Staff will be reduced and equipment not replaced
Posted By: Yeah but (sm) on 2006-06-12
In Reply to: There need to be cuts - me
Care provider will attempt to maintain their income and will attempt this by reducing staff/overhead (that includes transcription by the way).
The medicare/medicaid patient should have copays that are reasonable.
Reasonable is the key word here. But there is a sense of urgency that is taking place due to the state of Social Security and the aging baby boomers who are beginning to retire, who will due to good medical care for a lifetime, perhaps live for 20 plus years on Medicare benefits.
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Try checking the grocery store for reduced buggies, reduced
counters in the meat and produce departments. Quite often, you can find perfectly good foods marked down (be careful about pork). My husband is a meat cutter and we quite often have meat that has been reduced and it is just as good as what was cut that day. Buy double roll toilet tissue. For whatever reason, it seems to last longer at my house. Buy cheaper brands of shampoo and hand soap. The stuff from Wal-Mart works just as well. The same can be said for scented lotions. Make your own potpourri. Mix cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg in water and keep it simmering in a small crock pot. Smells really good and is less expensive than candles. Believe me, I can pinch a penny, but it's really not so bad. 
Yes my pay has been reduced by 2/3. So.. sm
I figure I will have to do triple my amount of lines to get back to where I was. I don't think that is possible is it? I hear where you can maybe double your lines but triple?? Any opinions?
ME rates reduced
yep, the letter's in the mail. if you're doing ME work your rate will be decreased off of your base rate because they think the average production increases by 25%. well, you have the choice as staying as a MT at your regular rate, which I'm going to do as their ASR program can't seem to distinguish between the smaller words in a document even with the person saying them very, very clearly that you're continuously having to peck along to correct. The system even leaves out words that clear dictators are saying. Until they fix those kinds of things I'm not messing with it. You cannot get a rhythm doing the ME work -- at least that's what I've found. I've timed it and I can type a document faster from scratch than I can do it with ASR. That's just my opinion. They are paying us pennies to do a job that requires more than flipping burgers at Jack.
THIS is what we're reduced to as MTs - sm
what do we sell next?  We're certainly not able to sell our skill, our professionalism, our decades of experience -- these are up for grabs to the LOWEST bidder!
These are credited to you at a reduced rate ---
Indications:
Examination Protocol:
Aorta Meaturements:
Interpretation:
Recommendations:
How long do you think it will be until MQ throws everything on ASR even the junk to get the reduced
line rate. Should be interesting to see. I do think they are looking for a big exit also. There is no work in a lot of the offices especially Amherst and my understanding is the work will be delegated from a national office and not regional and they will put people on accounts that need work. Not sure what that means but maybe the days of having a main are coming to an end. Should be great for quality.
Weren't the Indians given a reduced rate to get CMT?
p
The incidence of errors could be greatly reduced - sm
if MTs were paid in such a way that they didn't have to positively RACE through everything they type, just to make a decent line count and an honest day's wage.
Take proofreading for example: Sometimes I think we come out ahead by NOT proofreading and taking our chances with missing an error, since if we really kick butt on our line counts, it can make up for being docked. But that goes against my nature. So I slow down enough to actually SEE what I'm typing, and then go back and proofread. It produces the best-possible quality of reports, but then eliminates any chance of a bonus because I can't reach that *carrot-on-a-stick* that is dangled a bit too high (in terms of a qualifying line count) for me to reach.
No way, I am having no problems with productivity, only that my pay has been reduced to compete
with the global market, that is a fact.
Now please with all respect please do not offer your opinions on my situation, I am sensing a little attitude here and I am not interested in your opinions on that. Thanks.
Reduced my desk clutter, bought a KVM sm
I got a slick new KVM. I work on 2 computers every day, so this was a necessity. All USB, a Belkin. Not only can I used ONE mouse, ONE keyboard, ONE monitor, but I can use ONE set of speakers and ONE set of headphones in said speakers. This one came with a remote button. Push it and you are on the other computer.
I have wanted one for a very long time and I have it!!!! They have come a long way.
Now...I just have to keep my backgrounds different so I know where I am...
careful with the reduced rates... devalues the industry sm
and forces even experienced MTs to lower rates just to keep clients.
My honest two cents, meaning no disrespect to anyone.
Clients see the bottom line before they see the years of experience an MT has. (yes, they do.)
A new person coming in with a lower rate will only cause problems.
