I know someone making 60 grand a year with no CMT

• anyone had problems with AAMT responding to you - LH
  • it's not AAMT any longer, rather AIHD...nm - Assn for Integrity of Healthcare Documentation
    • Oh great...now we will have to buy a NEW book with that name.. - SM
    • Really? I keep getting my stuff from them and so far still AAMT...? - sm
      • Read your "stuff" -- it tells you when. - nm
  • Have you called or just emailed? I call and - always get a response.
  • CMT is a waste of money & time. Times are different in the MT - see the rest inside
    • CMT/AAMT - Eeyore
    • I know many who are, though, and I make as much as they do. (sm) - not a CMT -
    • This is your opinion only. - CMT-me
      • Oh no you don't. I have been there. I used to have my CMT and - sm
        • Pure opinion dear. I make an extra 1 cpl with CMT. As well, - My $52K is a decent wage!
          • ONE CENT? That shows its not worth it ROFLMBO!!! - NM
          • I know someone making 60 grand a year with no CMT - sm
          • Very, very few companies pay a CMT more, ... - UTMT
            • CMT/earning potential - where have i been??
              • I have a couple accounts through a medium- - UTMT
      • The name change was not to allow other who work in the industry access.... - mtanon
        • The sole purpose of AAMT was and is to make.. - UTMT
          • TOTALLY AGREE WITH YOU!!! - NM
      • Many of us agree that it is worthless... - UTMT
        • Exactly what I was meaning in post below, but you say it so articulately. Thanks. - thank you
      • It is the opinion of many, many MTs who do not sm - actually
      • ... - Melissa

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IC's risk being considered an employee if they work only for one company. I had a friend with an MTSO that the IRS went after because some of her MT's worked only for her. 

Incorporation was a benefit to me because my business was making money, yet I was paying self-employment taxes on what my business was making. For example, if I have 3 IC's working for me, who bring in $40,000 per year, that is what my BUSINESS is earning, not me and therefore I should not be paying self-employment taxes on my business earnings. So I incorporated, paid myself a small salary for running the business on which I DO pay self-employment tax, and took the rest of the earnings as an S corp. They go right through to my personal taxes but I save the 15% SS tax, which as you can see on 40K, saves me $6 grand per year right there. Also enjoy 401K contributions from my corp, and increased deduction for health insurance.

would not recommend incorporating if making less than 50K per year with a business as there are increased fees and corp taxes too.

Regarding the prior post who said "For insurance, for professional liability insurance, I was told that you have to be incorporated. I don't have a problem with this. If I hired someone to build an addition for me, I would want him/her to have insurance. Why should medical records be any different?"

Medical records are different because the MT carries essentially zero liability. Insurance insures against lawsuits. MT's lawsuits are nearly nonexistent. Many, many, MANY MT's do not carry professional liability insurance. The analogy of a construction company putting on an addition is not equivalent to the MT situation. It would be like asking if your neighbor carries liability insurance against your contractor. Why would your neighbor carry insurance on your contractor if they have no liability? Exactly.

Is he telling you to earn that much or is he being funny? Just my situation, but my hubby would never tell me how much money I had to make or whether I should work part time or full time. Life is too short to work 7 days a week or 12+ hours daily for the almighty dollar!

Now it seems, I'm just scraping by, juggling the utility bills and paying whichever one has sent me the 24-hour disconnect notice this month; it's become a grim miserable job compared to what it was.  I'm nearing retirement age, but I doubt retirement is going to be in my future for a very long time.

The single worst thing that ever happened to us was going from the gross line count to the character count, and not adjusting the line rate upward to parity -- not to mention the adjustments that should have been made to accommodate all the extra time spent struggling to make sense of huge increase in ESL dictations that has occurred over the last 15 years, and of course there should have been COLAs as well, which we all know has not happened.

In the 1980s, with the advent of powerful and affordable PCs, free lance transcription became much more common.  So if you were experienced, disciplined and organized, you could be much better off economically by working for yourself -- although there were definitely advantages to working in-hospital.  There were great benefits and the salary was indeed enough to support a small family (albeit very modestly.) 

For a number of years during that time, many of us worked part time in the hospital for benefits, but made our real money at home.

But in my case, the time came when it just made no economic sense to work in-housel, I was better buying off buying private insurance for major medical care, tax-deferred annuities, and self-insuring the little stuff. 

I would just pick up tapes from the hospital every morning, and drop off the work (which I printed out) from the day before.

