Started in 1979 when I was 18, worked in office at MQ while it was still
Posted By: Transcriptions Limited on 2007-01-04
In Reply to: Any 20+year MT's here? - bizzytypist
.
Complete Discussion Below:  marks the location of current message within thread
- Any 20+year MT's here? - bizzytypist
- Started in 1979 when I was 18, worked in office at MQ while it was still - Transcriptions Limited
The messages you are viewing
are archived/old.
To view latest messages and participate in discussions, select
the boards given in left menu
Other related messages found in our database
I started in the file room of the urology office I worked. And I was not
going to be a file clerk for the rest of my life. I only had 2 semesters of terminology, no other professional schooling. They had a fresh from a Mayo Fellowship peds urologist coming in and needed somebody to help with the typing. First it was half file-room and half transcription. Finally he was so busy, I became full time. I was there from 1990 until 2003. I then left to free-lance and start my own business. He has since moved to Arizona and I still type for him after all these years.
me too. I started in 1979 at the age of 24 sm
I turned 50 this past May. We had selectric typewriters and the dictation was done on some kind of dictaphone system that had these little disks that were that floppy plastic kind of like when you would get kids records out of the cereal boxes. Remember that stuff. They were the size of a CD now. I remember when we first got cassette tapes. I thought I was in hog heaven. When I started with Transcriptions Limited in 1983 (now Medquist), we had selectric typwriters, typed on paper, different kind for each report and each account and got paid by the page. They delivered the cassette tapes to your door (at least where there were offices in the area) and picked up the work the next day. At least back then I actually knew people and saw them every day and got acquainted. Not like today. If you had too many accounts and too many types of paper you wound up getting paper "mites". For you younguns who don't know what paper mites are, they are little tiny creatures you cannot see but they will bite at your anikles. You have to spray for them! Kind of like fleas but smaller. I use to hire my two sons when they were small to separate the paper and pile it up by accounts and type or report. The little guys were 6 and 8 and they learned a lot quick. I paid them so much a page and finally my oldest asked me one day, how much I made page! He was 8 years old. I knew I was in trouble. But, then again this was the kid who took his Twinkies to school and sold one for a quarter and ate the other!
Now I sound old, but those really were the good old days.
O yes, I remember when Transcriptions Limited/Medquist got the IBM wheelwriter and then finally one day computers! I had been on the MTs system since tehy developed it in the late 80s and just this past March went on the DQS system. If they change again, I won't be here. Don't want to learn another one. haha
O yes, I learned in highschool on an old black manual typewriter (Olivetti I think), not sure and then we went to the really sophisticated stuff, the ELECTRIC TYPEWRITER which at the time I hated as much as I hated the computer the first time I used it!
Thanks for the memories!
P.S. You yunguns, 50 is not that old!
IBM Selectives before, but In 1979 where I worked we had computers
and loved them; however right before then we had IBM Selective typewriters and you could honestly fly on those, well I could anyway. I think anyone who ever used the IBMs would tell you they loved the keyboard. I don't think it took 3 times as long because we were trained better to start with. I spent a year studying before being turned loose on actual incentive pay plus payroll. The typewriters had correction tape you put on and used that way. When making an error you simply backed up, hit the same error again, your new letter and on you went. It was fast and seems like then you did not have as many to go back and say, oh add this, erase that, start over and so on. The first computer we got was honey also. Don't remember the name but I do remember having a Wang in the 80s, loved that one and no internet but still did straight over 2000 a day. We were our own good references, did not rely on the internet.
Our office just started it. Not sure yet how it will go.
;
I worked for co. that started doing this and that
x
I am glad I was sitting in an office with experienced MTs when I first started.
I think I have a decent ear for accents, but I can't imagine doing ESLs for acute care when you are a newbie without having a trainer sitting at the next desk to interpret now and then. Otherwise I'd have cried at times.
I started too but home office got moved to bedroom. sm.
Now have to use earphones when husband is sleeping. I actually prefer the earphones just because my speakers weren't the best but it worked well the other way too.
I've been in MT for 20 years. Started out in the office at a hospital.
