I just sent it to 60 Minutes staff writer - You guys help me- please read
Posted By: CC on 2009-03-19
In Reply to: Have you thought about sending this letter & story - to 60 minutes? The time is certainly - sm
Who ever mentioned sending it to Lou Dobbs, Dateline, or anybody else, please send this along yourself and name who you sent it to here on this site, so it is not duplicated to the same person too much. Girls, I don't want any credit for this - I just want someone to look into this who has access to any credible sources and figures. What ever it takes to get this out there - please help me do it. We are talking about 30 MILLION jobs and counting. I have already sent it on whitehouse.gov and to 2 newspapers. Copy the thing. Spread it around as much as you can and encourage others to do the same.
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She is a great writer. I read
In the Meantime, by that author, she used to be on Oprah a long time ago. Thanks for the poem, enjoyed it, especially the last line.
not a bit homophobic. love queer guys for straight guys.
these guys are clever and witty and have good taste. they are who they are. not a problem. i have problems with boy-men who are currently trendy now. that's my taste. and it's kind of scary that women are attracted to these unisex boy-men culturally. no big deal unless you make it one. this is a board to exchange ideas right?
I used to say he nursed for 30 minutes every 30 minutes. I was trying to figure
out a way to strap him across my chest so he could help himself while I went about whatever it was I had to do. I really miss those days too.
I think you'd be a great writer. (U already are.) - nm
x
I'm a steno writer
I went to school to learn how to use a steno machine, like in court, to "type" my medical reports. I have been doing this since 2000. I trained at 225 words per minute back in the day, so now I have a reservoir of speed to draw from when dictation speeds up. I rarely need to lift my foot off the pedal with steno.
I think steno is the fastest way to produce a report, but now that MQ is forcing us to do ASR work, I am not using my machine as much. To me, this is unacceptable since they only pay 70% of our base line rate for ASR. I have hung in there so far, but I'm fast approaching the need to get out of MQ since I used to produce 2000 lines a day easily with steno, way less now on ASR reports.
They say ASR is 30% faster than non-ASR thus they justify knocking off 30% of our base rate. Not true. ASR has slowed me way down, can barely make the minimum each day. Last I heard, they will not take us off ASR if we request it. I'm getting madder by the week and losing tons of money in the process.
lanier voice writer
Does anyone know of any companies that still use these? I am a die hard Lanier fan! Thanks.
lanier voice writer
 HELP! I'm going crazy. All of a sudden my foot pedal went down on this unit - I have opened it and replugged a million times to no avail. Any solutions or suggestions/ Thanks!
Writer and PT marketing consultant
z
Meant professional writer. Know what HIM is. Sorry. nm
X
Lanier Voice Writer 1000
Client uses phone in Lanier Voice Writer 1000 with MTs coming into the office to transcribe. What is necessary to hire at home transcriptionists with this system? Are there tapes involved, will a c-phone work or can you not hire at home transcriptionists with this system? Thank you for any help you may have.
What do you need a Master's Degree in to be a science writer?
?
For all the fans, very interesting insight from the writer of the show.
Shonda Rhimes long take on part two:
From Shonda: It's the end of the episode (as we know it)
Original Airdate: 2-12-06
So Dylan’s dead.
And I have to admit, I’m a teeny bit relieved.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Kyle Chandler. He was great as Dylan. Smart, funny, cute, and very much in charge. I was, in fact, a little bit in love with Dylan. Not as in love as I am with McDreamy or Burke but…you know, there were moments during the filming of the episodes when Dylan would be saying something bossy or helping Mer down the hall, pushing that gurney and being all bomb squad-y, moments that I was thinking, hey, maybe he doesn’t have to explode.
But still I am relieved. Why? Well, I’m glad you asked. Here’s why:
At the end of Act Five, there is a scene. Scene 52. I wrote this scene about fifteen minutes before I had to print out the script and hand it over to production. It reads as follows:
INT. OR CORRIDOR -- CONTINUOUS
Meredith leans her head out. Sees Dylan heading down the hall. She's just about to open her mouth...
...When the ammo explodes. When Dylan explodes. Fire, shattering glass. Meredith is thrown backwards.