As far as being replaced by VR
pitching it to the larger institutions. These so-called American companies are just as much to blame for facilities/physicians going with VR. If you really think about it, the national can pitch VR at a pretty low rate since they have editors/QA to do it for 3 cpl and at the most what 5 cpl. If you are doing VR, you are probably just as much part of the problem. Of course as an independent you probably could not handle an account for a hospital by yourself, so you would have to hire MTs, hence a company comes to form. Larger companies have more capital and can market their product (platforms). It is not just India taking this market over, it is the large American companies as well taking the pie from the little guy. You also see posts of people gaining their own accounts still, so this tells me that not all physicians feed into the larger national/India deal. Look at Diskriter, just as one example, they are practically begging people to come and work for them. Look on any job board, VR/editing is what these companies are seeking, but they unfortunately only want to pay 5 cpl at the most, which is very sad. Money maker if I've ever seen one. Makes ya' wonder.... 
Not when it's replaced by
VR or some off-shore worker.
I have never replaced my headset -
When I worked in someone else's office, rarely but occasionally a headset would/might break. However, since being at home doing same work 10 years, I have never had to replace my headset (the one that came with a transcriber years ago); however, I have had to replace several transcribers over the MANY, MANY years and think I'm on my 3rd one now......finally got a Lanier (they are the best in my opinion for transcriber machines).
Er, I mean WE replaced our Linksys
with a Netgear router.
My first post wasn't very clear.
No wonder we're being replaced
Perhaps I'm just having a bad moment because I'm in the midst of a job hop, but I'm venting/ranting just a bit. On another board, a newbie MT writes a solitary paragraph, and in that one paragraph there are three errors, one a grammatical error, one a spelling error, and one misuse of a word that spellcheck would not have caught. If we can't show that we have an edge that VR doesn't, no wonder we're being eased out.
For the record, you ACCEPT not except a position. You PURSUE other offers, not persue. And when listing a grouping of people, English is polite and let's the other people go first- so it's my family and me, not me and my family.
I think she should have replaced the semicolon with a
comma and should have taken out the other comma you have in there.
Not totally replaced...only for Katrina
nm
Perhaps they meant replaced as in these companies
apparently have the mistaken belief they will be able to replace experienced, knowledgeable, skilled MTs with minimal wage proofers some day. I hope to be around to watch that catastrophe.
So ideally, how often should a keyboard be replaced?
I'm on of those who eats and drinks at my computer :)
I never considered this as a regular expense, maybe I wouldn't have shelled out for a wireless keyboard. Don't they have those vacuum/brush thingies that can clean keyboards?
Netgear replaced our Linksys.
The same thing was happening to me when I had Linksys, so DH replaced it with this Netgear one has never had the problem.
The cable company said the router was causing the problem.
No, they're not. Fan is getting ready to die. Disconnect it and have it replaced. nm
.
Don't give anyone your MACROS... You ultimately will be replaced... sad... (sm)
but that's how docs work, at least some of them.
The electronic medical record has replaced MTs at my job..it's all over!
My job has been scanning all the medical records over to electronic medium and the doctors are now taking laptops in the exam room with them and typing in all the info, so basically, my job will be obselete once this transition is over.
Our boss has been doing a comparison of the clinics who now have the electronic medical record--those docs went from dictating thousands of lines in a weekly period to less than 50!!! Of course this is a tremendous difference and it's "lights out" for us MTs. We've got about a good year before it's all done.
Have any of you been affected by this new technology?
P.S. I didn't care so much anyhow...I hate this industry and this job, so I've been looking for other employment anyhow.
I always thought that the reason CR wasn't replaced -sm
by tapes/videotape, recordings, etc. long ago, was that there was some major legal reason for having an actual live person there that could SEE and HEAR each participant in the case do the court reporting, and the same for depositions. Something about the veracity of the resulting printed document generated by a live CR, as opposed to one generated by a machine (that could be tampered with.)
I am so paranoid of being replaced with a lower wage employee.
dd
On a positive note, with dictators like these humans will never be replaced. sm
No VR program will ever perfect the ability to cut/paste, or add necessary punctuation to reports. There will always be a need for editors. Of course, it still doesn't alleviate the frustration of having to deal with either one, ASR or horrific dictators.
Can anywone recommend a good vacuum cleaner? My old one broke and has to be replaced. Thanks. NM
nm
Glo and staff at MTS. (sm)
Just wanted to thank you for your ultra-quick response to my plight of not being able to get to your job bank this morning!! Found it w/your help, was ready when the phone call came in and got an offer!! Yahoo!! Thanks again - you are the best!
If you MUST have QA on staff, they should all have guidelines, be it BOS
or AMA, whatever you choose. I've been seeing ads for QA personnel and they don't have to have been MTs. I don't get that.
As I've said before here, I work for an MTSO who believes if you have to have QA personnel, you've hired the wrong MTs. I tend to agree with her.
