I started in the file room of the urology office I worked. And I was not
Posted By: tired fingers on 2007-11-18
In Reply to: just curious how did everyone get started doing MT? - sa
going to be a file clerk for the rest of my life. I only had 2 semesters of terminology, no other professional schooling. They had a fresh from a Mayo Fellowship peds urologist coming in and needed somebody to help with the typing. First it was half file-room and half transcription. Finally he was so busy, I became full time. I was there from 1990 until 2003. I then left to free-lance and start my own business. He has since moved to Arizona and I still type for him after all these years.
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I started in the file room of a 6 doctor urology office....
The file room in any office is a nuclear dumping ground...any paper that nobody knows what to do with gets dumped there. Then and there I made up my mind that I was NOT going to be a file clerk for the rest of my life.
I actually started by filing part time and typing part time. When we got a new Peds Urologist in the office, fresh from a fellowship at Mayo, I was right there. We used tapes back then as that was in the early 1990's. As he could fill up a 2 sided tape with 8 hours of seeing patient's, the other girl in the office did not want any part of his work and left it for me. The rest, as they say, is history.
I had no professional training, just 2 semesters of medical terminology and a killer spelling ability.
After I had typed urology, I was then farmed out to our other offices and I learned GI/GU, family practice, sleep labs etc.
I now work for a major hospital on the west side of Michigan and still type for my Peds urologist. The only difference is that he now has his practice in AZ, not MI.
If you can find somebody willing to take a chance on you with no experience, jump on it with both feet. You will be glad you did.
I started out in the file room of a 6 doc urology practice.
I started in the file room and worked my way up to full time transcriptionist. I took 2 semesters of med terminology at our local CC and haven't looked back since. I now have my own small transcription business and also work full time for a major hospital here in Michigan. My cubbie mate spent 7K on her program and degree and was no further ahead than I was.
It can be done.
Started in 1979 when I was 18, worked in office at MQ while it was still
.
Have room just for my office
I have a really big house and not that many people so have my own comfy quarters. I have a television in the room and it is on all the time but not a distraction for me, rather just sound around and the news when I need it.
Right now my office is in the family room...
we have a separate living room also...it is fine for now because I have an 8-year-old and a 15-month-old that need my attention so I can't be too far away...but we are planning on moving and I want an extra room for an office/playroom...maybe try some of those noise-reducing headphones if you can't escape the noise...
Have no office. Just the corner of the dining room. nm
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My office is in a separate room, yet close enough
I can hear what is going on. I have a shock collar that I put on my dogs to keep them quiet when they are outside (I don't have to shock them but very rare occasion). I work late afternoon/early evening so that part of my schedule, pets and husband are in bed and I have total peace and quiet.
Check with your tax person for certainty but I have a room solely used for my home office and I even
:)
I deduct all expenses that relate to my home office-% of utilities, taxes, repairs to that room, --s
mortgage (we do not plan to sell our house so this deduction will not affect us)as my office is used only for that purpose, internet, phone, I print out a daily schedule so paper/ink, computer repairs, pens, pencils, tape, staples, file cabinets, storge bins for tax recepts/tax returns,file folders. Anything/everything I use to do my job.
I was using mileage for another account where I pick up tapes every day, but found for me the time it took to keep track of the mileage, write it down, add it up was not worth the effort so I quit doing it this year.
Our office just started it. Not sure yet how it will go.
;
don't print for them. Send the file to their office...
you might as well start smart. Push the advantages of them having the file in their office. Doctor gave wrong physician name? No problem! They don't have to wait for you. They correct it in their own Word file. They need to archive their transcription. You however are required by HIPAA to only hold it long enough to do billing. So that is why you, smart business person that you are, send it to their office in a digital format.
1. Can anyone or everyone recommend a good medical spell checker that interfaces with Word? Stedman's
2. What about an Expander to work with Word? I know some use Instant Text, but at least one says she uses the Word Autocorrect feature. (I think.) Does the Word autocorrect hold a bunch....can you put whole reports into it...large capacity? I only use ShortHand because I have a Meditech account and Shorthand works with all Windows based applications. Some of the other ones didn't. Will defer this to other MT's.
3. You all mentioned that the docs usually supply their letterhead and to use plain copy paper for subsequent pages. Does the MTSO usually supply the paper or the docs? Same question with sticky paper...that sounds expensive!
