Self-employed-need advice
Posted By: dufries on 2007-04-04
In Reply to:
I am a self-employed MT, trained by the office I have been contracted with for 9 yrs. When I started, it was myself and an in-house Transcriptionist working for 4 physicians. I gave a 24 hr TAT. I had one 18-month-old child when I started, and was able to work around 6 hours a day. I drove about 40 min to work and back, picked up tapes, working sometimes 6-7 days/week. Since then, they have hired 2 more drs. and 3 NP's. The in-house MT retired, but they did hire another MT who works at home. I had another daughter, and a set of twins in those 9 yrs. They have always known I try to work around my children's schedules. As I am sure many of you do, I was getting up in the middle of the night working, working on and off throughout the day and at night. The new MT and I are backed up now and we can't possibly get it all done. It is more like 48-72 hr TAT. They call all through the day asking me to stop what I am doing right then and search the tape, type the note and fax it ASAP. I picked this profession to work around my children's schedules, not have to push them aside at every moment to cater to the office. I do not have a certificate in MT, was just trained by this office. I checked in to other places, but the pay is much less as I get paid 65 char/line including spaces at $.125/line. The reason they pay so well is because they know I probably can't get on somewhere else with no certificate and no experience in any other field. They want to make sure I stay there. Also, the driving is ridiculous. They refuse to get technology for telecommuting. They refuse to hire someone else. On top of that, I was just diagnosed with IST, and am on Toprol and not capable of working the hours I once did. Is there anyone else out there who understands or has any advice?
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Currently employed
Hi. I have been with then since 02/2006 and extremely happy with them. As of this past month, I actually became and employee instead of IC and will be getting insurance. Hope this helps.
I think 30-40K if employed
There are variables. Is the person working 10-12 hours days and pretending they are working 8? I know many who are. If so, income should be considerably higher. People with their own accounts can usually make 50-60K or more.
For a 6-8 hour days, 5-day weeks, as an employee with experience, I don't think this job should ever pay less than $30,000. It takes too much concentration, medical knowledge and complete isolation to pay any less. Hospitals pay at least that and you are expected to take breaks, lunch, talk with other staff and physicians, get sick sometimes, have bad days and get bad authors sometimes, take vacations and generally be a human being. Working from home, most of us hunker down and feel guilty if we have anything else we need to do, then making it up at all hours of the night or our supposed days off.
Are you self-employed with your
If you are employed at
MQ, the reason people are making 8 to 10 cpl is probably because that is what they were hired in at when their company was bought. They probably have not had raises either.
I most certainly am self-employed
Obviously, you work as an employee. Sure hope you got a raise to change from what you were hired at. Again, not all of us can be that flexible to just change. We do have a life. Furthermore, anyone can dial in and listen to a dictation on the weekend if they need it that bad. Just call the floor get the identifying numbers, call the number, plug in the identifying patient info and badda bing, you've got the dictation. It used to happen all of the time at the hospital I worked at because they didn't want to wait on the outside MTSO that was soooooooooooo slow. TAT was never met or hardly ever.
Are any IC Incorporated since they are self-employed?
Just wondering if any IC out there have set themselves up as a Corporation. Being tax illiterate, it seems like I do not have many deductions when it comes time to file. My DH is looking into opening a business to provide a service and someone with a similar service suggested to him to file for corporation to be able to receive more tax benefits and deductions. My CPA over the last 10 years has never suggested it to me even though I ask him what I could I do for more deductions. Is this possible?
The first rule of being self-employed is that
you set your own line rate. However, we all know that NONE of the MTSOs hiring IC MTs allow us to set our own rate. They "offer" a rate, and we accept if it's OK.
I worked for a real cheapo doctor when I first started out. He paid hourly and kept riding my backside to type faster because he only wanted to pay for the actual time dictated instead of the time it took to transcribe. More than once I told him that it takes an average of 3:1 typing to talking ratio to get it done. It worked out to be $.03 per line. I dropped him like a bad habit. He bounced through a few other transcriptionists who all quit on him before he wound up having to pay to outsource to a service.
