I work on an account that still has tapes and ...sm
Posted By: passing through on 2006-06-06
In Reply to: Any ideas on a letter to possible clients to get started at home? sm - Looking for a nice change....
it is a very profitable account. The line count is twice as good as several of the accounts I have that are digital. To each their own, but there are many doctors out there who do not want to go digital and you will find when they do you might just lose them to VR, as I lost a very good account to that because they figured out how to do it themselves. If the account pays on time, the doctors are easy to understand, and they pay you a good line rate then go for it, tapes or digital.
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My account uses tapes.
Good luck.
I also work from tapes and pretty much plan my day/weekends the way you do. sm
Agree with posters below-you owe nobody an explanation/excuse. It is your business/career to do as you see fit. Good luck.
Same thing with nationals. You work all the time to keep the account caught up when others dont work
and then when they decide to put a whole lot of extra people on your accounts and run you out they could care less about how much you worked.
steady work...gearing up to start new account....but there was no work on Tues as it was a holiday
Be patient with your eyes open....
I have 2 clinics still on tapes, love'em! Also work for a national. Like that too. nm
nm
can you ask for another account to work on? SM
that's what i did. it was too much fretting over whether there was work.
companies won't wake up and stop doing anything. you will have to do it for yourself unfortunately.
You might not work on the account, but YES
x
I can work all I want. I don't have to account
for my hours.
Well, I work for a national, but my account
is a big hospital, doing acute work. It was a heck of a way to learn starting off, but I know it will benefit me in the long run, just one of those days!
Closing in on my 2 years now, I thought about maybe applying at a hospital inhouse here that hires starting out at $20, but once you add all the expenses (not counting any deductions), you come out to about the same. It's just not worth it. It would probably be less stress considering I would work set hours instead of all the crazy ones I have been doing, but then you have to add in at least 2 hours of drive time to that each day. It evens all out I suppose.
The company I work for has one account
that does not want IV at all. They have programmed their VR software to expand out IV, much to the consternation of cardiologists when they dictate IV conduction time and the MT doesn't catch it.
Is it possible some of the account work is going overseas. MQ does offshore you know.
:
I agree, it depends on who you work for BUT also the account
and how long it has been on VR. If it has been on VR for a few years, piece of cake. If it is just starting out on VR - tedious work, low pay as it takes longer to edit than to just transcribe it.
I have been doing VR editing for 4 years now with an account that has been on it that long also...can make up to $50 an hour, and some times as low as $30 an hour when we add new dictators.
Hope this helps.
Or why not hire an IC to work on the account under you? You found it
and it is your reputation and bidding that sealed the account, why not ask IC's to BID on it. You might find somebody who loves derm work and wants the money. Even if you only make 1-2 cpl over your IC it adds up.
I work on an account that just came back from India sm
They had an outsourcing company that sent their stuff to India. They were so unhappy, they brought the account back to be done by AMERICAN MTS.
But the poster below me is right, the government IS doing something, they are making it easier and more financially rewarding to go overseas. One day and sooner than later, the American worker will be so poor and so economically depressed that America will no longer be able to import goods/services from overseas because we can't afford them. By that point, we'll be gardening in our window boxes and stockpiling foods that we will no longer be able to have or afford.
The tip of the slippery slope towards another Great Depression.
Sounds like an account I work on locally
can ya try to focus on ONE thing. I know I would NEVER go to this doctor. He's not sure if he did a colonoscopy or an endoscopy??? Scary.
Anyone work for Sacred Heart or PeaceHealth as an account
Any advice on these I might need to know before I start?
I work in Meditech for a radiology account and have no lag time. sm
There are a few things to try that might help. The first is to try to go through an NT connection if possible through their Citrix. Another is: Disable your virus protection, log in and re-enable the virus protection. I have found this solved my problem.
I am also answering your cut and paste question from your other post: It is HIPPA as the possibility of putting the wrong report on the wrong patient exists. However, I would go above or beyond your company's IS dept (they tend to be the most paranoid) and go to a production person such a Lead or Coordinator or even MTSO. If they are MTs, they tend to be more sympathetic and will often allow cut and paste when IS will not. If you are the only person experiencing this, IS is not going to be too diligent in helping. Worst case scenario? Ask for another account. Sometimes it is an account-specific, computer-specific problem, almost like putting the wrong size tape in a tape player.
work for hospital account - use lots of expanders - nm
x
Wasnt that a rip. They must have called every person on every account to work. I cant possibly
figure that mentality. PLUS we get nothing extra for weekends, nothing extra for holidays ZIP. They overload the accounts and so we have no work. Why would they pay weekends or holidays when they play this game. Somebody is pocketing something but it AINT THE MTs. I hope every MT in that office inundates Mt. Laurel with complaints until they replaced the people that did this and not to mention their STUPID STUPID PICKY MQ point plan. That is a horrendous joke. Somebody up there needs to be removed and quickly.