Write a macro to put the letterhead into a header on the letters he dictates. Then they can use plain paper to print the whole file.
Think about whether he wants logs or not. They can be good (line count) but a pain. Not sure if you make any money off of it or not. Look for ways to streamline your billing, i.e. don't be telling him you will take off for the ones where he dictates his standard paragraph, etc. and make line counting a nightmare. Most of all, use what is already out there...i.e. why pay for a TASP when you can send stuff over the internet for free. Why DRIVE to deliver transcription when you can send it over the internet for free...get it?
inexpensive tips you gals can think of that can be gotten ready now besides the main transcriber? (Would want to wait on that to see which type the office uses.)
Now that I have the ball rolling, I am also going to contact the two MTSOs that I know locally and ask if they have any overflow. Might also send a sample psych report to my shrink and see if he can spread the word. Scary stuff, but you gals really helped! Thanks so much for all the encouragement!! 
I worked for co. that started doing this and that
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I am glad I was sitting in an office with experienced MTs when I first started.
I think I have a decent ear for accents, but I can't imagine doing ESLs for acute care when you are a newbie without having a trainer sitting at the next desk to interpret now and then. Otherwise I'd have cried at times.
I started too but home office got moved to bedroom. sm.
Now have to use earphones when husband is sleeping. I actually prefer the earphones just because my speakers weren't the best but it worked well the other way too.
I've been in MT for 20 years. Started out in the office at a hospital.
Switched to working for services from home for a while and now I work for the same hospital I started out at, but I work from home now. So I guess you can say I've come full circle and now I'm back where I started. I much prefer being an employee of a hospital versus an IC or employee of an MTSO.
It may be that your user profile in EXText is not set up to allow you to add normals. I've found with services they don't give their MTs a whole lot of freedom with their software. 
I started part-time in a doc's office while still in high school. sm
That was in 1984. My career just bloomed from there......
I started using it when I worked for Rodeer. They had used PRD at one time
I like the simplicity of it, and the fact that's it's fast compared to others I've used. I'm not sure why that is.
It doesn't have any prompt that reminds you of your expansion, so you have to have a system of remembering, which is another thing I prefer. The reminders only get in my way and slow down my production.
I sure wish I worked in your office!
We hardly ever get an update, we run out of work, we never get answers to our questions, raises are few and far between.... its definitely an office to office, management to management thing! I hope MQ management reads some of these posts and get ideas on how they could make their office better and happier!
Ive worked Sundays since I started transcribing 18 years ago!
..but i know that they always need to be covered and people keep getting sick and having operations... holidays too. we are in one of those kind of jobs. i love having time off during the week to get things done though.
Before I started my own business, worked in a hospital in-house with taxes taken out & then went hom
was getting with shift differential 23.80 when I left. Your pay seems extremely low, you could make more as an IC seriously.
I worked at one job where the office manager would
go to the gas station on Friday afternoons to buy a case of beer for the employees. It was his version of "corporate culture". As the only female working there, it wasn't a great place to work anyways. The guys told me that the only reason I got hired was because I looked good in a skirt and the office manager was going through a divorce. My resume spoke for itself, but the comments, which got harsher after a few beers, did create a hostile work environment.
Because think of the reverse, when you worked in the office...
did you ever see the director of med rec ask doctors to dictate their old stuff, so there would be enough work for MTs? when we were low on work in the hospital,a deficiency list would be sent out, and then boom a bunch of dictation...
hospitals are doing anything and everything they can to cut costs, even as mentioned above, hiring ICs on the side. health care is purely a business now, and I would bet not a day goes by every hospital in America asks the question, how can we cut back on the cost of dictation?
if that were not true, you would not have the HUGE push for the technology and the HUGE push for outsourcing, overseas or not.
think about this, also. we are only working at home for these companies, because hospitals decided it would be cheaper than paying health benefits for full-time MTs, office space, etc etc.
I do not put anything past people who are 100% money-driven these days.
you do make a great point, though, about the billing and DRGs, etc., but I still think they are told to 'cool-it' whenever they can...
I worked in a physician's office as well.
Normally they get paid only a percentage of that. If your mother has insurance she can pretty much disregard that initial bill. The hospital my parents used also chopped off a large amount due to their fixed income. The worst part about this system is that people with no insurance and who do not qualify for the indigent write-off have to cough up the whole thing.
