Not newbies making 7 cpl! I am like you, lucky to have a decent rate
Posted By: sm on 2006-11-09
In Reply to: I have consistently made in the upper $40s to mid $50s in this business. - Busy MT'ing
but that's not the case anymore, you must know that.
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Neither...just a lucky girl with a decent job for once...sm
Have only been at this for about a year now and have found that most of these companies SUCK!!! They dont care about you, they use you and then get rid of you, and they are the rudest group of people I have ever been around...Not one of THEM are you???? Sounds like it.
making a decent line count
Pretty much, yes. Unless you work in a small hospital and even then sometimes that is the case. I worked in a small hospital where we did 15 different work types plus radiology. You can make normals for some of the doctors and others... Line count comes with time and experience. Gaining medical knowledge helps because it helps you figure out what the doctor is saying, even if you can't understand his dictation.
I would be 43 and have no life at this time and wish I was making decent money, but not ;0( ...NM
NM
True but bid for decent rate and wont get
x
Decent line rate question......
I have been a MT for 16 years with acute care experience in all specialties. I have also covered various clinic specialties also. The hospital I type for at home is gradually moving everything over to EMR. We will be losing ER reports in June, with discharges to follow thereafter and so forth. We have a couple girls who work the ER notes who are extremely fast so once they are pulled off ER's and start typing the other reports, we will be low/out of work a lot. I have started looking for a supplement to this job and I have had lots of responses and offers. My problem is that I make 11 cpl on a 60-character line for this hospital. All offers I have had thus far are for 8.5 cpl then going to 9 once off QA. This is an acute care position. I also was offered a clinic position with one doctor. They pay 7 cpl and will move me to 8 once off QA. 8 cpl is the maximum they will go. I know there just isn't a company out there that will pay me what I'm making now, but is 7-9 cpl the norm? I just hate thinking of taking this much of a cut. Any information you can provide will be appreciated. Thanks
When we are not making a decent enough wage to buy our kids food and clothes, it is like (inside)
the little kid who wants a toy from another child and runs to his mother and whines "he won't give it to me." Just another way for them to try to force more money out of already tired pockets. I for one will not pay for that until they fight for wages to be increased. Let them go out of business like a lot of us have had to do. Now they want to make us pay for the lack of money they are getting from India because I am sure they aren't buying into it, and believe me I don't hate the Indians for wanting to work, it is not them, it is the American company's greed. When transcription companies can spend millions and millions of dollars to buy each other out, you know it is a lucarative business.
Why are they cramming voice down our throats at half pay? You can't tell me they are taking half pay, plus half pay is not enough when speech is not trained.
Vote for Obama! He says he will close the loop holes for American Corporations to send our jobs overseas.
What's considered a decent line rate for radiology?
All I want for Christmas is a decent job, a decent job, a decent job.
One that's not 95% ESLs, steady workload, steady accounts, good communication, office staff who aren't rude buckpassers, decent line rate, no offshoring, direct deposit, flexible schedule, not having to do 50+ 30-second reports per day, and a platform conducive to speed. I know it's not possible, but a girl can dream, can't she? This is, after all, my Christmas wish list. I never get what I want for Christmas. Why is that too much to ask for? It doesn't even matter anyways. After Christmas, I QUIT MT!!!! Burger King is just down the street, and they give food discounts.
One year and you make decent money? What is decent money to you?
k
sure i was. i'm making fun of the people who are making a case for background checks, etc
to do medical transcription at home as if they may do something AWFUL with the info they receive. So if you want an invasion of privacy let's REALLY invade it and make sure fat chicks don't transcribe because they are so busy eating they can't get the work done, they mess up the keyboard with food and if they are provided health insurance they will raise the rates for the company sky high because their health risks are higher than others. Then there are the psychological issues overweight people bring to the table. After we eliminate fat people, we can go on to eliminate diabetic people who may have low blood sugar while typing and go into a spell and type the wrong thing. I could go on and on through the process of elimination. How about prescribed medications that may cloud your thinking? So you take Ambien to sleep but you have an Ambien groggy hangover when you are transcribing? Should they transcribe. How about your teens are on your last nerves and you take a Xanax? Should you be allowed to transcribe?