Okay, that’s…what? An eighth of a page? A sixteenth of a page? A tiny fraction of the script, right?
The ammo explodes.
Dylan explodes.
I wrote those words and was actually ignorant enough of the horrors to come that I gave it to the production team and then slept the sleep of babies and angels for several nights in a row.
The ammo explodes.
Dylan explodes.
Seriously? SERIOUSLY?
All of the sudden, you find yourself in meetings with real live bomb squad guys and special effects guys and a very tense director and everyone is asking you things like “When you say, bloody rain…you actually want bloody rain or just like, some blood spatter?” And things like “When Dylan explodes, you wanna see chunks of Dylan or do you want like, a Dylan vapor?”
These are thing I don’t want to think about. These are things that make my head hurt. The ammo explodes. Dylan explodes. It’s in the script. I wrote it. I know that. But I don’t want to think about Dylan chunks or bloody rain. I don’t want to think about it at all. I like to write things and have them happen. I like to keep myself in a kind of stalker-ish fog in which I believe my characters aren’t characters but actual people. It’s how I can write them. So when you ask me about Dylan chunks, my brain gets all twisty and shuts down. Because Dylan’s a person, a very real person to me and I love him and it’s not my fault he has to die and besides…yuck.
But I’ve got Rob Corn on my ass.
Rob Corn doesn’t care if I try to kick everyone out of my office when they bring up bloody rain or he doesn’t care if I try to pretend I can’t speak English when someone asks me about bloody chunks. Rob Corn is the producer on our show and it’s his job to make things happen and, if I am stupid enough to write Dylan explodes on a piece of paper, Rob Corn is damn well going to make sure that Dylan explodes. Behind his back, I like to call Rob Corn Bossy McBossy. It doesn’t sound affectionate here but in real life, it’s really sweet and kind. Trust me. Anyway, Bossy McBossy told me that we had to do tests so we could figure out how exactly Dylan explodes.
Tests? Dylan explodes. What’s there to test? HA! I’m clearly an idiot.
They built this model of Dylan’s body and one day I am herded out onto the back lot of the studio at the request of Bossy McBossy Rob Corn. Then I have to stand and watch as 20 or 30 really happy guys (testosterone is a powerful thing) position the model of Dylan just right and explode it into tiny little pieces. Twice. It is very loud. Wow. Dylan explodes. I’m all, “great, thanks, way to go, very manly.” And I turn to flee, prepared to head back to my office, happy that the Dylan explodes part of this is over so I can pay attention to the other stuff, the estrogen stuff, the fun stuff like Bailey and George giving birth and Derek describing that kiss to Meredith…
…But Rob Corn raises an eyebrow and very gently says, “Uh, Shonda?” and I go really still with horror. Because I suddenly start to realize that a) that little test was only the beginning and b) that, for the rest of my life, I was going to regret ever typing the words Dylan explodes into my computer.
They blew up test dummies. Tall dummies, dusty dummies, dummies with helmets, dummies without helmets. They blew up test dummies filled with fake blood. They blew up pieces of our set. They set off an explosion on the set of our operating rooms. They used stunt girls and stunt guys. Ellen let them pull her through the air. I think there were blue screens and green screens and animated pieces of debris and glass. The genius special effects guys added fire and smoke and things I can’t imagine but things that made it amazing. The sound guys added over 100 layers of sound elements so that, if you have HD and you watch with surround sound speakers, the explosion flies at you and passes you and swirls around you.
Dylan explodes.
The explosion was beautiful. Amazing work and truly impressive. I told everyone so. I can’t believe the amount of talent and energy that come together to make this show happen. But next time I get a Super Bowl and post-Super Bowl time slot, I’m gonna write something different. Something a bit easier. Something less time-consuming and expensive. And without so many bloody chunks.
Dylan puts the ammo down and goes to have a sandwich.
Enough about Dylan, may he rest in peace. I want to tell you about the difference between the first episode titled “It’s the End of the World” and the second episode “(As We Know It)”.