I'm poorer than when I worked an office MT job, but - (s/m)
- I'll probably live longer, too! My blood pressure has dropped 20 points (for real!) since I stopped having to deal with the annoying little "management clique" at my old job. I've also lost 10 pounds, mainly because now I only eat when I'm hungry, (usally while still working, so it's a fast meal), and not because I'm ticked off, or because I want to get away from the office. So I'm definitely eating less. If I need to run a quick errand in the middle of the day, I don't have to drive like a maniac and nearly wreck my car (or anyone else's) worrying about getting back to my desk at a certain time. I just work later at night.
It's not that I agree with what most employers think MT is worth, but I made a conscious choice to get out of the rat-race and the back-stabbing office politics, and live a saner, quieter life. Meanwhile, I'm dealing with the added poverty by clipping more coupons, buying mostly generic products, and recycling aluminum. When I start getting itchy about moving out of my crummy, low-income apartment, I just go online and see what I'd have to pay to move up to a better apartment, and it gives this one a lot more appeal. And it sure beats living in my car. ;p
Back in the days when we all worked in an office
we got this new manager who I disliked immediately. She couldn't spell every day words, she had absolutely no background in MT and figured she was doing somebody to get the position. We had been promised an MT as our next manager. She said she could type 85 wpm and she believed she could handle the job - HA. We had an MT come in to interview and test and she had to ask me how to turn on the computer and how to print the report. They company lost the account and it closed down that office and the manager couldn't get another job and had to move back home with mom and dad.
I had a man looking for his wife to be able to do something where they could work and travel and he said his wife had a business degree and he felt she could do the job too. I also had an associate whose husband got fired AGAIN and she called me wanting to know how she could do what I do, like she could start tomorrow.
I've decided I'm going to tell people I'm a medical langauge specialist from now on and when they ask me what that is I'm going to say I'm a translator.
May I ask which office your all worked for. Sounds very familiar.
:
When I worked pathology office in a hospital
My experience was that I worked 3 times as hard for a set wage than I ever did as an MT - and in medical records as MT earned set wage plus incentive.
At pathology lab, we were responsible for getting there first thing in the morning and transcribing all the micro before 10 a.m. so the pathologists could then look at slides and dictate the gross report. Doctors tried to get the gross reports back to us by 1 p.m. -- because they had to be typed by 3 p.m. so the doctors could sign the reports, and get them back to us so we could get them sorted and in the mail before we went home. In addition, we fielded phone calls, took messages for pathologists, searched for and mailed slides when other labs requested them, provided courier coverage to transport slides and things between our lab and hospital lab in the next building, and when we had a spare minute, we entered Pap smear results from precoded sheets used by the technicians reading the Pap smears (like between 10 a.m. and noon, if we had all the micro typed)!!! Every day was hurry up and meet this 2-hour deadline, then hurry to meet the next 2-hour deadline...
I learned a lot of terminology -- but I would have to be very hungry to do it again. It is hard to describe or comprehend a pathology secretary job unless you have actually been there, done that -- you will either love it or hate it... good luck.
I worked in house in a doctor's office and it was the same for me...
and I had to answer phones, make copies, et cetera, basically was an MT/secretary...and I hated it...I am making much more money now working at home part-time...
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.
I know a lot of people it helped (I worked in a doctor's office) SM
BUT you have to really want to quit before you start it. It doesn't make you want to quit - it just helps you w/ the depression and the withdrawal symptoms that come along w/ quitting. Good luck.
A nice sunny room just for me in our finished lower level. Love my cocoon room.
:+
Early in my career I worked for a service in the office. I gave my notice after almost two years...
with them because I got a job with a hospital that paid better and had better benefits. I gave my notice and the office manager made my life heck for my remaining two weeks. He gave away my desk, my chair, my transcriber (we were still transcribing cassettes back then). I spent the next two weeks shuffled between workstations and using the crappiest equipment they had. He also refused to give me any help on my account. It was a huge family practice from which I would get at least seven 90 minute tapes a day from them. Before I gave my notice, I was the lead on the account and had three other people helping. When I gave my notice, he couldn't spare anyone to help me and I got several tapes behind. I kept telling him I was behind and he would just say do what you can.
Long story short, he tried to stiff me on my last paycheck because he said my account was way out of turnaround time and I had cost them money. He had told the owner of the service that I had never asked for help and that I purposefully held tapes back to screw them. I ended up taking them to small claims court to get my money.