Switched to working for services from home for a while and now I work for the same hospital I started out at, but I work from home now. So I guess you can say I've come full circle and now I'm back where I started. I much prefer being an employee of a hospital versus an IC or employee of an MTSO.
It may be that your user profile in EXText is not set up to allow you to add normals. I've found with services they don't give their MTs a whole lot of freedom with their software. 
I started part-time in a doc's office while still in high school. sm
That was in 1984. My career just bloomed from there......
I started in the file room of a 6 doctor urology office....
The file room in any office is a nuclear dumping ground...any paper that nobody knows what to do with gets dumped there. Then and there I made up my mind that I was NOT going to be a file clerk for the rest of my life.
I actually started by filing part time and typing part time. When we got a new Peds Urologist in the office, fresh from a fellowship at Mayo, I was right there. We used tapes back then as that was in the early 1990's. As he could fill up a 2 sided tape with 8 hours of seeing patient's, the other girl in the office did not want any part of his work and left it for me. The rest, as they say, is history.
I had no professional training, just 2 semesters of medical terminology and a killer spelling ability.
After I had typed urology, I was then farmed out to our other offices and I learned GI/GU, family practice, sleep labs etc.
I now work for a major hospital on the west side of Michigan and still type for my Peds urologist. The only difference is that he now has his practice in AZ, not MI.
If you can find somebody willing to take a chance on you with no experience, jump on it with both feet. You will be glad you did.
I started using it when I worked for Rodeer. They had used PRD at one time
I like the simplicity of it, and the fact that's it's fast compared to others I've used. I'm not sure why that is.
It doesn't have any prompt that reminds you of your expansion, so you have to have a system of remembering, which is another thing I prefer. The reminders only get in my way and slow down my production.
I sure wish I worked in your office!
We hardly ever get an update, we run out of work, we never get answers to our questions, raises are few and far between.... its definitely an office to office, management to management thing! I hope MQ management reads some of these posts and get ideas on how they could make their office better and happier!
Ive worked Sundays since I started transcribing 18 years ago!
..but i know that they always need to be covered and people keep getting sick and having operations... holidays too. we are in one of those kind of jobs. i love having time off during the week to get things done though.
Before I started my own business, worked in a hospital in-house with taxes taken out & then went hom
was getting with shift differential 23.80 when I left. Your pay seems extremely low, you could make more as an IC seriously.
I worked at one job where the office manager would
go to the gas station on Friday afternoons to buy a case of beer for the employees. It was his version of "corporate culture". As the only female working there, it wasn't a great place to work anyways. The guys told me that the only reason I got hired was because I looked good in a skirt and the office manager was going through a divorce. My resume spoke for itself, but the comments, which got harsher after a few beers, did create a hostile work environment.
Because think of the reverse, when you worked in the office...
did you ever see the director of med rec ask doctors to dictate their old stuff, so there would be enough work for MTs? when we were low on work in the hospital,a deficiency list would be sent out, and then boom a bunch of dictation...
hospitals are doing anything and everything they can to cut costs, even as mentioned above, hiring ICs on the side. health care is purely a business now, and I would bet not a day goes by every hospital in America asks the question, how can we cut back on the cost of dictation?
if that were not true, you would not have the HUGE push for the technology and the HUGE push for outsourcing, overseas or not.
think about this, also. we are only working at home for these companies, because hospitals decided it would be cheaper than paying health benefits for full-time MTs, office space, etc etc.
I do not put anything past people who are 100% money-driven these days.
you do make a great point, though, about the billing and DRGs, etc., but I still think they are told to 'cool-it' whenever they can...
I worked in a physician's office as well.
Normally they get paid only a percentage of that. If your mother has insurance she can pretty much disregard that initial bill. The hospital my parents used also chopped off a large amount due to their fixed income. The worst part about this system is that people with no insurance and who do not qualify for the indigent write-off have to cough up the whole thing.