We get up in the morning, do our work and send it in. If there's something we don't understand, we put a note on the log for the doctor or the hospital - because we're all experienced enough that we either know what we're hearing or know how to find it.
office staff at MQ
that's exactly what I've seen. I had one of the guys at 1888# tell me when I said that MQs priority is with the clients 150% and the MT's concerns are at the bottom of the list and his response was well, they do pay our salaries -- those techs don't have a clue what we do
11
office staff at MQ
LOL, you reminded me at one time, about 9 years ago that we had THE tech support guy in our office pinch hitting also as the CSR. on the overnight and weekend shift, just when you would need someone with a brain...forget calling when you had question on how an account wanted a format, etc
That's why all QA staff should cc their feedback to the
entire QA staff! QA needs to be on the same page. By cc'ing the QA staff (blindly of course), QA can get on the correct page. That way, if one QA has a question, bat it back and forth to determine the answer. QA people have a good rapport with each other for the most part and are very accepting of the correct way a company does things. If someone challenges something, then we just find the correct answer and that is that! Also, the QA staff I most recently worked with had an updated frequently most common errors and the correct answers that they passed out to the MT staff and it included the reasons for the correct response. It does work.
Poll for QA staff
1. Are you paid by line, report or hour or salaried?
2. What are your production requirements?
3. Do you get incentives or bonuses beyond your base pay?
4. How do you provide feedback? (Directly to MTs, to a supervisor, etc.)
My answers:
1. Hourly ($19)
2. 12 reports/hour
3. No.
4. Directly to MTs.
monitoring staff
We need this done for a lady in our department. She works at home, goofs off, and starts late. She gets to stop working, and I get called in on my day off without on-call pay. From now on I'm not answering the phone!!!!
The rod should be a guide, a staff, not a weapon.
Please reaad the following if you think spanking is okay.
Spanking can cause a sensitive child grave psychological damage. You probably won't even see it, and the child may never tell anyone or even recognize what it is. Please, please, if you insist on spanking your child, at least give that child an outlet for the anger that follows. When I child is forced to feel anger/shame directed at the person(s) they depend on above all others, and then to suppress that anger, it can cause significant, lifelong problems in his/her ability to have healthy relationships.
Another reason to reconsider spanking is the prevalence in today's society of spanking being related to sex - it's all over the place, and unless your kids watch no TV, no movies, read no magazines, and have no access to computers, they are eventually going to come across this. It can be very confusing, very upsetting.
From: http://www.stophitting.com/religion/faithMaterial.php
All of the biblical quotations advocating corporal punishment of children are taken from the book of Proverbs in the King James Version of the Bible. They were written by King Solomon, and presumably reflected his parenting beliefs with respect to his own son.
Proverbs 13:24
"He that spareth his rod hateth his son; but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes (diligently)."
Proverbs 19:18
"Chasten thy son while there is hope, and let not thy soul spare for his crying."
Proverbs 22:15
"Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child; but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him."
Proverbs 23:13
"Withhold no correction from the child: for if thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die."
Proverbs 23:14
"Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul from hell (Shoel)."
Proverbs 29:15
"The rod and reproof give wisdom: but a child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame."
The Bible itself records the negative effect of Solomon's parenting style on his son, Rehoboam. He became a widely hated ruler after his father's death and had to leave to avoid assassination by his own people.
What would Jesus do?
If you take the Bible seriously, you have to notice Jesus' attitude toward children. It was wise, loving, and filled with compassion. Even when anxious adults wanted to shoo the children away, Jesus rebuked the adults. "Of such," he said, "is the kingdom of heaven." Given this attitude, it's hard to conceive of Jesus hitting a child on any occasion or for any reason. It's simply not consistent with what he taught. If Jesus wouldn't hit a child, why would we? SpankOut Day is dedicated to exploring alternate means of discipline. We believe that Jesus would approve. A simple slogan for Christians to consider might be this: the next time you are tempted to hit a child, ask yourself "What would Jesus do?" Then go and do likewise.
Reverend Dr. Thomas E. Sagendorf, Senior Pastor
Bexley United Methodist Church, Bexley, Ohio
Wisdom from the Talmud
Many people who strike their children do so not because they are evil or mean, but because they believe they are doing God's will. They often cite the phrase in Proverbs: "He who spares the rod hates his son." The problem is that pulling one line out of the Bible ignores the rest of the text. Much of the Book of Proverbs is filled with good counsel on how to be a better person. In Chapter 22 we are taught, "Train a child in the way he should behave, and even when he is old, he will not depart from it." Isn't it possible that the rod Proverbs refers to is to be used to point to lessons on the wall? When we fail to properly educate our children, we not only spoil them, we show them the opposite of love. We must use the rod to point out right from wrong, not to beat our children into submission the way slaves have been beaten throughout history. Even the Talmud says, "If you must strike a child, do so only with a shoelace." When taken in its entirety, Judaism can hardly sanction the use of violence against children. Even the famous sentence in Deuteronomy to stone to death the stubborn and rebellious son, was, according to the Talmud, never carried out. Instead, while discipline was and still is crucial for raising healthy children, striking a child need never occur. The mix of discipline and love is the recipe for a good future for our sons and daughters. The Talmud suggests: "A child should be pushed aside with the left hand, and drawn closer with the right hand."
