IC Question: How long do you keep your reports for your docs?

ICs, I was curious to see how long do you keep your reports on your computer for the doctors?  Is there a usual time limit? 

Thank you!

• IC Question: How long do you keep your reports for your docs? - MTToo
  • Thank you~ - MTToo
  • When I worked for a single doctor, I - sm
  • I have work going back years - sm -
    • Time varies - MTinNC

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Does anyone have any good tricks for dealing with the long reports with huge segments of "nothing"?  On top of that, the people I am dealing with are ESLs so that's slowing me down enough already.

At this point, all I do is speed up and fast forward but am wondering if there are other ways to compensate for this issue.

Seems like someone would teach them how to pause when they stop dictating! 

It's just straight transcribing with no stopping to verify patient or physician information to start a new note.  I'll trade you for 1 minute long dictations by a little Russian guy?

I do understand the frustration at the duplication of information.  Then again, the copy/paste feature works great at giving more lines for free with no typing.  LOL  I always thought that if I could find a way to simplify the medical record while still utilizing MTs, I'd be rich. 

I used to make $70,000 and up a year and did so for most of the late 80s and 90s (one girl used to make six figures a year working 7 days a week!)  Because we were making more money than the supervisors and Medical Records Directors in hospitals, they began to switch to transcription services which were sprouting up all over the place.  Plus AAMT came into existence and even though in the beginning it claimed it was to fight for transcriptionists (although assured us it was NOT a union), they eventually morphed into an organization that was more management friendly.  They developed the "guidelines" and the 65-char line.  That was the beginning of the end for those high-end wages.  Then all those mickey mouse transcription schools popped up, and now outsourcing overseas.  YES, we're complaining. 

That is SO true!!!!  There is definitely a problem with dictating the appropriate gender when it comes to ESL docs. They tend to go back and forth umpteen times during one dictation, so you really have to pay attention.  Verb tense can also get very confusing.

I agree that sometimes slowing down and concentrating can actually increase productivity. Even though I feel like I'm transcribing like a tortoise, I'm really getting more done than I think when I slow down and allow myself to think.

Just hang in there with QA. They are just doing their job and you need to take a good look at what they are telling you and concentrate on that issue. It's really hard not to take it personally, that's for sure, but it's gonna make you a better Transcriptionist in the long run. On the other hand, if you feel they are truly wrong about an important issue, then challenge them!!  But you'd better have major references to back up your challenge.

Ellen S.

if they even know the English language to begin with, 'cause if they do, they don't practice it.

read the reports after we have transcribed them, but I just had a doc on my account dictate that he wanted the line "Dictated but not read" added to ALL of his reports from now on.  He was mad because he said he requested this to be done a few weeks ago and has been "keeping track" and it hasn't been getting done.

Amazing.

I switched companies and along with my new account came all new PAs (and might I add, quite a few of them) who all make me miserable. They botch the dictations beyond belief and I am left to fix the sentences which look like riddles and are actually confusing after they get done with it.

Change thoughts in the middle of a sentence...start talking and forget where they left off so I am sitting there for another 2 minutes waiting through the ummms and ahhhs and the start of sentences "the patient umm.... ahhh" and I'm waiting for them to say something and they just hang up.

Mine are good for this too... they will dictate an incomplete report and then a few dictations after they will start finishing incomplete dictations, adding in something they forgot to say, or they will say CC a copy to: Dr. ____  on a 4 second report and not say whose report it goes on. This would be easy to figure out if they didnt have 40 dictations and at least 5 hang-ups with about 8 of those 40 dictations being something they want added on to some nameless patient's report.

Had I not switched jobs, I would have had a hard time believing any PA was hard to transcribe...just because I had a good bit of them on my other account and they were all PERFECT speakers.

Now when I see that I have to transcribe a PA-- 

...and I transcribe and read my own reports (I work for a large healthcare co).  Hubby signed a HIPAA form for me to transcribe and read his reports, too.   Now the docs are more careful 

When I mention to physicians that if they send their work out it might be sent overseas they are appalled!  Sometimes they say things like, "So that's why there were so many mistakes."  Companies don't always tell them where the work is being done or by whom. 