Ind 401K for self employed
There is a new type of retirement fund for self employed business people where you can put money in as both an employee ($15,000) and as a percentage of your profits as the business owner. It is called an Ind 401K. Here is a link...
http://www.troweprice.com/common/index3/0,3011,lnp%253D10264%2526cg%253D960%2526pgid%253D10057,00.html?scn=Low-cost_plans_with_&rfpgid=7622
I wanted to go with T. Rowe Price but they do not allow loans, so i decided to go with Oppenheimer.
yep, two. I'm self employed in three ventures. sm
1. I am a soapmaker at www.sarva.biz and, as of recent, http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=5120869
2. I am a yoga therapist in the style of www.pryt.com
And also studying to be a yoga teacher in another lineage.
Yes, I do all of this with bilateral CTS. I intend to specialize in yoga for CTS sufferers and am nearly there with my education.
Turn lemons into lemonade :-) It's those other things that motivate me to finish my MT work every day, and my MT work informs my yoga therapy so tremendously.
Happened to U but are you now employed,
x
Not good ones and so far I am still employed
x
Self Employed Question
Hi all. I am new to this board. I have a home based secretarial service and do both medical and legal. I have never worked for a big company, just attorneys and docs as well as sales profesionals with no secretary. I have always charged by the page, but I have a possible new client that wants me to bill her by the line. Is .12 per line reasonable or too little for medical? Are there any other home based self employed individuals who can offer advice on per line charges?
Thanks!
My friend has been employed by the ...sm
same hospital that hired her as a newbie. She has been there 10 years. She does good. She has her hourly wage plus incentive pay and benefits. She has one of the good jobs. They outsourced the rest of the MT work except radiology, which is what she does. They outsourced the radiology also a few years ago to an MTSO and she went to work for the MTSO who got the radiology account from her hospital. Well the doctors there in radiology at the hospital raised some cane and demanded the inhouse MTs be brought back. The work was bad from the MTSO MTs and they demanded their MTs back. She was lucky. That is what you call appreciative doctors who value the MTs who do their transcription.
Self-employed even worse getting paycheck
Bill three doctors at the end of the month, and still waiting two weeks later, sometimes three. I even stay up all night and do a 12h turnaround time. You'd think they would see I was paid in a reasonable amount of time!
He can do it. If he is becoming self-employed, he can cut his child support
too if he does not make a profit for the first few years.
Better to be prepared.
When I was a W2 employee, hubby was self employed
and it was enough to cover his taxes and sometimes we got a refund.
MT week - did anyone employed with Diskriter get
anything for MT week??? Just curious - I didn't, but I see that they gave out an American Express gift cheque.
Taxes regarding self-employed = getting an accountant
Get yourself one, and he'll explain everything you need to know.
Try the National Association for the Self-Employed. SM
They have lots of options. 
I'm already employed. I feel my company has sent
a
ditto - am self-employed, 1-person
for local physicians.
There is no one else to have do them. I just type them and forget them as you did.
Medical Insurance for Self-Employed
 Hi Everyone: Does anyone know of an medical insurance that is a PPO Plan for me and spouse in Tenn that does not cost an arm and a leg? I have 2 job offers, one is a company but cannot afford their insurance for both of us, so I will take out on me only and the other job offer is IC at 13 cents a line which is good for this area. Help!!!!
TaxAct and TurboTax will work for self-employed.
No need to buy the expensive business versions of them either. I don't know about TaxCut, but I'm sure it's the same. No, you do not have to prepay your taxes quarterly either. The first year is considered a "trial run" meaning that you need to establish a base pay before they can establish a quarterly tax payment amount due. I've been self-employed for 10 years now and have never made quarterly tax payments because I've never owed.
Yes, they can quit their job, go self-employed or IC, and work under the table.