Charge him an hourly rate. The current rate is
between $15-21/hr. according to your location. If he had to use an independent secretarial service, he would be charged much more. You can look in the Yellow Pages in your area under Secretarial Service and ask them what they charge, then charge accordingly knowing you can back it up.
You realize by doing that they're making more money & you're making less? You should reconsid
Decent MT job
Good luck in finding one any more. I have checked on several and they are all as bad as or even worse than MQ. That's why for the time being, I am staying with them. Everybody wants us to work for peanuts nowadays, thinks we can just jump from one account to another with 100% QA, understanding totally strange doctors who don't speak English, etc. The people in charge don't have a clue just how difficult this job really is. I wish I could retire!
I was responding actually to DECENT MT
...rather than EXCELLENT MT.
:)
Nice attide, though.
I don't know companies that charge 18 to 20 CPL!!! The most I've heard of is 13. Who charges 18-20 CPL, please? And who are they sleeping with??? :)
I lie... I forgot that in mentioning sleeping with..... There was a surgical group whose director's wife started a service and charged her husband and his partners 18 CPL.
They now offshore to India, however.
Where is there a decent company???
I would like to know exactly WHERE to apply to a decent company that is not the same as or worse than MQ? I have checked into several and they all leave a lot to be desired. I have lots of experience, have 99% QA reports, and would like to be paid for it. I have not found anybody who is willing to pay me any more than I am making at MQ, plus they have a lot of rules about strict schedules, etc. that were a lot worse than MQ. I would love to quit MQ, but where is there a better place???? Let's hear some POSITIVE answers for a change----.
How does asking someone which companies are decent
equate into having them do your resume and work for you? That's a stretch. Word of mouth is all we have here because the people doing the hiring are naturally going to make their company sound like the best one out there.
Personally, I am sick and tired of searching for a decent MT job. I've been looking for over month now with no luck. It's not for lack of experience or effort. I'm not unqualified or a lousy worker either. I get really tired of being put on the most difficult accounts right off the bat or being bounced from one account to another for coverage. I want a decent platform that doesn't require you to jump to four different places just to find the header demographics information. Time is money. It's gotten to the point that I don't even know what I want any more. Everyone wants full-time, odd shifts, Tu-Sa, or a C-phone. I've seriously been thinking about going back to selling stuff on ebay because I'm so frustrated. I give up.
That would be the decent thing to do
deleting posts where it is mentioned. It seems very juvenile and shady for them to just delete the posts without any sort of response. If you take a stance on something, you should be willing to truly stand behind your decision. They are acting like they are ashamed of the position they have decided to take on this matter.
That's a decent salary.
.
Then, I would say 9 cpl to 10 cpl would be a decent offer.
Go for it! 
Decent money is out there
Most of you know me from this board and I just want to share this with you guys. One of my gals that I met through a nephew's baseball team -- he and her son played together and we go to the same church. She had two terms of medical terminology/some transcription underneath her belt, many years in the law field as a paralegal, etc. She wanted to work at home, make some extra money, etc. I took her in and started her on my psych accounts and the onto some IM accounts. She got the psych accounts quite well but had trouble with the IM. We butted heads several times over scheduling, etc. She did not understand the 24 TAT and so on. But we perservered together. She finally got a job in an attorney's office part-time doing some medical review, etc. and quit me. On good terms. Then last November I helped her land a GYN account that we started off together and I just handed off to her as it was not worth my while to drive 25 miles for what dictation was there. It was my business name and years in experience that landed the job. She took it over and tonight she informed me that she is so glad that I kept at her and perservered with her as she is now making $42 to $45 an hour typing for them. She is like me charges only .12 cpl but because of auto corrects, macro's and shortcuts that I helped her with, she is making good money. If fact in Sept when they add another doctor she is going to quit her legal job completely because she makes more with this account with less hours or if she keeps the legal job she is going to do what I did and mentor and help someone else break into the field. Again these are tape accounts, with pick up and delivery and the little accounts no one else wants but they provide us with a good living. Again, I don't look at the cpl but at my hourly rate and that is what keeps me happpy. She just wanted to thank me for helping her out and I am really happy for her. Yea we spoil our accounts but they reciprocate with decent money. So for those that want your own accounts, keep at it, takes time and patience but you can get there. I had most profitable year ever this year and less hours.