I still fault them for trying to save money at our expense, but in a certain sense some of them are being taken advantage of as well.  Perhaps our "enemies" could turn out to be our best allies should a good case make it to Court TV. 

We need to educate the physicians as well as the public. 

I guess it gives them the right to charge PREMIUM prices,  although I

think ER prices are quite pricey enough.  My friends trip through the ER

the other night was a cool $10,000 and all she got was an aspirin.  (she thought

she was having a heart attack and it was GERD.  But to rule it out they gave her

the works; CT scan, CXR, blood work, cardiac enzymes......and on top of that came the doctors (including the cardiologist, oh my) bill.

yeah, and that's why I'm here typing and they're out on their yacht somewhere, right?    But I do try to diagnose, even did this when I worked for a doc in the back office.  And sometimes I was actually right!

They absolutely don't care about quality or any of that jazz, which is why I have always wondered why we as an industry keep beating each other up over issues that doctors couldn't care less about. Not that I think we should all just transcribe any old way we want, but it seems like we act like the slaves out in the mud pit slapping each other around about how much or how little straw to use for the bricks while the slavedriver sits on the side line with the whip completely content with end product either way.

I suppose the answer most would give is that we should take pride in the quality of our work whether they (the doctors) do or not, but I can't get passed the notion that these are the same individuals that the powers that be seem so intent on pleasing and are also the same individuals who would see us all in the soup lines tomorrow looking for the next homeless shelter to sleep in if they had their way. They (the medical profession) will not think twice about putting all transcriptionists out of business at their first opportunity, and yet we as an industry continue to bow to their ridiculous and uninformed demands concerning how to do what we do or their complaints about how much we charge or that we shouldn't charge for line count generated by short forms or macros, etc. They have no clue how many times their butts get saved by transcriptionists on a daily basis.

I've never met a transcriptionist who wouldn't readily agree with the notion that we are part of the health care team, and yet many of us continue to act like we still work for the doctors instead of the patient. Oh well, go figure.

Just venting as well.

without your consent, if they are not considered standard and will probably have to be paid for by the patient out of pocket, unless the patient agrees to pay either up front or if the charge is denied.  At least that's been my experience! Good luck, I hate insurance companies, too!

Isn't she cute? 

I have one doctor who, when she wants to correct something or other always says "This is an aside to the typist." ARGH. I feel like I'm in a Shakespeare play or something - don't those have a lot of "asides"? I always want to scream at her "Don't you know I'm not a TYPIST?? I'M A MEDICAL TRANSCRIPTIONIST, DAMN IT!!!!" Of course she's 80 or something so I shall forever be "the typist" to her.

I have a resident who always says "For transcriptionist, would you...." to get my attention - but when he was new I thought he was saying "Poor transcriptionist..." I always nodded my head in sad agreement until I realized what he was actually saying....

And then there's the doc who loves to complain about his job to me, sometimes in great detail - "Here I sit, waiting for some x-rays to come in so I can make a buck" and "I cannot believe this hospital."

They crack me up!

think for some reason you know exactly what they are going to dictate for ROS so they just basically babble right through it and take a big deep breath at the end.

Or the one like I had today that sounded completely wasted off his butt and even with the speed up or down it still sounded like a drunken drawl. It was ridiculous. It was also dicatated later on Thanksgiving night, so who knows? Maybe doc had a few too many rounds of Thanksgiving cheer and then thought, "Ow thith, I thstill gottsa do my dictatheen."

Report them to your supervisor. It's worked for me in a few cases. It's up to them to pass the word along that the dictator needs to slow down.

I had one guy that I do locally on tapes that suddenly decided that he was going to take his machine and dictate on his way home in the car.  I don't think so pal. I called my local boss and said I wasn't going to do it. His tapes have been clear as a bell ever since because he's doing them in the office again.