However, the courts aren't stupid. There is a worksheet the judge does based on the past several years' worth of taxes that XX is the amount this person is capable of making, so therefore XIX is their child support amount. It's legal and binding. There's no changing it by trying to scam the system. It is difficult to enforce but that's why our state has deadbeat parent laws. My friend's ex wound up in jail with liens against all of his property for not paying his child support.
You know who I see working at Walmart? People who may not be employed elsewhere.
Old people, under-educated people, etc. I doubt those workers were ever paid better elsewhere and they seem quite content with Walmart who gives them the dignity of a job. I know one lady in particular who seemed a little "off" and she was so happy to participate in retirement plan. My son worked at Walmart as a temporary pharmacy tech and also liked the 401K offered to even the lowest part time employee. I think Walmart is good for the poor and unfortunate people of the world and I know I have not walked away from Walmart thinking I had been cheated or people who worked there were unhappy. Same with Sam's Club.
Sorry for the open your mind. I actually did not mean that as an insult either. It's just that some people are so angry they refuse to listen to new ideas and the other side of the story.
I am sorry for the small business man but I am just as sorry for the MT whose job is going to be obsolete in the near future. The times are changing and we need to face it and deal with it. It is what it is.
Thankfully, self-employed so I don't have to deal with the likes of you.
What an arrogant bitchy know-it-all you think you are. You are laughable. I'm sooo beyond you. Later.
Advice to YOU..1st learn to spell before insulting poster and trying to give advice...sm
Your national is liable for SS and Medicare tax not you. They thinkyou are self employed. nm
:
NASE (National Assocation for Self Employed) has insurance sm
but not sure how expensive it is or how much it costs to join NASE. Their website is www.nase.org.
Good luck!
Any former Spheris employees employed elsewhere now and deliriously happy?
Would love to hear from you. Seriously considering looking elsewhere. Thanks much.
My claim was denied b/c officially, I was still employed but we were out of work. Crazy. nm
nm
I look at the jobs posted and tons of MTs are applying. I am employed but not terribly pleased with
prefer OPs and have done MT work for about 16 years. I have worked for MQ for 11 years for the Univ. of Pa. which they lost and now I am working for a small company in Michigan with just tons and tons of crap work. I would like an IC job with OPs if possible.
Sound advice from a fellow MT if you want advice or support (sm)
I have been an MT for over 10 years. I also am getting burnt out, tired of my job, day in day. However, I do love transcription and make excellent money at it, have grossed over $50,000 per year the last 5 years. I decided to go back to nursing school and am very happy with my choice. However, over these 10 years of transcription I have had my ups and downs. My biggest issue with being at home working is lack of socialization, being home day in and day out with just the kids and the animals really gets to a person, sure hubby is home at night and thinks working from home is the easy life, thus the return to school and boy has my overall enjoyment of life changed once I realized I was the problem, not everyone else and I needed to find myself again.
Anyway, my biggest advice to you three-fold:
1. Get into counseling for yourself, find out who you are and what your needs are, whether or not you think you need to, I sense you are feeling overwhelmed and need someone other than your family to talk to that can be nonjudgmental to your feelings and needs.
2. If you're only making $100 after you pay preschool you can either keep doing it and be miserable, or quit because you are lucky enough to have a husband who can support the family without your income. (See how fast his mind changes just by losing the income you do have as to whether your job means anything.) Or look for a different company or office that you like more and are more productive if you really want to do transcription (lots of fish in the sea as far as companies).
3. Find a local "mom's" group where you can get out and socialize. MOPS (mother's of preschoolers) is an excellent one that is nationwide, they have a website. Also Mom2Mom is in a lot of areas. They provide a once a week time for moms with kids the same age to get together, socialize, (some offer spirtual guidance some don't) and each week a different mom takes a turn watching everyone else's children at the facility that hosts it so the other moms can talk about things they have in common. Every stay-at-home and work-from-home mom needs to socialize with adults, without their kids, or they will have a nervous breakdown eventually no matter how much they love their kids.
