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I just recently went back to work in the office at a local hospital. We type in both Meditech and Cerner, depending on what you are typing, i.e. Medical Records reports versus Radiology.  We are currently typing blindly in Meditech, meaning we do not have access to our line counts and must depend on management to give us our totals.  In Cerner, we are able to run a line count report and print out a hard copy of our line counts at the end of the day.

We are finding that 800 lines in Cerner equals about 500 lines in Meditech.  We are not paid per line nor do we have an incentive plan, but we have a new HIM Director who would like to institute an incentive plan and the administrator over our department has laid down the law and decreed that all transcriptionists not making minimum in the department will be written up.  Problem is according to Meditech line totals that we have been given, that would be about half the department.

The transcription supervisor has taken our concerns to the new director who told the MT Supervisor to hold off on writing people and has taken home all the line counts from the last month and she is going over them with a fine tooth comb this weekend.

I am not a very trusting soul by nature, so I am doing a little research on my own.  I've been in this business for about 15 years.  I started out in a hospital and have worked for a few services at home and am now back in the hospital setting.  So I know a few things about line count and I consider myself to be pretty well informed on trends and technology in the industry.   I would like to walk into our next department meeting armed with as much knowledge as possible.  So I have come up with some questions that I would like some fellow MTs to answer, give opinions, and maybe even direct me to websites or individuals who could give me a better understanding of Meditech and Cerner.  Here are my questions:

1. Is it possible for an MT to have access to her line count in Meditech or is strictly a management function?  Any MTs that work in Meditech on this board, do you currently have access to your line counts and if so, how do you check them?  Is it an option on the main menu after you log into Meditech?


2. How is a line defined in Meditech?  (i.e. 65 cpl, with spaces, without spaces)


3. How is a line defined in Cerner?


4. What abbreviation Expanders work with both Meditech and Cerner?


5. Examples of incentive plans (if anyone would like to share that with me that would be great, if not I completely understand).


6. Measuring productivity by minutes of dictation versus typed lines.




1. What would be the minimum minutes required for an 8-hour day?


2. How would one structure an incentive program based on minutes?

I was thinking of presenting the idea that we keep track of productivity using minutes instead of lines since there is such a discrepancy in Meditech.  I also worry that if an incentive plan is put into place and we are still typing blind into Meditech, what's to keep management from shaving off a few lines here and there?

Feel free to email me or post here any responses.  Either is fine.  I really appreciate any input, comments, or just plain old supportive posts would be nice too! 

And you ask, what is it about?

I don't know.

And you ask, why don't you know?

I don't know.

And you say well it probably doesn't apply to me, right?

I don't know.

And you say "I threw away the letter because I'm SE and the letter didn't mention SE.  So why am I getting a package? "

I don't know.

And finally you say, well is it specifically to me?

yes.

Then you wonder, if I'm a SE, why are they sending me SPECIFICALLY anything AT ALL?

What do you think she's going to do?  Sit back and let a bunch of MT's who could give a flip about the quality of their work let an account who pays thousands and thousands of dollars per year go bye-bye out the window? 

Personally, I hope she lowers the boom because any MT who doesn't have a spell checker shouldn't be working and never should have been hired, and any MT who refuses to use a spell checker should be canned immediately, if not sooner, on the spot.

I'd like to see you bust your butt to do all the things involved to secure a good account and then see how YOU react when some/a bunch of airheads do lousy  work, with the end result being all your hard work, expense, and time away from your family that you put into securing that account fly right out the window.  You'd be L*I*V*I*D!

in our transcription department we type milligrams/deciliter as mg/dl.  However, the transcription outsource service we have types it as mg/dcl.  Which is correct???

Here is the other thing - when the doctors dictate KCl 20 mEq, we type it as noted.  However, the service has been typing it as Kay Ciel 20 mEq.  We have asked them not to use KCl because the floors and docs might get confused (even though they are educated, they can be quite lazy), however, they won't stop doing it.  Have we been transcribing it wrong and the service is right???

It is very interesting when you say "you have followed the directions of our company."  We don't give directions on software that we don't sell.  We have over 20 different foot pedals that work on nearly 100 transcription software programs.  We have never claimed to provide support for transcription software that we do not sell.  We only sold you the foot pedal.  I absolutely guarantee that it works with DVI VoiceWav when the DVI VoiceWav software is configured properly.  After checking our records we have sold over 1,000 of the exact same pedal you purchased without an incident.  We exchanged your pedal and continue to ask you to check with the company you bought the software from.  We tested the pedal you sent back and as mentioned previously it works perfectly.  PLEASE speak to whoever you bought the software from.  If you can't get support because you don't have a legal copy of the software I strongly suggest you purchase a legit copy. 

Your IT guy is completely wrong.  Anybody that knows anything about a 15 pin game port pedal knows that there are no settings in that type of pedal.  The pedal is configured to match what the software is looking for.  The pedal you sent back matches the pin outs perfectly for the DVI VoiceWav as does the replacement pedal that was sent out.

Please feel free to give the BBB and credit card company my direct information.

This will be my last post regarding this matter.

Tom Wilkes

President

horrible plus I did not have cable internet then.  Supposedly I failed but they would not tell me what I had wrong.  I took a written and actual dictation of about five charts.  I have 18 years of experience, but I got a stupid letter from them saying to retest when I had more experience.  Gosh that was insulting.

Not to tell you what you missed also didn't mean anything to me.  It took me about four hours to do that test and I did it after putting in a full eight-hour day too. 

I mean get real.

If I am given a sudden oral exam, I get flustered and can't remember, so I think you should account for that and give that person every opportunity to get calmed down.  I remember one person asking me about ORIF which I knew but locked up on.  I felt so stupid because I knew what it meant.  .

I finally got a second account, since my first one hasn't has much work lately.  My question is, do I treat this second account as that - a secondary account - and give more of my attention to my first account? Or go where there is work?  (I've only ever had one account, so wasn't sure.)  Just so happy to finally have the chance to get my line counts back up!  TIA!