MT profession getting lower

• MT positions - Francine
  • I agree with you, but sm - Appreciated MT
  • MT profession getting lower - Francine
  • Yes, I get upset, but then just move on - to the next ad.
    • or - AMG
      • You're right if you're single it's tough. - sm

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So I should get a hobby so I won't care, like you?  A hobby isn't going to pay the bills.  I can't afford a hobby because in addition to working for a living, I also have to study in a different career field in my spare for fear that eventually transcription will be strictly an offshore operation!

Aargh.  It happened all day yesterday.  When I brought in text that was all caps

IMPRESSION:

and had lower case on keyboard (as always do), it reverses keyboard commands.  This is driving me c-r-a-z-y.

I would never, ever lower my rates.  Is the one doctor in the group that is complaining a constant whiner?  He may just be a tightwad that still has the first .01 he ever earned.  Think about it - we complain about the cost of gas increasing and the cost of groceries increasing, but those businesses sure aren't going to drop the price of their product due to our complaining just to keep our business.  You run a business and the point of that is to earn money.  If you or a family member had to see this particular doctor, would he drop his office visit rate because you complained about his bill?  Never!

Not only that, these are cardiologists - one of the elite money makers in the medical profession. 

Write a note stating that you understand his concerns about the cost, but state that in spite of your expenses increasing along with everything else recently, you will agree not to go up on your rate for a year instead.  Tell him while there is less expensive out there, it comes back to the old saying of, "you get what you pay for." 

This is old, but has anyone read this??  I must research further what the final outcome was.  While I totally agree with what they are doing and why, I totally DISAGREE with their final recommendation for standardizing line counts. VBC is not the way to do it.  

About three weeks ago I began a position with a local health care company (transcribing for local acute care hospitals but part of a national chain).

We are not really transcribing, at least not by my definition (21 years of experience).  Rather, we are recording medical ShortHand (abbreviations [even in DIAGNOSES section], shortened medication names, slang, contractions, etc.).  On the one hand, they claim they want you to type it verbatim (no expansions, additions, etc.), yet OTOH they say to delete redundancies, repetitions, etc., which is hardly verbatim. We are not allowed to expand, add to, or correct ANYTHING except number and tense dictated by ESL docs, who comprise about 60% of the dictators.  In addition, certain dictated terms are to be abbreviated (e.g., "emergency room" transcribed as "ER").

The supervisor had the gall to look me right in the eye and deliver a harangue about how these are "legal documents, and we have to transcribe EXACTLY what they say."  (Conveniently disregarding the bit about deleting redundancies and the other "allowed" changes.)  So ALL of my previous employers, AAMT, etc. did it wrong, and THEIR crackerjack legal department is smarter than everyone else?!     Don't think so.  Cutting costs is the game they're playing; everyone can see that.

Excerpt from a typical report looks like this:  Wrote scrip for vanco 100, patient also to take aspirin 81 and will return next week. I don't think .... [blah blah blah]

AAMT taught me to create a complete, coherent, grammatically correct document that doesn't look like alphabet soup.  Needless to say, I don't feel good about what I am creating and HATE THIS JOB!!

I'm just curious if this is happening elsewhere.  With all of the emphasis on "cutting costs,"  I have to think that it is.

Thanks for listening to my splenic venting.

I have been doing transcription for many years now.  For many of those years I was paid 9 cents/line per 70 character count with the WordPerfect 5.1 (DOS) program.  I have now been switched over to Microsoft Word and there is a variation in word/line count and a drop in my pay.  Can anyone explain this please?

Was setting up a surveillance camera because I am a single woman who lives alone. 

 As I was programming it, I could a glimpse of myself and nearly fell off the chair!   I loook old and tired (47). 

Have been so busy and so stressed for the last six months, I haven't really taken care of myself.  I just joined gym, quit smoking, am cleaning up my act.

But, nothing is going to take the bags away from my eyes.  Am thinking of plastic surgery.  If anyone has had this done, can you tell me whether it was worth the money to you?

As you know, I am far from rich but have few bills other than the general overhead (no credit cards).

thanks!  I work very hard and it would be a gift to myself.

I'm an independent contractor and have just lost an orthopaedic clinic account to EMR.  Also, I've been sending out hundreds of letters for new accounts, and I'm hearing nothing back! 

Is our profession (clinic work) drying up?  This is getting very scary!

Could someone either (1) comfort me with "it's not true" news and there's more than enough clinic work out there to go around, or if you find that it is, indeed, drying up, write back and tell me of your experience.

Thank you `` Nancy in Alpharetta, Georgia

I don't agree with you.  I'm betting that MT is good for MAYBE 5 more years.  Maybe.  Thinking they won't perfect VR is only fooling ourselves....they will.  I wouldn't recommend MT to anyone looking to enter the field.  Money better spent on something with a better future but what that would be, I don't know.  Seems everything that can possibly be offshored is being offshored.  Maybe we should move to China   Then we can be sure to have jobs seeing nearly everything in the U.S. comes from there anyway.  Or maybe, the way things are going we had all better learn to like rice, cuz that's probably all we'll be eating before long.

criteria for a profession are extensive college required, also person's work autonomous. Separate body of knowledge required for work. Think of lawyers. Extensive college, they work independently, i.e. they don't have supervisors, editors, etc., and law has its own body of knowledge. Even nursing is on the edge as far as being a profession, not quite autonomous enough. MT certainly doesn't fit the definition of profession.