Some people are just ugly people that take EVERYTHING personally. You can't win with people like that. They are unprofessional. I wouldn't worry about your boss' attitude. In a couple of weeks, he'll just be a memory.
I have never had my own room. I shared a room with my sister, went away to college sm
and had a roommate (whom I am still close to) for 4 years, moved back home and back to sharing a room with my sister while she went to a local college and then got married. In fact, after 17 years of marriage, this is the first time in my life that I have had my own dresser, not just the top two or bottom two drawers!
I could never live alone. Not for fear but for loneliness. I like my alone time but I love to have people around.
Urology. Thoughts?
Posterior right renal mass, exophytic, and measuring up to 3.1 cm in maximum dimension. This has Hounsfield attenuation numbers between 50 and 60 which is too high for benign simple cyst although this may be a proteinaceous or bled into cyst.
A 2.7 cm exophytic cystic mass involving the posterior mid-pole of the left kidney, somewhat hyperdense, possibly representing partially mildly hemorrhagic cyst.
Degree of malrotation involving the right kidney.
Within the right lung base peripherally, there is a nonspecific 3 mm nodule. Six-month follow up is recommended.
This has the holy living hell scared out of me. Mets?
Appreciate any thoughts; urologist appt. Sept. 27.
Urology to India
The urology office I work in only has me full time in the office for 6 physicians and 2 NPs. We send out what I can't handle. They started using a transcription company and guess where it was going? India!!!! Let me tell you it came back a mess and I had to deal with it, after 6 months they are finally letting someone locally do it for the same price. That makes me very happy! I can't believe doctors and patients don't care if their dictation goes to India. Our local hospital says NO!!!
Used to work for urology and
they say at least 6 weeks for all the swimmers to be gone. Make sure he is protected!!!
LOL typical man wanting to make sure his business is still in order.
Urology, Radiology and Psych
Hi! I'm new to the board, but I saw your question. I did contract for VA hospitals in my area for years, and I got a ton of urology, some psych (those were very long reports!) and then ended up just doing their radiology.
Does anyone have any good urology sites?
Need some clarification on C-phone dictation and some websites for urology sm
I will be covering the transcription for a urology clinic. I was briefly told that the doctors dictate to a C-phone that goes directly to a base office. Then the file is e-mailed to their office where they can access the dictation. Does this sound right or are they accessing the file from the base office through FTP and then downloading it. Also, doesl AOL work OK to access files or do you need another FTP provider. Not sure how they are doing the work, but any help would be appreciated. Need some good website for urology, Just want to be prepared. Always ask the experts! Thanks.
Good nephrology/urology site? Thnks, nm.
a
Rename your normal.dot file to something else then restart Word. It will create a new file.
x
I think it is the same type of file, so rename it and replace your autocorrect file with your DQS us
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Help..I lost my word file. How can I retreive a file that has been changed? sm
I was working on a large file and had saved it in Word. I then went back to work on the file and hit a key that made the page go blank. When I went to close the document it asked me to save any changes on the document. I answered yes, and now when I click on that document it is all blank! Shouldnt the previous info saved be there, even if the current stuff is not? Please help me!! Thank you
Depends on the file format of the Short Cuts file.
ShortHand comes with a utility file that can import various formats. You can get that file with the trial download of SH.
Depends on the file format of the Short Cuts file.
ShortHand comes with a utility file that can import various formats. You can get that file with the trial download of SH.
...with your user.aco file. Save your autocorrect file to somewhere else. nm
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You can save the SH file in a text file and import to IT that way. sm
You may have to do some cleanup in the SH text file, but it sure would be faster than re-entering them all manually.
File taxes under the name on file w Social Security....
Name on W2 doesn't have to match, but your tax return has to match SS records. They don't want your marriage license or anything else. Did that for 13 years as instructed by IRS. Didn't have to change it with SS until state changed rules requiring drivers license to match SS records. Still use my maiden name in some limited circumstances.
Have most people had good luck with their MQ office closing and moving to the regional office. Have
things gotten better or worse for you.
Yes, I lost mine. I upgraded the Office 2000 package to Office 2003. sm
I have over 2000 autocorrect entries and lost them all as well as my supplemental dictionary for my Stedman's spellcheck. Lots of grief!
Maybe you will be lucky and not lose anything. Good luck to you.
Might be able to rent one from an office supply or office machine repair shop
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