Safe Medication Practices."  I'll have to check that out...the only list I have access to is from a site I had to join through owning of a piece of software and i tried to post that link once and I couldn't due to password protection :( 

The payroll schedule for MedQuist states PayDate as 07/11/05 (Monday). 

Love it!

Like you and so many others, I have watched my wages as both an IC and an employee go down, down, down.  I worked for a company owned by an MT.  She paid very good wages but sold the company to an Indian company, who got rid of all the Americans except for a few who would accept very low pay.  It's funny...clients want 100% accuracy but they don't want to pay for it.  They agree that they can't just randomly pluck people off the street to do MT, that they have to hire experienced or trained people.  But they don't want to pay us for our experience or our training.  I am doing my last MT job. I have my bachelor degree almost completed and I'm outta here.  The lack of respect for MTs, from employers, other MTs, from offshore companies, from clients, from AAMT, is so disheartening.

over the same period in 2004.  It had been decreasing all year until the fourth quarter when it skyrocketed.  The only thing that's changed is that we now have 150,000 Katrina evacuees living in our city.

Please don't misunderstand.  I am quite sure that the majority of the displaced New Orleanians are good people.  There are, however, more than 1500 missing sex offenders running around Houston, gangs of thugs trying to take over and out and out warfare in some areas of the city.

Prior to Katina, New Orleans had the highest per capita murder rate in the country and I now see why.  I definitely believe in helping those in need; in fact, not only did I donate money but also donated old clothing and furniture and the like.  It now really pains me to say it, but I wish they would all just go home.   I want my city back the way it used to be before they all came here and tried to make it theirs.

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.  

The medical transcription business is drawing people from other sectors. That’s because the income can be quite substantial. Transcriptionists are paid anywhere between 60 paise to Rs 2.0 per line. At a minimum of 6 hours and transcribing 800 lines per day, transcriptionists can make around Rs 1,200 a day. Working 26 days a month, they earn more than Rs 30,000 (USD 450 - 500) a month. They send their reports to an Editor for proof-reading who are paid upwards of Rs 40,000 per month. 

As a result, hundreds of professionals are quitting their regular jobs to assist US doctors in transcribing their conversation with patients. X-ray, pathology, surgery and discharge reports of US patients are also being transcribed out of India.

To be a transcriptionist, an aspirant has to acquire skills in medical terminology. The next step is the editor. Level three is a quality analyst (QA) who has to work out of the office of the MT firm.

It’s a daily ritual for thousands of homemakers across India. After sending husbands to work and kids to school, they download voice files and start transcribing medical illnesses of patients in the US.  

Sowly, medical transcription from home is becoming a phenomenon, particularly in tier-II cities where the BPO boom hasn’t yet caught on and educated women are still not being encouraged to venture out of home.

“Almost half of our 600 home employees are women. Working from home allows them to spend more time with family,” said Mr Rajiv Shetye, VP, Spryance, a Boston-based medical transcription firm which now has 1,200 employees in India.

According to estimates, India has about 100 medical transcription companies and the big ones include Accusis, Spryance, Stheris and Heartland. About 10,000 people work in the $120 million-strong industry.

Still, there is a lot of untapped potential. The US market for market transcription is about $12 bn per annum, which is more than double the BPO exports of India. More than 700 million hospital events need to be recorded every year. According to Nasscom, about 1.6 lakh such transcriptionists will be needed in India by 2008. Earnings depend on how much time a person is able to devote. Billing is based on the number of lines transcribed.

HARSIMRAN SINGH