I've worked for attorneys and doctors in the past and ...
Posted By: JulieP on 2006-03-30
In Reply to: True - MommyMT14
I can tell you that attorneys have way more heart. Docs are stone cold. Personally, I can't stand working for them.....
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I have transcribed for doctors in the past who have dictated...sm
that the patient is heterosexual. I'm not much on what is politically correct or not, I just transcribe what the doctor dictates.
I too am an IC who has worked for 2 doctors sm
for quite some time (going on 6 years now). Fortunately things have been going well and I get along very well with the office staff, as well as with the docs, though I don't see them much. We have hit some rough spots though, like when I was told I was doing too much work! I work full time at a hospital in addition to my IC work and most of my typing for the IC work is done on the weekend. Two tapes a day usually means I have between 5-8 tapes every weekend. One time I brought 8 tapes on Monday, feeling very proud of all the work I had done and I was slammed for causing their secretary too much work! Sheesh....so now even if I do all my tapes I only send in 4 at a time. Oh brother! It's tricky trying to keep a good working relationship with everyone. I hope you can resolve your issues. If I were to lose my IC work, I would be devastated, financially and personally. Best wishes to you!
When I have worked for disreptuable company in the past, I "threatened" to bill...more
the client directly if payment was not forthcoming and if they failed to respond. I do not believe you should work for free or write it off. This has happened to me at least two times. I have never actually had to go through with it before though. Some might not like to use this tactic but it worked for me. I do not believe in working for free. When I want to work for free, I volunteer. LOL
Doctors documenting hours worked
Does anyone else find it unseemly that some of these doctors are now stating at the end of the report how much time they spent examining the patient, talking to the staff, other doctors, the family members, reviewing chart data, attempting a lumbar puncture, etc., from 9 to 12 and again 1 to 2, for a total of 3 hours?
For some reason, this seems very unprofessional to me. Am I just being cranky?
I've tried that the past few nights
it gets WAY too frosty!! :)
What company uses this? I've only had ADT or ADP in the past. nm
s
Over the past 33 years, I've often wondered sm
the same, is it worth it? I guess it was for me, as I really don't know what else I would prefer to do (besides crafting, my pets, gardening, and other hobby stuff). I don't think I'd consider starting out now as an MT with things the way they are.
As far as the depression, anxiety, etc., I don't think being at home alone causes these. I think these problems are inherent in those particular people who eventually turn to this type of work.
What I'm saying is (put out the flames) not all or even many of us have these problems, but those who do would find this kind of work attractive.
I think it's important for those of us at home to pursue outside interests to get us in the world. I'm delighted to be able to be home all the time. Sometimes I don't leave the house for 4-5 days at a time. My pets provide a lot of company. When I want people, I email some, or go out somewhere.
I do MTing, as well as billing. Although I have worked for the same doctors for years, I subcontrac
for $18 an hour. I'm looking to stop though and stick with transcription. If you think the medical transcription world is not so great these days, then try billing. I'm so sick of dealing with PPO networks, HMOs, Medicare, Medicaid and all the crap, rules and regulations that come with it. It gives me migraines and my job is never done. At least with transcription, you do your reports, upload them and it's over. With billing, I am constantly fighting with insurance companies who want to rip you off at every turn. When I finally get sick of all MT-ing, then my next money is a travel agent. Something fun!!!!
I've done a lot of WAHM jobs in the past 15 years.
Is it the typing that's getting you or the subject matter? Maybe try general or insurance transcription? I did secretarial work at home for a while, bookkeeping, typing, resumes, insurance typing, databases, mail merges. I did mystery shopping, but couldn't make any money at it.
I sold on eBay by going to yard sales in the hot afternoon and offering people $1 a box to haul off their leftovers. Or go early in the morning so you can snap up the collectibles. Run an ad in the paper that you're buying certain collectibles. Estate sales and auctions are good sources of stuff, too. I once paid $12 for several boxes of junk that I sold for $800. eBay does get tiring quite often between finding packing materials; finding inventory to sell; answering people's emails because they can't bother to read the auction instructions; nonpaying bidders; blatant liars; driving to the post office every day, etc.
I've done some other WAHM jobs but, again, eBay and transcription make the most money for me from my home.
Well, it seems the norm to me! I've tested with at least 4 co's in the past few years and
the tests were not dictations that I do on an everyday basis. I know they pick and choose carefully what they will test you on because there are always kinks in there where the doc either stumbles, mumbles, or you know you would have to be a genius to figure out what they are saying.
I've had problems with Abacus' accuracy in the past.
.