I tried really hard to make the first episode very male and the second episode very female. I wanted them to fit together, like puzzle pieces. So that I could have two episodes about the same thing but that felt very different from one another. The first episode is all amped up energy, all naked girls and screaming and bombs and running down hallways and men saying things like “Get out of my OR.” The second episode is all long pauses. Long pauses and sitting and pushing out babies and kissing in linen closets and lots of discussion about how the hell this is all going to end. The first episode is what happens when danger strikes. The second episode is how we deal with danger when it strikes. The epicenter of this episode is the hallway/gurney scene. It’s the first scene I envisioned at all when thinking of these two episodes. I kept saying, “there needs to be this scene where Meredith and Cristina move down the hall really slowly with the ammo and Dylan and talk about boys.” And everyone kept nodding very politely with tight smiles the way they do when they are sure you have gone off the deep end. But Elizabeth Klaviter (she’s our super smart medical researcher) got on the phone with the bomb squad guys and the doctors and she got them to tell her how this would be possible. How I could get that gurney rolling so Meredith and Cristina could discuss the state of Cristina’s relationship. I needed that discussion which, for me, is really just a big old metaphor for how we deal with the tragedies in life. You’ve got your hand on a bomb but you don’t want to talk about it over and over, you don’t want to face it – so you talk about something else. Most of life is talking about something else. Plus, I found this really cool song by The Greenskeepers that I was dying to use.
George is a big key to this episode. If you pay attention, he’s the one who serves as our witness. Through most of the episode, he wanders around, a bit bewildered. He’s the one who feels the most helpless. And then he has that moment with Hannah where she talks about the nature of cowardice, where she says that to do nothing is to be a coward. And he acts. He helps Bailey through giving birth. In the first episode, he’s fantasizing about what it would be like to see three women in the shower. In the second episode, he sees what three women in a shower is like in reality. Because, guys, women don’t just climb in a shower and start soaping each other up for no reason. Hello!? Life isn’t porn. Life is Meredith, bloody and battered, being gently cleaned off (chunks of Dylan) by her best friends. And so he leaves. Because what he is seeing is too intimate.
The last thing I want to say about this episode has to do with Meredith. Because all she really wants is some kind of reason to live. I’ve heard a lot of talk about Meredith being whiny but the truth is, she’s got a mom with Alzheimer’s, no other family to speak of, and the man she loves is married. She’s pretty freaking lonely, people. She’s got a right to get her whine on. So, when she falters, when she doesn’t want to pull her hand out of Mr. Carlson, it’s partly because she’s got nothing to hang on to. As she says in the first episode, she needs a reason to go on, she needs some hope. Which is why she has to picture Derek to get through it. And at the end, when he shows up at her house (and he shows up just to see for himself that she is alive), she has to ask. She has to ask him about their last kiss because if she’s ever going to get out of that bed again and keep going, she needs a reason. She needs to know there’s someone out there for her. She needs some hope. And Derek (can Patrick Dempsey be any more amazing?) describes that last kiss, the last kiss they had as a happy couple, in such perfect detail that Meredith knows she’ll be okay. Because he wouldn’t remember that kiss so well if he didn’t love her. He couldnt. Its her sign.
He loves her. Even if he can’t be with her. Even if he has a wife.
He loves her, people.
I told you, there’s hope.
I can’t promise you anything because, like I said earlier, the characters are alive for me and thus, I can’t make them do anything against their will. But my fingers and toes are crossed for the Mer/Der love…
Once again, thanks for watching the show.
Anything by Elie Wiesel...he is an amazing person/writer..nm
nm
Too bad the writer didn't address the true reasons why this is not
an attractive field to enter.
Who in their right mind would spend time and money training in a dying profession? Can you say EMR, ASR?
Who in their right mind would spend time and money to train for a job which conceiveably could end up paying minimum wages, few benefits, little reward?
How many have spent time and money training only to find there are few companies who will hire newbies, few companies who offer flexible work schedules, few companies who work with you to make a living wage rather than to throw you into a pool of accounts guaranteed to keep your wages low?
How many expert MTs have left the profession due to reasons above?
CEOs need to wake up and take care of the excellent MTs they can manage to retain; quit messing with our paychecks with creative line counting, quit throwing multiple accounts at us and then expect 1000s of lines a day, quit basing our health insurance on production rather than hours worked; quit expecting us to be happy to work outside our scheduled hours because you provided no work within our scheduled hours with your too tight TATs, and on and on.