Rabbi Larry Kaplan
Temple Israel, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania
The Law or the Spirit?
In the book Spare the Child, Philip Greven suggests that our readiness as fathers to strike our sons explains why we men grow up so ready not only to tolerate but to perpetrate violence in our culture. A boy picks up his moral cues from Dad: "Dad hits me when he doesn't like what I have done. Therefore, men resolve differences by violence. If Dad did it, it's OK. I can hit people myself, especially when I think they've done wrong and therefore deserve it." Often a boy who has been spanked won't respond later to love, but only to more spanking. The Law, that is, has supplanted the Spirit within him. God's story of Israel says clearly that a son lost in the Law can be restored to appreciate and respond to a relationship with the Father only though crucifixion. In this case, that might mean the father's dying to his pride and asking the child's forgiveness, then begging Jesus to show him whatever brokenness in himself has led him to resort to the Law and how to become hospitable again to his Spirit's rule.
Reverend Gordon Dalbey, Santa Barbara, CA
Author of Fight Like a Man and leader in the Christian men's movement
Quoted with permission from Fight Like a Man
Also see: http://www.nospank.net/toc.htm
No, I am not qualified as Chief of Staff
but I do my job well and I think that is what matters. I took the time to learn what I needed to learn (on-the-job training) and I am very much qualified to work as a medical transcriptionist.
Try Piedmont - they have inhouse staff nm
x
They expect so much from MTs but the other office staff
is paid well and make mistakes (x-ray techs, scheduling, etc), be paid full benefits.
What is UP with that?
Cranky staff is not your imagination.
The attitude you describe seems to be prevalent. It is as if we were a necessary evil rather than support staff. I think personally it is due to the amount of time needed to keep the paperwork in order. Everyone hates paperwork (even if it is electronically) and we produce a ton of it.
Also, in my view, physicians and care providers absolutely hate to make errors given their jobs are so important and the likelihood of a lawsuit keeps them paying very high premiums. We MTs tend to be one of the few who can say that an error has been made. It can irritate some doctors though I have met a few who are very thankful for it.
In the 20 plus years I have been in the medical field, there has been a change due to pressure from insurance companies also, plus the change in patient complaints as the population ages. This may add to frustration as the bottom line is not only finding relief for the patient but making sure treatment is approved by insurances. This can only get worse from where I sit as cuts are coming with Medicare and Medicaid payments.
Suggest she and the other office staff take a pay cut, too.
p
Re office staff to print
No, the office staff are not allowed access to the 2 PCs and they still work with a handwritten appointment book as well as only fax facilities and no internet at work... this is the reason I have to cut & paste WP doc into Word and e-mail to doc's home e-mail so wife can e-mail the report. This is really a mess I have myself in... and Im starting to throw tantrums now! I corrected him yesterday morning on a mistake he corrected me and now its spite on his side to pay me back because how dare I take a printout from physician website with the correct spelling and show him his mistake - my reports gets marked like a school teacher grading it big circles with messages "I spelt this for you a few months ago, you should know it by now!!!" etc
I type things like this a lot. Staff are always
calling in chaplains, pastors, etc., to comfort the patient and/or family. I don't understand why it is even questioned. Whatever the doctor dictates is transcribed (except major cussing, but even that is if the patient is being quoted). We are not here to determine what does or does not go into a report. We just transcribe it as dictated.
How about QA staff from previous jobs?
Do you know any other transcriptionists? Those are the only two I can think of for you. I have always been IC and have had individual doctors to give, also, if that applies to you. Good luck.
Go search bar and put in the word Staff
It will bring up a post(s) regarding the EMR system posted on Jan 12.
Put the word -- staff -- in the search bar. It should come up medical records staff being replaced by EMR
I sent it to 2 staff writers for the Associated Press plus...
Forbes Magazine, 60 Minutes, USA Today, Washington Post, NY Times, and a couple of others. The Editor who e mailed me did not know I was an MT but that's okay - you investigate one offshored industry, you investigate them all. I asked him to check into any credible sources he had. You may have noticed in my letter it constantly said, "See what you can find out."
HAPPY 4TH OF JULY from all the staff at MTStars!
We went with the accounts and Warminster is still there with the office staff.
:
Yes, I do. The office staff are always very kind to me when I call, and I just
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