I've tried to quit 6 times in the past 6 years but
always went back to it. The longest I've quit was 3 weeks. My mom died from COPD and she had smoked from age 16. She really enjoyed smoking and although we kept trying, couldn't get her to quit until she was on 24 hour oxygen. She told me if she couldn't enjoy anything in life (smoking), why live. She died 3 months later.
I started smoking at 13...you know, the "try it, you'll like it" phase. We both tried to quit when I was 19 but we only lasted a day. There was only cold turkey then.
I've tried the patch (3 weeks off cigarettes), cold turkey, herbal meds, hynosis (only lasted 5 hours), you name it. I've used all the suggestions possible to no avail.
With a cigarette dangling from my mouth, I told my boys never to start smoking because they'd never be able to quit easily. Two took my advice, one didn't. He also tried to quit smoking but failed. He was on Wellbutrin for it.
My husband started smoking at 8 while working in a coal mine. He quit cold turkey 19 years ago. He was smoking almost 4 packs a day and one day he got so disgusted with it, he just threw them out the window of the car. Never touched one since and smoke from other people doesn't bother him.
He told me you really have to have the willpower and just get disgusted enough to quit. There's no other way. I guess I just don't have that willpower.
A ballpark figure I've seen in the past is 90 minutes +/- for an
s
In the past when I've needed extra work could get a response from co.'s within a week and be w
Now it's like zip, zero, nothing. No responses whatsoever from my emails to the companies here and on mtjobs.com.
At first I was looking for specifics regarding hospital work, clinic work, days, hours, etc., and choosing those but later got desperate and even with 16 years experience have been applying for 7-cent-a-line clinic jobs.... STILL no response from ANYONE! Well, actually, I get responses but they are automated emails stating I've passed the test(s) and will be contacted in X amount of days/weeks/months. Then I never hear back even with a followup email. In the past, I could get a new job within a week or two.
I don't know. I was thinking maybe they're thinking that with 16 years experience it would be easier to go with someone with less experience (for whatever reasons), so I'm considering just putting down 5 years or so as my experience instead of the truth. Could be they don't want to deal with this old dinosaur and want new blood, I don't know.
Besides the fact they've had a freeze for hiring transcriptionists for the past couple years.
The MT I know works a few hours, is required to take 2 hours off, then come back and finish her shift. Plus she has to work 4 hours on the weekend. They do work at home but keep to a strict schedule. I wouldn't want it.
I've worked for both
I think there are two big differences. (1) Benefits should be much better than the national, and (2) in working for the hospital, you will only be working on one account (which makes a BIG difference in my opinion). I averaged about 225 lines per hour working for national on a main account plus a couple backups. I am averaging 300+ with the hospital.
The only advantage with going with the national might be better job security. If you lost the account, at least they could move you to another one. But personally, I would take the hospital job in a second. Good Luck!
I've worked with one of their
products. It was an excellent transcription product; they basically bought another company and added the product to their line. I've read some about the owner of the company. He seems like a very above-board kind of guy. He values the special knowledge that MTs have, and we used the product without VR, BUT ... he won't be happy until his VR product is worked in to the transcription process. (I think they might focus on radiology only). He is just SURE it can improve turnaround time, but he admits that VR on its own is not very impressive and reports will always need to be tweaked by a knowledgeable MT. What he doesn't realize is that the transcription process is much more active and able to catch errors when the MT is immersed in transcribing the report. I don't believe 95% of MTs could in a time-efficient way get the complete gist of each report and catch as many dictator errors, history errors, as she could when her mind was completely involved in the transcription of every word. Doing radiology, how many times is there just the briefest pause from the dictator and the MT's mind is already filling in the next word or phrase, and then the dictator says something else, and you think - wha?? and then the radiologist realizes his blunder and corrects himself at some point. Or if he doesn't, the MT's mind is reasoning out what is right or wrong and can bring any problem up with that report. Because of noticing, that report will get corrected before it goes out to the referrer and causes a phone call from an angry referrer.
Radiology needs to go out at 100% accurate, and IMO, insisting on the use of VR will lower accuracy rates and won't improve turnaround time much at all. When I was doing radiology, the better radiologists could dictate a note in a quick and efficient manner and the MT would get on and do it within about 3 minutes. Every 20 minutes the good radiolgists would sign a batch and the reports would go out. So it was about a 30-minute turnaround time for those reports that didn't need a different radiologist to read them. Turnaround time had everything to do with which radiologist was reading and how many specialty reports there were and how efficiently the off-site radiolologists were getting on to dictate. It seems like the VR guys think the MT is the slow one, but IT'S NOT THE MT - SPEED IS UP TO THE RADIOLOGISTS.
chiefly British past and past participle of SPELL
nm
I've worked for MQ for years and
have NEVER been given the opportunity for bonuses. Those who have gotten them have been lucky.