How often do I recommend this profession to young people? Never.
I'll write it..I am a professional freelance writer as well as an MT
Let the ideas roll!
digital phoneline with Lanier voice writer
I recently had my unlimited long distance suspended because of the time I was putting in on the lanier voice writer. I as going to switch to digital through the cable company with a data line added for access to dial tone. Does anyone have any suggestions good or bad on the digital phone line used with the LAnier voicewriter. Please let me know.
Thank, Lisa
Sitcom & screenplay writer/philanthropist. - no message
:)
ATT- I was paying $320 for 7000 minutes, I am now paying $175 for 5000 minutes in CA. nm
nm
Glo and staff at MTS. (sm)
Just wanted to thank you for your ultra-quick response to my plight of not being able to get to your job bank this morning!! Found it w/your help, was ready when the phone call came in and got an offer!! Yahoo!! Thanks again - you are the best!
If you MUST have QA on staff, they should all have guidelines, be it BOS
or AMA, whatever you choose. I've been seeing ads for QA personnel and they don't have to have been MTs. I don't get that.
As I've said before here, I work for an MTSO who believes if you have to have QA personnel, you've hired the wrong MTs. I tend to agree with her.
We get up in the morning, do our work and send it in. If there's something we don't understand, we put a note on the log for the doctor or the hospital - because we're all experienced enough that we either know what we're hearing or know how to find it.
office staff at MQ
that's exactly what I've seen. I had one of the guys at 1888# tell me when I said that MQs priority is with the clients 150% and the MT's concerns are at the bottom of the list and his response was well, they do pay our salaries -- those techs don't have a clue what we do
11
office staff at MQ
LOL, you reminded me at one time, about 9 years ago that we had THE tech support guy in our office pinch hitting also as the CSR. on the overnight and weekend shift, just when you would need someone with a brain...forget calling when you had question on how an account wanted a format, etc
That's why all QA staff should cc their feedback to the
entire QA staff! QA needs to be on the same page. By cc'ing the QA staff (blindly of course), QA can get on the correct page. That way, if one QA has a question, bat it back and forth to determine the answer. QA people have a good rapport with each other for the most part and are very accepting of the correct way a company does things. If someone challenges something, then we just find the correct answer and that is that! Also, the QA staff I most recently worked with had an updated frequently most common errors and the correct answers that they passed out to the MT staff and it included the reasons for the correct response. It does work.
Poll for QA staff
1. Are you paid by line, report or hour or salaried?
2. What are your production requirements?
3. Do you get incentives or bonuses beyond your base pay?
4. How do you provide feedback? (Directly to MTs, to a supervisor, etc.)
My answers:
1. Hourly ($19)
2. 12 reports/hour
3. No.
4. Directly to MTs.
monitoring staff
We need this done for a lady in our department. She works at home, goofs off, and starts late. She gets to stop working, and I get called in on my day off without on-call pay. From now on I'm not answering the phone!!!!
The rod should be a guide, a staff, not a weapon.
Please reaad the following if you think spanking is okay.
Spanking can cause a sensitive child grave psychological damage. You probably won't even see it, and the child may never tell anyone or even recognize what it is. Please, please, if you insist on spanking your child, at least give that child an outlet for the anger that follows. When I child is forced to feel anger/shame directed at the person(s) they depend on above all others, and then to suppress that anger, it can cause significant, lifelong problems in his/her ability to have healthy relationships.
Another reason to reconsider spanking is the prevalence in today's society of spanking being related to sex - it's all over the place, and unless your kids watch no TV, no movies, read no magazines, and have no access to computers, they are eventually going to come across this. It can be very confusing, very upsetting.
From: http://www.stophitting.com/religion/faithMaterial.php
All of the biblical quotations advocating corporal punishment of children are taken from the book of Proverbs in the King James Version of the Bible. They were written by King Solomon, and presumably reflected his parenting beliefs with respect to his own son.
Proverbs 13:24
"He that spareth his rod hateth his son; but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes (diligently)."
Proverbs 19:18
"Chasten thy son while there is hope, and let not thy soul spare for his crying."
Proverbs 22:15
"Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child; but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him."
Proverbs 23:13
"Withhold no correction from the child: for if thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die."