I usually had 24 hours to transcribe tapes which I did during school hours, when things were peaceful and quiet. 

I transcribed a couple thousand GROSS lines day.  Every single character line counted, so by taking advantage of headers/footers, creative macros, word expansions, etc., I really boosted my productivity far beyond to what I could do in-house on the self-correcting Selectric, Wang or Mag Card, or whatever 10-years behind technology was currently being used, plus all the office distractions and politics, and I definitely did not to have to work 24/7 to earn a good living. (Oh how I loved WP5.1!)

In fact, 2000 gross lines a day, 5 days a week at 10 cents a line (courier 10-pitch font, one-inch margins) was very very do-able for an experienced productive acute-care MT, provided she had good equipment, good reference books, and stayed focused.  It would take about 5-6 hours a day to get that amount of work done.  So figure the math out for yourselves, that's just a tad under $50,000 a year, certainly not a high standard of living in those days but adequate when it meant you could stay home and be actually be a full time parent when your children were home from school, and very comfortable, if you were married with a working spouse, or had rerliable child support, or social security for your children (if you were widowed.)

If you chose to work some weekends and evenings, it was not that all that difficult to hit that $75,000 a year mark, which I did for a couple of years so I was able to pay the tuition at a good boarding school -- and cruelly thwarted my teen-aged son's only ambition in life, which was to become a high school drop-out.

Things have gotten bad, no doubt about that, and the worst part of it is, is that most of the big MTSOs are still charging the hospitals as much as we used to earn, and sometimes even more, but the MT is no longer earning it, and often can't get enough work to meet the line counts required by the MTSOs for benefits (although the cost of those benefits are reflected in the cost charged to the hospital.) 

I don't know what the answer is, as the electronic immigrant is such a huge threat.

It's pretty darn awful, and I feel very very bad for those of you starting out in this field, and I do hope things change for you (and that someday soon I can retire.)

And the point that the person made is that that she was worth $75,000 a year, not necessarily that she was getting it or could get it, and I absolutely agree with her.  This is a hard tough job if it's done right -- it's mentally tiring, it's hard on your back, your hands, your neck (and your behind.)

It requires a lot of time -- it requires focus, you must stay alert, and must give 100% of your attention to what you are doing 100% of the time, it takes education and brains -- and now a word of truth which my 35+ years experience gives me the right to say aloud -- it's not fulfilling, wonderful, lovable and enjoyable, it's often as repetitious and tedious as an assembly line but infinitely more frustrating.

PS: I recall one of my colleagues from those early years of my career, now gone from this earth, telling me that the 1960s were really the "fat" years, that things actually began to decline salary-wise, in real dollars, in the 1970s. 

I don't know if this will work as I am not very tech minded when it comes to other people's pics. You may have to copy and paste into your browser as this is from our local paper. Anyway........we had 4,000 people. I am proud to be a "right wing extremist." Our reporters gave everybody a chance to have their say. Unlike the CNN wench.

http://photos.mlive.com/photos/grandrapidspress/b96672b959f32da9625921441b5b7949.jpg

IMG]http://photos.mlive.com/photos/grandrapidspress/b96672b959f32da9625921441b5b7949.jpg[/IMG]

to pay him a cool 1 million dollars.  You can check this out at the Medquist website.   I think the CFO makes $350,000 a year, and the head of IT makes $250.000 a year.

P.S.  This does not include the perks, like expense account, car allowance, sign-on bonus, etc. 

I suggest you have your father read my post and explain it to you.  Apparently you have poor comprehension skills.  Talk about ignorance.

My point was NEW immigrants who come here not to become American.  Obviously, this is not apply to all NEW immigrants, because as we know, many of them bust their butts to become American in every way including service in the military.  My point was that so many of the NEW immigrants, meaning those from the last 25-30 years, come with different aspirations than previous groups.  This is documented by social scientists who have been studying this very point for a couple of decades.  Look up some articles in any journal of American sociology or political science and you will find research on this subject.  

 I am perfectly aware of New Spain and New France and even that Russia once owned parts what is now Washington state and Oregon.  Do the people in Northwest US demand to have legal papers printed in Russian because 400 years ago, Russia settled that land?   Are you aware of the language controversy in Quebec, Canada?  We don't need that in this country and having English as our accepted common language has helped prevent some of the fighting and death that results from people coming to blows over language.  Language is the root of "the Troubles" as the Irish call their 100 years of conflict with England.  England passed a law making English the official language and forbad Gaelic in public places, including schools.  Look how that has worked for them.   In the U.S., it has worked because it has been understood as a custom and new immigrants were proud to learn English, because it was a mark of American citizenship.