Sorry so long but it does get better but you have to take the first step at making yourself happy.
Go to MTChat and ask California self-employed MTs or do a SEARCH in LOCAL MTs for California. We ha
.
my advice
would be to get an MT job that pays by the hour until your experience and accuracy come together well.
I believe that MQ will pay by the hour until you reach "production" -- but i am not sure if there is a time limit on that. I believe i've seen where other companies do this also.
I admire your refusal to quit -- i believe that is one of the essential traits of a transcriptionist. Hang in there. Very little worth attaining comes easy, you'll make it.
Need some advice
I know this isn't MT-related, but it has gotten me so upset that I can't work, so maybe it is MT-related after all. Anyway, if anyone has been in this situation, can you please tell me how you successfully handled it? My son wanted to go away for the weekend and asked to use my credit card to secure a hotel room. We went online to Hotels.com and found a nice place. I put in my credit card number and was given a room confirmation. I then received an e-mail from the hotel telling me there were no rooms available. I called the hotel and they told me I would have to address it with Hotels.com since they were the ones with my credit card information. I called Hotels.com and they told me that my card had been swept for the entire amount of the stay ($276.00!) but since there were no rooms available, the money would be credited back to my account. I got my credit card statement yesterday and they only credited back $71.00 of my money, causing me to incur and over-the -limit fee of another $29.00. I don't know where to turn to get this problem resolved. Do I call Hotels.com and ask them to reimburse my over the limit fee? Do I call my credit card company and tell them that it was Hotel.com's fault for hitting my account for the whole amount when they said they weren't going to? If anyone has been through this kind of thing before, I would really appreciate your input. Needless to say, I will NEVER use Hotels.com ever again!! Thanks in advance for your help!
Well said! I will take that advice.
Here's some advice from another old MT
Give Medquist a try. I know there's a lot of controversy surrounding MQ, but there is a lot positive about the company, too. The transcription platform is very, very easy to learn and quite MT friendly. Set your boundaries about the number of accounts you are willing to do right from the beginning.
You will never have to worry about not getting paid on time. If you need no benefits, go with the statutory employee status. There's flexibility with that.
There are apparently many MQ haters on this board, but there are many more who are happy with MQ. They just don't happen to spend a lot of time posting here.
Whereever you land next, may it be a great fit for you. :)
Need advice, please --
My 15-year-old niece has confided that she has met a boy through an over 21 chat room and has been emailing him (supposedly, he is 18). He has been to her house, and her parents have met him and they think he is a nice boy, but they have no idea how they really met. I have serious reservations about this and feel I should tell her parents, because even if this one is very nice, he is still too old for her, and what about the next one?
Advice
Learning a secondary account can be challenging but it also makes you a more well-rounded transcriptionist. The more accounts, the more doctors you work on, the better off you are in the long run. If its hard at first, work that much harder to learn it. You can't have to much experience!
Need advice
I just wanted to see if anyone had any advice to give.....I have been debating changing jobs. I currently make $15 an hour doing transcription in office. The delima I am having is that the whole reason I started doing transcription was so that I could work from home. I have been doing transcription for 4 years and my job is really easy and I am happy with the money, there are however other down falls with the company and I am not able to have the flexability of working at home, therefore dealing with the stress of not being able to always be there for "home" things. I have three school age kids, and they are all very active. My question is....Do I have a chance of finding anything else working at home or do I just try and suck it up where I am at??? I really have not started looking, so I am not sure what is actually out there. I hate changing jobs, but I also don't want to settle.
Just need some outside help and opinions! Thanks, KL
RE: Need advice
Don't forget your taxes. You can really wind up in a mess if you don't get on top of that right away.
Need Advice! What would you do?
Want opinions about something which has come up at work and need some advice. I am the lead Transcriptionist in a department with three other people.
Last year, one of our physicians in the practice was fired and rejoined another practice in town. He currently has a lawsuit against the company about the firing.