Proverbs 23:14
"Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul from hell (Shoel)."
Proverbs 29:15
"The rod and reproof give wisdom: but a child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame."
The Bible itself records the negative effect of Solomon's parenting style on his son, Rehoboam. He became a widely hated ruler after his father's death and had to leave to avoid assassination by his own people.
What would Jesus do?
If you take the Bible seriously, you have to notice Jesus' attitude toward children. It was wise, loving, and filled with compassion. Even when anxious adults wanted to shoo the children away, Jesus rebuked the adults. "Of such," he said, "is the kingdom of heaven." Given this attitude, it's hard to conceive of Jesus hitting a child on any occasion or for any reason. It's simply not consistent with what he taught. If Jesus wouldn't hit a child, why would we? SpankOut Day is dedicated to exploring alternate means of discipline. We believe that Jesus would approve. A simple slogan for Christians to consider might be this: the next time you are tempted to hit a child, ask yourself "What would Jesus do?" Then go and do likewise.
Reverend Dr. Thomas E. Sagendorf, Senior Pastor
Bexley United Methodist Church, Bexley, Ohio
Wisdom from the Talmud
Many people who strike their children do so not because they are evil or mean, but because they believe they are doing God's will. They often cite the phrase in Proverbs: "He who spares the rod hates his son." The problem is that pulling one line out of the Bible ignores the rest of the text. Much of the Book of Proverbs is filled with good counsel on how to be a better person. In Chapter 22 we are taught, "Train a child in the way he should behave, and even when he is old, he will not depart from it." Isn't it possible that the rod Proverbs refers to is to be used to point to lessons on the wall? When we fail to properly educate our children, we not only spoil them, we show them the opposite of love. We must use the rod to point out right from wrong, not to beat our children into submission the way slaves have been beaten throughout history. Even the Talmud says, "If you must strike a child, do so only with a shoelace." When taken in its entirety, Judaism can hardly sanction the use of violence against children. Even the famous sentence in Deuteronomy to stone to death the stubborn and rebellious son, was, according to the Talmud, never carried out. Instead, while discipline was and still is crucial for raising healthy children, striking a child need never occur. The mix of discipline and love is the recipe for a good future for our sons and daughters. The Talmud suggests: "A child should be pushed aside with the left hand, and drawn closer with the right hand."
Rabbi Larry Kaplan
Temple Israel, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania
The Law or the Spirit?
In the book Spare the Child, Philip Greven suggests that our readiness as fathers to strike our sons explains why we men grow up so ready not only to tolerate but to perpetrate violence in our culture. A boy picks up his moral cues from Dad: "Dad hits me when he doesn't like what I have done. Therefore, men resolve differences by violence. If Dad did it, it's OK. I can hit people myself, especially when I think they've done wrong and therefore deserve it." Often a boy who has been spanked won't respond later to love, but only to more spanking. The Law, that is, has supplanted the Spirit within him. God's story of Israel says clearly that a son lost in the Law can be restored to appreciate and respond to a relationship with the Father only though crucifixion. In this case, that might mean the father's dying to his pride and asking the child's forgiveness, then begging Jesus to show him whatever brokenness in himself has led him to resort to the Law and how to become hospitable again to his Spirit's rule.
Reverend Gordon Dalbey, Santa Barbara, CA
Author of Fight Like a Man and leader in the Christian men's movement
Quoted with permission from Fight Like a Man
Also see: http://www.nospank.net/toc.htm
No, I am not qualified as Chief of Staff
but I do my job well and I think that is what matters. I took the time to learn what I needed to learn (on-the-job training) and I am very much qualified to work as a medical transcriptionist.
Try Piedmont - they have inhouse staff nm
x
They expect so much from MTs but the other office staff
is paid well and make mistakes (x-ray techs, scheduling, etc), be paid full benefits.
What is UP with that?
Cranky staff is not your imagination.
The attitude you describe seems to be prevalent. It is as if we were a necessary evil rather than support staff. I think personally it is due to the amount of time needed to keep the paperwork in order. Everyone hates paperwork (even if it is electronically) and we produce a ton of it.