I've worked for MQ over 4 years now and
I have never been told how many spaces to put or not put after a sentence; I have never been paid for spaces, by my count at least. I occasionally check my reports. I do not get spaces.
I'm not sure why, or actually by the anonymous stature of posters on this board, IF anyone has really been told to limit spaces to one after a sentence.
If MQ really isn't paying for spaces, it wouldn't make any difference monetarily so I cannot see that they would make a stipulation like that.
all the ones I've worked with (6) were gay. Go figure.
The only male MT I've worked with is now ...
one of the MDs I transcribe for now. He worked as an MT for the same small service I did while he was going to school.
I should add, I don't know how they are to work for as I've never worked for them, just saw th
post.
I've worked for several companies using this VR
I make on average $20-$26 an hour with the editing at 4cpl/straight typing 9-10 cpl 65 char with headers and footers and templates. I've been using it for several years though. There are several job ads for this software.
I've worked the same one account...sm
for over 10 years. They know I'm reliable and I know what those docs are going to say before they say it ;0) Seriously, though, I've tried other short term assignments or on-call situations through the years but always come back to my bread and butter. Like anyone, I could of course be let go tomorrow, but in the meantime I'm making good money and doing work that comes second nature by now. Less stress too!
No, not gullible. I've worked in
years and not just in MT. You need to unwrap your mind from around the state of MT of 25 years ago. Those days are long gone. Another unfortunate issue that we're faced with today - new MT graduates. The quality just is not there as it was back in the day. Well, enough said - we obviously will need to agree to disagree. I see it every day the negotiations with major hospitals and offshore. They know what their pennies are getting them and they don't care as long as it's cheap.
What is the best platform you've ever worked on
and why? What do you like about it? Also, what is the worst?
I really like EditScript 8 & although it isn't perfect, I like the fact that I can access other reports on the same patient/same dictator if I need to verify something (although I never trust it 100% lol) One thing I don't like is that I can't use my Expanders (or maybe I can, but don't know how to go about it?)
I don't like ChartScript, as I don't think its very user friendly and those old DOS-based antiquated systems were for the birds!
I've worked and traveled with (sm)
A Verizon Broadband USB device on a 5GB/month plan for $60/month. Anywhere that I can get a Verizon phone signal, I can work. Working on the DQS platform, I could work 24/7 and never approach the 5 GB limit per month, but I'm not sure how other platforms work in that regard.
Europe in general is more sophisticated in their cell phone plans than the US (the majority in Europe use prepaid as opposed to 2-year contract plans). I would think that you could get a USB device over there that is compatible with the cell phone frequencies they use over there.
Hope this helps!
You can get free attorneys..
.
Hey! We could all become engineers, attorneys,
!!!!!!!
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!
I don't think so. It sounds like you've never worked for a national.
Nationals DO check references. That's the job of the HR department. They DO run credit reports when you accept a job, and they tell you so on the piece of paper you have to sign giving them permission to do so. They DO prosecute and report to collections against people who don't return equipment. They DO keep deposits on unreturned equipment. They DO get the equipment super cheap anyways in bulk deals through major technology suppliers. Equipment, losses, and shipping are all tax deductible anyway. They DO use QA so that lazy or inexperienced MTs aren't sending garbage straight through to the clients. Most national MTs don't have any contact whatsoever with the clients. In addition, the majority will let you use your own equipment or charge rental fees so it's not coming out of their pocket.
That goes both ways. I can tell you out of all the MTSOs I've worked for,
only a small percentage of them worked out. It's as if they'll tell you anything to get you hired, then reality hits. You tell them when you're available. Oh, OK, no problem. Then the work doesn't show up until your shift is over, but they still expect it done by TAT. Sorry, but I don't work on-call for free 24/7. I'm not sitting around doing nothing all day long waiting for work to come in. I'm not staying up all night without sleep and blowing off my family because the MTSO is in a bind. We're expected to work more than 8 hours a day without overtime or incentive pay.
I've worked for two services that had VA contracts.
It was horrible. Lots of ESLs. High stress MTSOs. No samples or QA feedback.
I've worked on a laptop only for going on 7 years.
I do use an external keyboard the majority of the time though. The USB WiFi does not accept a card, it is small, plugs into a USB port and acts like your card does, you don't use a card. Go to a website like best buy and search for Wireless USB adapters and you'll see what I'm talking about.