decent money
Better than I would make at a 40 hour week clerical job in my area. Much better. I don't have benefits, but I don't need them because my husband has great benefits with his job. I DO get quarterly bonuses though that are more than my yearly bonus at my previous office job. No, I won't get rich doing this. And yes, I put in a lot of hours. I work hard. I research. I have invested in good reference materials. And I love my job.
What exactly do you consider *decent* money, (sm)
and what part of the country do you live/work in? What's "decent" pay in rural Kentucky or Iowa is food-stamp time in Los Angeles, Portland, San Diego or New York, just to name a few.
in bed, and have a husband with a decent job
.
No decent MTs just excuse to keep pay low. Pay
c
I had some decent Americans,
some decent nurses, and then started getting probably the worst dictator on my account. Is 15 blanks a problem? :o}
Is a decent MT job too much to ask for these days!?!?!?
is it too much to ask for a decent job as an MT anymore? i am so fed up with the big services and how they take you for granted, ignore your requests for help, clunky, time-consuming, line-stealing platforms that i could just scream! (please excuse my lack of punctuation and any type-o's, this is a forum and i just really don't care right now!!!)
i am so sick of sitting at my computer all day long to only get out 500 lines a day and it's not my lack of committment, lack of focus, or any of the like....it's the out-dated, stupid "platforms" we are expected to type in and now they are even setting it up where we're typing in little boxes and not hitting return to go from section to section, i'm sure in an effort to reduce payable characters.
I am just at my wits end. i have been applying for jobs that are not in the field of MT for the last two years and cannot get any replies to jobs besides "work at home" scams and the like.
ANYONE ELSE FEEL ME OUT THERE????
Try 80% ESL with the other 20% on ASR; any decent doctor is on ASR at 1/2 the pay....nm
xxxx
What are you talking about when you say decent?
Would be hard to say, according to what you are used to making. What have you come up with in your calculations?
It's pretty decent
Especially if your account is a tough one with ESLs, etc. 150 lph is nothing to sneeze at. As to getting faster, it's all about your expanders. If you have the same doctors at all, create templates as much as possible for them. Save their phrases, etc. If you type headings for reports, save the headings with the formatting, etc as a macro so you just have to hit one or two keys to bring it up. If templates, don't work, then really concentrate on your regular typing expanders. Any multi word phrase that you use more than once needs to have an Expander or an abbreviation. Any word that is longer than four characters has an abbreviation for me - or at least I'm working towards that. Really work on getting to the point where you don't type any word out in full. That's the hard part. Sometimes it seems like it's faster to just type and not figure out what the expansion is for that word, but it pays off in the long run. The other thing that helps me is to put mistakes in that I routinely type, i.e., teh = the, taht = that. I have found that doing that has made a huge difference - I'm not stopping to correct those automatically any more. Pretty much any typo goes into the library with the correct word attached.
You'll get there. Good luck.
newbies
I applaud your attitude towards mentoring (especially since I'm a student and crave that!). To hold employees that are worth having the employer would only benefit by training the way he/she wants the employee to work.
As a baby boomer, I think the majority of us will work well past the retirement age set forth by the powers that be. I don't see that my retirement funds will pay for me to live another third of my life unemployed. Not to mention, the need to feel productive that many of us have. MT is the answer, allowing many to work at home (or in our RV's - not that I'll get one, not my thing).