Also, in my view, physicians and care providers absolutely hate to make errors given their jobs are so important and the likelihood of a lawsuit keeps them paying very high premiums. We MTs tend to be one of the few who can say that an error has been made. It can irritate some doctors though I have met a few who are very thankful for it.
In the 20 plus years I have been in the medical field, there has been a change due to pressure from insurance companies also, plus the change in patient complaints as the population ages. This may add to frustration as the bottom line is not only finding relief for the patient but making sure treatment is approved by insurances. This can only get worse from where I sit as cuts are coming with Medicare and Medicaid payments.
Suggest she and the other office staff take a pay cut, too.
p
Re office staff to print
No, the office staff are not allowed access to the 2 PCs and they still work with a handwritten appointment book as well as only fax facilities and no internet at work... this is the reason I have to cut & paste WP doc into Word and e-mail to doc's home e-mail so wife can e-mail the report. This is really a mess I have myself in... and Im starting to throw tantrums now! I corrected him yesterday morning on a mistake he corrected me and now its spite on his side to pay me back because how dare I take a printout from physician website with the correct spelling and show him his mistake - my reports gets marked like a school teacher grading it big circles with messages "I spelt this for you a few months ago, you should know it by now!!!" etc
I type things like this a lot. Staff are always
calling in chaplains, pastors, etc., to comfort the patient and/or family. I don't understand why it is even questioned. Whatever the doctor dictates is transcribed (except major cussing, but even that is if the patient is being quoted). We are not here to determine what does or does not go into a report. We just transcribe it as dictated.
How about QA staff from previous jobs?
Do you know any other transcriptionists? Those are the only two I can think of for you. I have always been IC and have had individual doctors to give, also, if that applies to you. Good luck.
Go search bar and put in the word Staff
It will bring up a post(s) regarding the EMR system posted on Jan 12.
Put the word -- staff -- in the search bar. It should come up medical records staff being replaced by EMR
I sent it to 2 staff writers for the Associated Press plus...
Forbes Magazine, 60 Minutes, USA Today, Washington Post, NY Times, and a couple of others. The Editor who e mailed me did not know I was an MT but that's okay - you investigate one offshored industry, you investigate them all. I asked him to check into any credible sources he had. You may have noticed in my letter it constantly said, "See what you can find out."
HAPPY 4TH OF JULY from all the staff at MTStars!
We went with the accounts and Warminster is still there with the office staff.
:
Yes, I do. The office staff are always very kind to me when I call, and I just
x
Happy Mothers Day from the staff at MTStars! May you have the best day!
/
Happy MT Week from all the staff at MTStars!
Administrator
Goldbird
Sam
Natalie
Jamie
Kelly
AJ
Kasey
Sharon
Adam
Mimi
Good idea about telling them to let the staff
I'm going to have to use that one! LOL Since most clients aren't wanting more work put on their staff, at least not in my experience, that will certainly be a showstopper for many of mine. :D Hee hee, thanks for that tip, JoV! ;)
Staff will be reduced and equipment not replaced
Care provider will attempt to maintain their income and will attempt this by reducing staff/overhead (that includes transcription by the way).
The medicare/medicaid patient should have copays that are reasonable.
Reasonable is the key word here. But there is a sense of urgency that is taking place due to the state of Social Security and the aging baby boomers who are beginning to retire, who will due to good medical care for a lifetime, perhaps live for 20 plus years on Medicare benefits.
My vet and his staff told me nothing makes their day more than goodies!
It may be old hat, but they said getting a basket of cookies or pastries really makes them feel appreciated. I know you wanted original ideas, but this is what my large vet practice has told me in the past. Good luck. :-)
HAPPY 4TH OF JULY from all the staff at MTStars!
a
Happy Mother's Day from all the staff at MTStars!
         
Cool staff. Thanks for the warm wishes.
Hope everybody here had a good Mother's Day.
If the office staff are rude then all that just isnt worth it!
x
I have found that when you switch over to other accounts that have a full staff then you have no
work anyway because the main people have the account and if they have had it for awhile it seems the clients like that. Sometimes best to hit a new account when they get it to start from scratch. Many times if an account is full of MTs they wont move you on it.
Happy Thanksgiving from all the staff & moderators at MTStars!
 GOBBLE! 
I just want to add that I work for an AWESOME company with great staff and
:)
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