You need a history lesson - New Spain was SOLD to the U.S. government  and New France was sold to the U.S. government by their respective kings because France and Spain needed money to finance their wars with each other.   So, Spain left voluntarily.

BTW, my brother wrote my parents in English during WWII and his letters were confiscated - is there a group that will protest such actions again Irish-German Americans? 

Wnat to see what ignorace looks like?  Got a mirror?

not impressed one bit

you can make $12.50 an hour being a secretary and be dumb as

dirt.

you can make $12.50 an hour doing data entry and not know one

word of medicine or the other junk we have to know and be responsible

for and get grief from QA about.

you can make $12.50 an hour doing a lot of things and not have to

put up with the junk MTs are having to put up with now.

70k a year, I can have the 850 square foot bedroom if I want. In fact, my home is a mere 2200 square foot, on 5 acres in the country, only worth $450,000 but I paid off the mortgage in full in 7 years, by- yep, you guessed it-- working my MTSO.  I have no debts. I own 4 cars. I have money stuffed in my 401k. The point was made in an earlier post by our beloved Patti, who chooses to live in 1000 square feet - and also put 15K in her retirement account and takes home 50K. When Patti mentioned her home was 1000 square feet, some ignorant troll said  (now say this in a high falsetto) "shocked! my bedroom is 850 square feet! How can you possibly live in only 1000 square feet."  Jealous, no. Anyone who wants to own, maintain, clean their 850 square foot bedroom can be my guest. Me - I go for a little smaller but still nice, with more freedom and lifestyle. That's why I put in my 5-10 hours a week running my service while you're working full time. LOL!

I would ask for at least 11.  If you have been there that long, why not?  I always ask for more than i really want cause you can negotiate.  If you end up with 10.5 that is still a good rate. 

For ESL's I want 11, but I don't get snippy if i have some here and there.  I do one now exclusively and he can be a big pain but i can understand him fine and ESLs are great for making normals because in my experience they repeat A LOT. 

The going rates around here seems to be 8 cpl with many companies...you are doing good at what you have but there is nothing wrong with levering your experience and services for more money.  You have proven yourself already to these people.  If they turn you down you can start looking elsewhere but only do so if you are taking a step up. 

Alright folks let's move this off the word help board because it's become a different discussion.  First of all, I personally believe that we should type what doctors say, everything they say and not change a thing.  So if they say Synthroid 100 mg, leave it.  If they say There was changes.  Leave it.  However, our companies and many hospitals don't agree. 

If you were to try to get a job editing books at a publlishing house you would need a degree in English and you'd get paid a whole heck of a lot more than we do.  But we do the same job, fixing the English of doctors, having perfect punctuation, correcting verb tenses.  Not to mention the medical side, knowing all the drug dosages, correct lab values (yeah we get marked off for those too).  I love it when I have to leave something blank like I just did "H&H 13/4/38"  ???

IMHO we don't get paid enough to do all we have to do.  We are not just typists.  My friend is a nurse and when I told her everything we have to know she told me we could all be nurses!  This is because I carried on a conversation with her about cardiac cath, CABG and people who have IV dye allergies and the compliance issues with Mucomyst.  She was shocked.

We get no respect from many doctors.  I actually had a PCP that I went to when I was sick say that because I was an MT I knew too much about medicine in a really condescending voice.  Had another say then what do you suggest when he tried to tell me he'd done all the possible tests.  Corrected another to his face. 

So call me whatever you want but if I hear the doctor say something that is inappropriate in the same manner that Potassium 132 is inappropriate or Synthroid 100 mg is inappropriate, I'm going to leave a blank.  Maybe the doctor is mad or frustrated but the medical record is a legal document that the patient can get access to anytime they want.  So when the doctor calls a patient a land whale or says she's f-ing pregnant again or is a retard or is an SOB (and I don't mean short of breath), IMO I am covering their butt by giving them a chance to rethink what they say before they put it in a legal document.

I make close to 3,000 dollars a month typing....I'm not sure if anyone thinks that's a lot, but I feel very fortunate to be making this kind of money.  I have been doing this for a little over 20 years.

I hope this helps!