As far as education goes, some schools are most likely sub-par, in it for the money only. Some are developing, some are downright outstanding. However, even a student attending one of the 'lesser' schools might be worth mentoring. Perhaps they attend that school because of fund shortages (I know that's why I am), that does not mean the student is sub-par. Yes, I agree some are looking for an easy buck, but some are looking for a CAREER, not a dollar. I know that's my goal.
ok - I'm getting off my soapbox, and hoping someone someday will give me the chance to work and help others too, when I get enough experience!
Newbies
Good luck in a field where our pay goes down each year, and our business costs soar. I received an e-mail that offered to transcribe my overflow for 3 cents a line. How can we compete with that? It seems the doctors just care about cheap labor instead of quality work....
It isn't that most of us have anything against newbies. sm
Just as in any field, when people have trained and worked hard to get where they are, they expect to be rewarded. Forlorn hope. As newer people come in, they are eager to learn, willing to take less money while they train. That means those of us that have been at it so long (18 years here) have to sometimes cut our prices to compete for the jobs. I won't even mention the off-shoring. Eighteen years experience means little to a company that only asks for two years. We do get bitter, not necessarily at the new people, but at the situation we're in.
People in all professions find this. New people come into teaching making as much as people that have been there 15 years. In other professions, a long-timer is replaced by someone new who works for much less. Do you think there isn't bitterness over this? The list goes on.
We all feel cheated, even those of us making a decent living, like me. Yes, I can make $16 an hour, but have to buy my own equipment, software, insurance, pay employment taxes, income taxes, Medicare tax, internet, long distance, etc. I'm lucky if I really make $8 an hour. Not much above working at WalMart, when you look at it like that.
Don't take it personally, most of us understand being new. But the money was easier to make then, and the competition wasn't so stiff. We're sympathetic with you, but we're also worried about our families. Ten years from now, when you're fighting to make what you make today, and utilities have tripled in that time, maybe you'll understand better. Good luck.
newbies
It's because so many newbies want to work M-F, at their own chosen hours and want to make $50K a year to begin with. They think because they took a course, they know everything and have nothing to learn. They resent established MTs who learned on the job.
I'm from the days when MTs were hired because of their good spelling and typing skills. They trained us on the job. We had very few resources, about 5 good reference books to use, but we were able to get feedback from the doctors, who actually respected us and what we did for them.
Now, too many newbies think that an online course or a couple semesters at the local community college put them on the same level as an MT with 10+ years of experience. Not true. There is no substitute for experience.
To the newbies who think they are too good to work holidays and weekends, I just say, why on earth did you take a job in healthcare, which is 24/7 365 days a year, if you want a 9-5, M-F job? Go to work for an insurance company or an accounting firm.
If you can't raise your family and hold down a job at the same time, then quit and let someone else have the opportunity.
There are so many newbies who cannot get a job and would
probably take that and not think twice. Twenty years ago I was making 6 cpl/gross line.
The newbies always do.....
d
Newbies.......
I have been in this field for 17 years and on 'another board' I was ridiculed beyond reason for posting a problem I had with a vendor who advertised on that site. Little did I know I was a site where there were cliques present, you know like high school. HEY we were all new at one time or another and how do you lean if you don't ask questions? Compassion, patience and understanding goes a long way.
we were all newbies once...
so what's with the vets vs. newbies attitude that has taken over this thread?
Sheesh people - it doesn't matter how many years we've been doing this - we're all in the same boat here. Just because some of us have more experience than others, that doesn't mean we're any better or that our opinions are more important.
I have to take back what I said earlier about having not seen any nastiness here because now I have - and it's right here in this thread.
