It takes a long time to become familiar with

• Operative Notes - Loves to Type
  • Yes at my company. - LK
  • The only place I have heard of where - sm
    • Nope... - absolutely
  • Why would you think ops might pay more? - Love ops
    • OPs are harder, and apparently only us 'oldies' love them. - nm
      • Ops always my favorite - LK
      • I love op notes. - Newbie MT
    • It takes a long time to become familiar with - MQMT
  • I DO! nm - absolutely
  • Nope - nm - Truths

The messages you are viewing are archived/old.
To view latest messages and participate in discussions, select the boards given in left menu

are making big $$ you won't make any money.  Also, if you forget to rerecord header info you're out of luck.

You can get an adapter from Radio Shack for about $15 and rerecord to a cassette player, in which case you'll need a transcriber, or record to your computer and I'm not sure how that is done.

As I stated last week when you asked this question, you need to look into digital phone service, something like Vonage, or most high-speed internet services also offer it. 

You could also buy prepaid phone cards at Sam's Club, where they are fairly cheap, but you're still talking about $100+/mo.   My digital phone is $34.95/month and you can keep your landline or switch it to digital, which is what I did. 

I'm a member of NFO and after about three months I have about 970 points, and you need 1,000 points for just $10.  I only receive about two invites a week for surveys, don't know how to get anymore than that.  I'm also a MyPoints member.  I usually just get the 5 points for reading the message and never buy anything, so it takes a long time to get points added up for me.  Maybe once a year I do redeem them for about $20 worth of gift cards. 

The people who advertise that you can do the surveys in your spare time and make all this extra money make it sound like you can just log on to a site and they are sitting there waiting for you, and you can do as many as you want, all day long, for as much money as you want to make.  Wouldn't that be nice! 

I have never heard of or seen the car advertising thing except on cabs and public transportation, oh, and of course delivery trucks and cars. 

You're both worth it - go for it!!

Here is a link regarding the lawsuit from FEBRUARY, 2005 for which you will need Acrobat reader.

http://deflaw.com/medquist_add.pdf

Here is MQ e-mail which was followed up by hard copy in US mail regarding MT lawsuit. 

July 14, 2005

We would like to thank you for your continued service and support. We know that the key to our success is the people who work so hard for our customers everyday.

At MedQuist, we are determined to become the medical transcription provider of choice for statutory employees. Over the past several months, with your help and input, we have been working on developing a pay plan and comprehensive benefit program that will enable us to set the standard in the industry. We recently announced significant changes to our benefits program for full time employee transcriptionists and within the next few months, MedQuist will be announcing a new pay plan that will address the feedback we received from medical transcriptionists in response to our survey on pay issues.

The lawsuit is VERY MUCH ALIVE AND WELL and as some of the more sophisticated posters realize, it takes time for DISCOVERY allowing both sides to attack and defend their position.  And MQ stock is STILL delisted as not even MQ can figure out cooked books based on illegal billing for which ANOTHER lawsuit is STILL pending against MQ by the clients.  And as the MQ stock remains delisted for cooked books and illegal billing the shareholders in MQ stock have YET ANOTHER lawsuit still pending. 

kind of help in there. They have one road open. Everything is flooded. There is no airport to land at. Gas is scarce. 90% of the gas that came from that area is no longer functioning. Cars are being stolen from places just to get out. Thugs are shooting at helicopters trying to evacuate critically ill patients. You've got groups of thugs shooting everything up and steeling anything and everything, but they don't realize mostly everything they take will have to be left behind.  Everyone wants help now but it takes time to put together a plan of these proportions. Nobody was prepared for this because they didn't think it would happen. You have people commandering vehicles with guns for their own use that are being brought in to help evacuate. The only boats you see are very small ones because the big ones can't come in and work. The water is not deep enough.

 A lot of people stuck there are making the situation worse for everyone else because they are helping to put off rescues that can happen by shooting at vehicles, shooting at police officers, setting intentional fires just to get the police over to the fire so they don't come chase them for looting or terrorizing others. You have idiots walking around with AK-47s down Canal Street.

Shephard Smith described itbest the other day. Made me think too since I live in Fla. The day after a hurricane you hear chain saws going, you have people cleaning up, you get out there and assess the damage. They could not do that because for them in NO it was not over. The floods were getting worse and rising. There were no people assessing damage, no chain saws cutting down trees, no power trucks checking out downed power lines just because they couldn't get into the city. Everything is blocked. The closest city to them that has power is 90 miles away. That means no gas for them. Yes, they're bringing buses and stuff but it's very slow going. Trying to figure out how to do everything and coordinate everything w/o communication to others is very hard.

One of the guys in the news conferences said yesterday that he spent 18 months at ground zero. They are looking at being in NO much longer because that is much more damage than what he saw at ground zero.

You get paid for work you did a month ago.  Paychecks were short.  No answer when questioned about how they arrived at their line counts.  Advertise holiday bonus and $1500 bonus for acute care - do not know of anyone who got one.  Probably just management cronies.  They have great accounts but it is difficult to get lines.  All the work is straight type with lots of looking up because they have teaching facility accounts, so it is difficult to set up templates.  All the better work I am sure goes to preferred MTs or farmed out elsewhere.  The platform is not transcription friendly, lots of looking up and spreadsheets, and they do not pay for headers and footers.  They also micro management big time. 

General question for you all. I recently applied with a company that took a month getting me through their hiring process only to be told that one of their accounts dropped them so they could not hire any more MTs. Now I've applied somewhere else and interviewed, a company that sounds like a great company, but it's been about 7 days since the interview and have yet to hear back. I interviewed with them last Wednesday and was told that I would hear back one way or another by the end of last week. I sent a follow up email yesterday and have not heard anything. How long do these companies typically make you wait before hearing something back? How long before I should give up and apply somewhere else? Thanks.

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. 

And, I must confess to a bit of stupidity ....... the description talks about foot switches or whatever -- what's that about? 

Thanks for sharing! 

I try to encourage new MTs to learn as much as they can from their experiences.  The reason that companies do not hire new MTs is because they worry about production and having to utilize their QA staff.  I know it is a catch 22, but that is why it is best to try to work on-site for at least a year to gain some experience.  Most companies require a certain line count each and every day, which can be tough on a new MT that has to research and look things up.  I'm with you, not against you, and wish you all the best.  With anything, take the good advice and leave the bad advice alone. 

I was working for an attorney and he wanted me to get into court reporting so I would be able to travel with him as his private court reporter in his cases. I checked around and there was only 1 school in my state. It was a 3 year course and cost $10,000. Of course, I had to say no, as I couldn't afford it.

I had also checked at our county courthouse for transcribing the tapes and they showed me the ins and outs. For a job there, I didn't need schooling, just the smarts, was told that type of job is solid once you get in the door, but not to depend on it (waiting), as nobody quits. They retire...and the girls I talked to were my age, so that bummed me out, too. Gave up that idea, too.

MT was my 3rd choice. It's okay, but too stressful anymore.