Today, I saw letters typed by one of the girls in the my department for this particular doctor. (because this patient switched physician groups). Apparently she has been working for him on the side since October of 2004. I am not sure if she is still typing for him or not.
My question is this, would this be something you would bring to the manager's attention, talk to my coworker, or just let it go.
On one hand I feel she is being dishonest and not loyal to our current company. I do not know if she is saying anything about our practice to the other doctor or not. Also at looking at the letters, she set them up exactly the same way we do. Isn't this considered a conflict of interest?
Any advice or help would be greatly appreciated!
Re: Advice - sm
My question - is she using YOUR company's equipment to do this typing? Is she doing it on YOUR company's time? THAT would be a NO-NO to me, along with the other points you mentioned, it doesn't seem quite the kosher thing to do.
Thanks for the advice!!! nm
nm
Thanks for the advice!
That does sound reasonable. Anything to get my foot in the door would be helpful.
need advice
I worked for a multispecialty medical center for 6 years that shut down and sent all transcription out to a service. I got a job with spheris. I love the company itself, they are great. But the problem is money. This is my first experience with production pay. To make what I made by the hour, I would have to produce 1500 lines a day. I am now producing about 1000 a day more or less, depending on how much research I need to do, if my cable or power goes out or if their server goes down or is slow.-- I do ER, consults, admit and discharge summaries, no operative reports. Cant really use a lot of expansions, only for simple phrases or individual words, no macros, mostly straight typing. I figured once I got used to their system and compiled all my provider samples and got my Expander glossaries pretty much built I would improve, which I have, but I really cant see myself ever doing much more than 1200 a day, and that would be with no "P" breaks. I am still having to stop multiple times during the day to enter drug names in my drug glossary so I dont have to look them up all the time to see if they are generic or brand names-their spell-check doesnt have automatic caps, which is another problem for me because I am having a hard time training myself to hit that shift key, I am constantly entering text into my expander. The terminology is not a problem for me.
I am reading that a lot of you guys are doing 400 lines an hour.!!! My previous job didnt have a word expander, so I know I need to utilize that better. How do you do it, what am I doing wrong, what can I do to improve, do I need to just forget it and apply at Home Depot? I LOVE transcription!!!!
Looking for advice
Hey, anyone in the Portland/Beaverton area I could speak to about the "real deal" in MT work in the current environment? I'd really appreciate it. Off line at moosefeather at msn dot com :)
My advice to you
You are doing just fine. Trust me, having kids makes it more difficult to get more work done, but you will soon find a good schedule that works for you. I work for Medquist as an SE and am able to work WHENEVER I want which makes it much easier for me, considering I have 3 kids, ages 7, 3, and 2. Your average of 500-700 lines a day is really good for just starting in July. Don't fret, this is one job that you only get better with in time because you become more used to the doctors and type faster, and don't forget to keep adding to your word expanders.
Another tip I can give is to only work when your child is sleeping, otherwise it becomes too much of a distraction to have your child awake and running around while you try to concentrate on your work. Not to mention, it could also be dangerous if you can't see or hear them like you should.
I appreciate your advice and will certainly
take it to heart.
Just wanted you to know though that I already know the information you posted. I had an MT business for 5 years. I've done MT work for 25 years.
I may be new with MQ but I'm no where near new with MT work. This isn't my first time to do IC/SE work either.
My rainy day money isn't going to the govt. It goes for what I want it to. I've been self-employed for a few years now. I know what I'm doing.
Thank you for your advice though!
Advice to MQ.
This advice is given too late, but for future reference...
When you have a new program, just send the information out.
Telling people a month in advance that you are going to send the information out is just upsetting. Calling people on the phone to tell them they will get information next month but you cannot answer any questions just makes everyone more agitated.
If you think you were offering a teaser to get people excited, I am sorry to say that it backfired. As you can see from reading this board, everyone is just nervous and upset. Some people are out looking for other jobs because they think they are going to lose their SE position.
Big mistake......
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