I work an account where ESLs are better than the American dictators ever hoped to be. sm
There is bad dictation all over - you need to learn to cope with what is out there. Don't be afraid of the ESLs - you can only do what you can do, and for even American dictators, there is just no hope for the report coming out flawless if it is a bad dictator. I have 25 years experience, and there is just the fact of the matter that if junk goes in, junk is going to come out, and experiences helps with figuring out the words, but some words are so badly mispronounced, there is no hope of figuring them out. Blanks are inevitable, but that is why we have QA - they are the next level after the MTs get the rough draft out there. It pays to have a second set or third set of ears, and it is part of the plan - it is not all on just you to get it right on the problem dictations.
I work an account that the doctor names scare you half the death, sm
all foreign names, but the voices are pure heaven - very clear and good enunciation, even the one that have a tangible accident. I feel lucky to have an ESL account like that.
I know a PA from South Carolina at a hospital I used to work at that would bring you to tears. ESL is not necessarily a bad thing.
The national I work for usually offers jobs to the in-house people when they acquire an account. nm
nm
What is the difference between an acute care account and a multispecialty account??..nm
nm
I've never had a problem switching from account to account.
The problem I had was being switched too soon. If I don't get one account spec solidly in my memory with QA feedback on mistakes before starting another, I get confused. The other problem I had with former jobs was inconsistent QA. One person tells you one thing, another person tells you another.
Lately, I don't have a problem with it. Right now, my binder has 8 account specs (some I've never had to use) and I'm picking up a new weekend job for a while. The terminology and report formats stay basically the same. It's just all those little preferences. LOL
what is your account and specialty on the account?
no one is watching. tell us all about osi.
Tapes
Can you reuse the same tapes (standard size) over and over? I have been for a while and I was wondering if they eventually get bad.
Thanks!
Tapes
Tapes are great, they fly. Working for a national also, 50% of the time and tapes the other 50%. Enjoy the tapes much more, make much better money (gross line count, not 65 ch). Have always set my word expansions up in Word itself. That way, no matter who I work for I use my own version of Word and my expansions are always there. Enjoy the tapes. Hope this helps. PS. They print at the site for me.
This happens a lot with tapes too.
I have noticed that with digital there are more safeguards. When the office downloads the files to their computer they usually save it on their computer. Once they send it to you, you save it to your computer too. Sometimes the doctor erases the file before all this happens, but when the doctor erased a part of a tape there was no backup then either.
From below regarding tapes
Okay, I started typing today on tapes picked up yesterday. (I deliver between 10 and noon) So I could have done then yesterday but had graduation for nephew. So I started today at 5 o'clock and it is now close to 11. I have typed, printed, showered, made deliveries and pick-ups, went to bank, know what I have to do tomorrow and made $201. No sudden files sent, no sporadic files sent, have the complete day's dictation , and can schedule the rest of the day and tomorrow morning the way that I want. So this works for me and I appreciate the input from Tikki and all, but will keep doing this if they want to continue to use tapes. All my accounts are within a 4 mile radius from each other and the majority at one of the hospital medical buildings so it takes me 35 minutes to do the deliveries from walking out my front door and coming back through. I respect everyone's opinion and hopefuly you respect mine. I get exercise as it is half a mile from my car to home round trip. -- Live on the river in a floating home. Patti
I'm still doing tapes too!
Some docs don't like to change. If you have a good relationship with the office staff, then they shouldn't have a problem using digital. Most doctors do not want voice recognition because they want their reports edited. If the doctor is a taper user, he very well may adjust to digital and just have his secretaries upload the dictation to send to you. You may have to spend some time in the office instructing them on how to do it. You may want to Google "FTP sites", and see where that leads. Good luck!!!! 
sum tapes
Does anyone still use the Sum Tapes and Transcript keys for practice? If so, what is the copyright date on them? Mine are 1994. They seem to be a little out dated. Does anyone have any newer ones?
tapes
I agree, I do tape accounts, a small one, but they do treat me well. I also type straight from the doctors notes on a major account, nice people, too. We make a good living.
Tapes
I have had that happen a couple of times and I have a friend that just transfers the entire tape to a new casing and attachs that. Only rarely have we lost any dictation or have it become so distorted that we can't hear it. Perhaps a couple of sentences. Guess I have been lucky. But again, I would write to Maxwell and tell them that you got a bad batch or lot number. Good luck.