Newbies
Like you, I had a mentor in a former R.N. who started a small transcription company. I knew some medical terms but not much. I did have the advantage, however, of being a very fast typist at that point. But I had never worked with any type of dictation equipment. I started when I was 26 and more or less retired at the age of 67. To say that this profession is on life support is probably the most accurate and honest statement I've heard in a long time. I was able to work at home with young children and it was a God-send at that time. For years I worked full-time for a large group as a salaried employee plus worked several nights a week at a local hospital because they had new computerized equipment and I wanted to learn that. I still love the medical profession and all that it entails and am truly sorry that now all the bits and pieces stored in my brain won't be used any longer for transcription. I still try to read about medicine and get on this site frequently just to "keep up" but, again, the profession as we oldies knew it is dead in the water. My own family physician has already switched to EMR. In fact, he types his own notes as he sees the patient. He said the group could not afford to hire a transcriptionist. To put it mildly, transcription "ain't" what it used to be, that's for sure. So sad, really.
Newbies
Hi! Where does a newbie get started? I am working at a large local hospital in the Transcription Dept. and have been here a year. I transcribe 2 days and I do tech work. I just finished my internship and I have my MT certificate. :) I do not know where to start to find MT work as a newbie. Anyone have any advice? I am able to get 2 days transcribing at my current job but I want a second job transcribing. Any adivce is greatly appreciated! :) 
DECENT BENEFITS/PTO/HOLIDAYPAY
what company are you with that you would get paid downtime, paid pto/vacation/holidays AND decent insurance, need to know that company's name please
You are a decent woman, and that was well written.
I do also think that the moderator needs to ban the person who has been so inflammatory here so many times, particularly on the subject of motherhood. There's no need for responses such as hers to be allowed when we all just want a forum to chat and, hopefully, be supportive to each other. I'm off to watch Lost now, my one great indulgence :)
You can't be a decent MT without the right schooling! I don't care what you say.
Why would any decent MT waste their time with MQ
Don't be fooled by their latest spins. If it didn't benefit them, they wouldn't be doing it. The only ones with a good deal at MQ are the suits. They should be eating some of the slop they feed MTs.
How long to make decent $$$??
This may seem like a stupid question to all of you "veterans" out there, but how long until a "newbie" can expect to make a decent wage in this business? I have only been employed for about 5 mos, so I am trying to cut myself some slack, but minimum wage is hard to swallow. I do reports from a pool of doctors so I can't seem to utilize the full benefits of expanders, and on my best day, I can type about 110-125 lph. Again, I know I just started, but I can't keep making this kind of wage forever. Are there tricks I am missing? Any insight would really be appreciated!! Thanks in advance!!
How many jobs do we take until we might be treated decent
I am on my third in a year
MediSpell is decent and only costs around
It was about $10-$20 when I first got it, but I'm sure it's gone up since then. There's a free trial (or at least there was) and you can compare it to others. Not sure what Dorland's is like so I can't tell you comparison, but I've found MediSpell to be a decent medical spellchecker at a reasonable price for starting out. You can add to it, of course, too, but I don't think they ever issue updates like new drug names, tec. so you might want to invest in a more thorough one later on.
They also do not pay mentors decent money
so no one I know would never work for them. Companies like that do not need to be around.
I am, but not because of pay. I make decent money, more than I would
make in most fields today that don't require a degree or experience. I'm just burned out with the monotony of it. Type, type, type and then type some more because the account is behind and others aren't pulling their weight, so type, type, type, go to bed without spending time with family, exhausted, kitchen not cleaned up, and get up the next day and do the same thing all over again. You have no control over your paycheck because you are paid by production. If you have one of those days where you get the worst dictators or the sound quality is really bad you don't make your lines. If you don't feel well you don't make your lines.
I've done this nearly 20 years, about 19 more than I ever thought I would, but I'm tired, I don't enjoy my job, and I want to do something different. My problem is that I need to be home 5 more years and I don't know what I can do and make the money I need to make.
VR decent but long way to go before replaces MT
I was present at a demo of Dictaphone's/Nuance Enterprise and HDI's VR systems. While both were fairly decent, Enterprise even took on one motormouth Ortho at about 50% accuracy, we were told the systems would never replace live people. The hospital I work for is now looking at Enterprise in the next fiscal budget.
Spheris has dialup and are decent enough
nm
Good MTs won't work for 7-8 cpl. Pay decent $
a
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