I've traveled and worked many times
To try to answer your questions.. Whether your foot pedal will work in your laptop depends on the laptop that you buy. When you're looking to buy one, try to find one with the correct kind of port for your pedal. The one I recently bought doesn't have a serial port, so I bought an adapter at Circuit City that plugs into my USB port, and then I can plug my ergo keyboard and mouse into that. In any case, your laptop will definitely come with at least a couple USB ports, so you could always buy a USB pedal to use with it if you have to. As far as the headphones, every laptop I've ever used has had a place to plug in a pair of headphones so that should be no problem. The thing is...if you're going to buy a laptop specifically for this, then look at the ports on the laptops and make sure it has what you need. I would say if you don't mind buying a USB foot pedal, though, you're not going to have problems because every new laptop will have USB ports, and I'm sure a place for your headphones.
If you're staying in hotels, try to stay in places that have free high speed internet which so many of them have now. You can plug right into that and work. If not, I know Verizon has a wireless broadband service now for around $60 a month you could check into.
I hope this helps some.
They aren't that rare. I've worked with SM
bunches of them. Unfortunately, my experience with them boils down to this: The men who do this usually are the men who can't get along in a work environment with a lot of other men.
I've had this problem and the only thing that worked for me....sm
was to slow down turnaround. They called within a couple of days. Told them I had to take on extra work to meet my own bills by paying customers which slowed down their turnaround. I had my check the next day. Don't know how they managed that, but they did. Since then, there have been a couple of times that it was a week or so late, but not like they used to do. I honestly think as long as they can get away with it, they will. I wonder how long they would last if their paychecks were 2-3 weeks late. Really irks me.
I've worked with much programs that were much worse.
I don't find ExText so bad.
Because I've done radiology, I've been stuck using software that didn't come with a medical spell-checker and was not compatible with any medical spell-checker. It had an English word checker, so we had to add every single medical term manually.
I once had management actually move us BACKWARDS in technology, from Medrite (which was a fine program back then), to the one previous to it. It may have been called MTS, but I can't remember. This was done because of a company merger and the "alpha" company managers were too lazy to learn the Medrite program. Did it matter to them that they were not paid on production and we were? NO! Of course not. So we all stood around as we were trained on this program my jaw dropped to my knees because it was so inefficient. And the spell checker was worse than useless with that program. Say you misspelled Levaquin as Leviquin. Here is a list of the suggestions it offered, and I am not exaggerating:
lewder
lawless
marshmallow
As far as ExText, what I would want fixed would be the ability to speed up or slow the dictation rate with the keyboard. The multi-mouse moves required are a waste of significant time IMO because of the long pauses so many acute care dictators inconsiderately leave in dictations.
I've worked with MTs who work diligently
...to find a way to cherry pick.
The system that you and the poster above you are describing sounds like the one used where I used to work.
One MT fiddled around and wasted who knows how much company time until she figured out how to manipulate the filters component of the system, and set the filters to only route to her jobs from her 3 preferred dictators.
If only these MTs put as much time into actually transcribing as they put into getting around the system they could probably make even more money than they do with the cherry picking.
Who sent you the paperwork? MQ or MQMT attorneys?
Be scared of what? No raises, losing accounts, smoke and mirrors, turnkey CEOs.
I want to be a consultant to attorneys, to show them where
. I'd like to reduce the allowable error rate for patients like you and me.
Oh, ugh, attorneys (and chiropractors, IME). My sympathy to you! (nm)
xx
I've worked for companies that needed people
specifically to do certain reports. I have been hired to exclusively do ERs and discharge summaries before. It wasn't cherry picking either. They needed someone to catch up their backlog and keep the reports within TAT permanently. Evidently, other people were cherry picking and bypassing these report types because they're not as good of money makers as Ops or H&Ps.
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.
We supposedly have Labor Day, but I've worked it for years.
I do respect those that have serious religious holidays though and only hope that the company that they work for understand.
At first I kicked myself for picking Mondays as one of my scheduled work days, as most of our holidays fall on a Monday. But the kids sleep in because they have no school, so it always works, as I only have a 3 hour shift and I'm done before they get up.
I do. I've worked closely with these people for years,
nm
I've tried Vivarin and the 1st two days it worked great
But after that they put me to sleep like anesthesia. Go figure.
I've worked at home for years and mothered sm
4 babies during that time. Buy a battery-operated swing and put it right beside your desk. I breastfed all of mine, too. They would swing and sleep, then when they woke up I'd take a break and nurse and then put the baby back in the swing. Get one that reclines and the baby will be very comfortable. That battery-operated swing allowed me to continue working. It was worth every penny I paid for it, and then some! Good luck and enjoy your little sweetie. She will grow up much too fast.
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've worked weekends for 10 years, now I want to move onto a company
that does not require at least one weekend day. I realize hospitals are open 24/7 but you would think that companies seeking good MTs would be more willing to offer a M-F shift.
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