YES you can fix the tapes yourself
see entry above; OPERATE ON THE TAPES.
tapes to wav/mp3
there is a program online - inexpensive - that you hook you tape player up to your computer, play the tape and have ability to modify the tape sounds, editing etc - play it as a wav or mp3. Polderbit is the one I use - you can Google - tape to wav and many will come up
tapes
I have been with them for 10 years and they have only asked for me to reprint twice, that's not bad.
You have tapes -- how do you log in
Guess I am a little slow. You type from tapes, you deliver back on paper, how do they know when you log in???? You don't have to log in to retrieve the dictation nor send it so please explain to me. Guess my old age is catching up with me as I don't understand.
Tapes
This may be a sillyquestion, but I have always worked digital, so I don't know this. How are tapes played with a foot pedal? Thanks
Tapes.....
That sounds really HIPAA compliant.
Tapes
You're right, this isn't very common anymore. However, people do still do it. Myself included. I charge by page. I charge $5 a page. This is how it works: I type everything in Word, then get the line count from the Word statistics. I divide this by 55 (55 lines per page) and multiply by 5. This is how I bill. I just make up a bill in Word and sent it to the clinic twice a month. You will have to get a machine with a foot pedal that plays cassettes though, and those are not cheap, but you can make pretty good money if you charge this way.
GOOD LUCK!
Erased tapes
They request that I erase the tapes and I have disabled my erase on my machine, I just accidentally somehow picked up two tapes that were not yet transcribed -- I have two bins -- two different colors --but was in a hurry and picked up the wrong ones and pushed them right through the eraser. Today when I went to transcribe I found two tapes that had already been done in the "To be transcribed" bin and had been delivered and the ones that I knew had to be done were nowhere found and so I am by process of elimination assuming that is what I did. I remember erasing two tapes and it was the wrong two tapes. I am so organized and have always had this fear and so after nearly 20 years it finally came true -- one I could accept but both of them -- that is the problem. But can't fix it now. Thanks for your input.
Erased tapes
Good for you!
Maxell Tapes
Just thought you would find this of interest. I know we don't use tapes too much, but all these years of trying to fix broken tapes - I contacted Maxell about a tape that blew off the spool on side B. They guarantee their tapes, just mail back to them at a N.J. address - link below - via regular mail from NV to N.J., and it was returned within 3 days - not only do they fix it for free - but send it back via Federal Express, at their expense + give you a free tape. Wow! Joyce
http://www.maxell-usa.com/Content/Pages/Page.asp?Section=maxellusa&department=aboutus&Line=maxellcorp&Product=contact
How about the docs that use the tapes sm
to dictate, then use the call in system, put the phone by the recorder and re-record the whole stinking tape via the call in. To me, that is the worst. It turns out to be 30-40 minutes of dictation and they sound like they are dictating from the grave. Yuk.
practice tapes sm
As usual, your answers are so much appreciated. I love this site, helping others is so important, I do it whenever I can as well. I believe in karma. Thanks again!
I was on my way to pick up tapes. nm
nm
Practice tapes from?
I have heard practice tapes some give out that are almost perfect dictation- definitely not what you run into when you transcribe. Are you doing the "goodie" tapes or are they the real McCoy? The practice ones I have heard put in their periods, paragraph. Ha, very seldom hear that in real. What kind of work will you do, speciality or the 4s? I have my equipment as fast as it can possibly go and my salary has gone down in the past 4 years 20,000$ from the constant outsourcing the companies are doing. My speed is between 130-140 wpm and I make good only because I have my nose to the grindstone most of the day. By the way, independent as well but my company asked me for certain hours and which days. I have seen numerous posts on here saying you do not have to do it -but I wanted to work for this particular place and I accept it.
practice tapes from...
Practice tapes are real; slurring run-on sentences, gurgling muffled words, you name it. But, she gave me the printed reports to go with them, so if I really get stuck, i can look at them and find the answer. If you don't mind my asking, how long have you been in this, and what's your cpl? You work for an agency? Yes, my speed is concerning me. Thanks for your reply.
Maxell tapes
Just FYI - if they break, Maxell will repair, send back via FedEx and give you a new tape - beats Dr. having to redictate, if you are still working with tapes. Joyce
I just had to comment on the tapes...sm
I've been MTing for 10+ years and just in the last 1-2 years the tapes the docs have used are coming off the spool at the end of the tape. My doc got so mad and asked me to fix if I could. I would take these things apart and Scotch tape the tape back onto the spool. I have fixed about 10 of these now. Some were Maxell and some Sony I think. I wonder if any of you have had this happen. That's all. Just thought I'd share.
CAN'T UNSCREW SOME TAPES
Unfortunately, some of the newer tapes don't "unscrew" anymore, or at least there are no screws there. Last time I paid someone to fix one it was $85.00. I used to fix these myself, but wonder if anyone knows how open the newer tapes without screws?
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