I'm poorer than when I worked an office MT job, but - (s/m)
- I'll probably live longer, too! My blood pressure has dropped 20 points (for real!) since I stopped having to deal with the annoying little "management clique" at my old job. I've also lost 10 pounds, mainly because now I only eat when I'm hungry, (usally while still working, so it's a fast meal), and not because I'm ticked off, or because I want to get away from the office. So I'm definitely eating less. If I need to run a quick errand in the middle of the day, I don't have to drive like a maniac and nearly wreck my car (or anyone else's) worrying about getting back to my desk at a certain time. I just work later at night.
It's not that I agree with what most employers think MT is worth, but I made a conscious choice to get out of the rat-race and the back-stabbing office politics, and live a saner, quieter life. Meanwhile, I'm dealing with the added poverty by clipping more coupons, buying mostly generic products, and recycling aluminum. When I start getting itchy about moving out of my crummy, low-income apartment, I just go online and see what I'd have to pay to move up to a better apartment, and it gives this one a lot more appeal. And it sure beats living in my car. ;p
Back in the days when we all worked in an office
we got this new manager who I disliked immediately. She couldn't spell every day words, she had absolutely no background in MT and figured she was doing somebody to get the position. We had been promised an MT as our next manager. She said she could type 85 wpm and she believed she could handle the job - HA. We had an MT come in to interview and test and she had to ask me how to turn on the computer and how to print the report. They company lost the account and it closed down that office and the manager couldn't get another job and had to move back home with mom and dad.
I had a man looking for his wife to be able to do something where they could work and travel and he said his wife had a business degree and he felt she could do the job too. I also had an associate whose husband got fired AGAIN and she called me wanting to know how she could do what I do, like she could start tomorrow.
I've decided I'm going to tell people I'm a medical langauge specialist from now on and when they ask me what that is I'm going to say I'm a translator.
May I ask which office your all worked for. Sounds very familiar.
:
When I worked pathology office in a hospital
My experience was that I worked 3 times as hard for a set wage than I ever did as an MT - and in medical records as MT earned set wage plus incentive.
At pathology lab, we were responsible for getting there first thing in the morning and transcribing all the micro before 10 a.m. so the pathologists could then look at slides and dictate the gross report. Doctors tried to get the gross reports back to us by 1 p.m. -- because they had to be typed by 3 p.m. so the doctors could sign the reports, and get them back to us so we could get them sorted and in the mail before we went home. In addition, we fielded phone calls, took messages for pathologists, searched for and mailed slides when other labs requested them, provided courier coverage to transport slides and things between our lab and hospital lab in the next building, and when we had a spare minute, we entered Pap smear results from precoded sheets used by the technicians reading the Pap smears (like between 10 a.m. and noon, if we had all the micro typed)!!! Every day was hurry up and meet this 2-hour deadline, then hurry to meet the next 2-hour deadline...
I learned a lot of terminology -- but I would have to be very hungry to do it again. It is hard to describe or comprehend a pathology secretary job unless you have actually been there, done that -- you will either love it or hate it... good luck.
I worked in house in a doctor's office and it was the same for me...
and I had to answer phones, make copies, et cetera, basically was an MT/secretary...and I hated it...I am making much more money now working at home part-time...
No, I've worked in doctor's business office.
That is what the insurance company allows, not what they dictate. Who is to tell the doctor how long he can sit and talk with his patient. It is up to him. True insurance companies get together to decide what is the appropriate amount for the doctor to "charge" for a service but I've literally seen where the doctor sees the patient all of 2 minutes after patient is worked up by techs, but they still get paid for that visit.
I know a lot of people it helped (I worked in a doctor's office) SM
BUT you have to really want to quit before you start it. It doesn't make you want to quit - it just helps you w/ the depression and the withdrawal symptoms that come along w/ quitting. Good luck.
Early in my career I worked for a service in the office. I gave my notice after almost two years...
with them because I got a job with a hospital that paid better and had better benefits. I gave my notice and the office manager made my life heck for my remaining two weeks. He gave away my desk, my chair, my transcriber (we were still transcribing cassettes back then). I spent the next two weeks shuffled between workstations and using the crappiest equipment they had. He also refused to give me any help on my account. It was a huge family practice from which I would get at least seven 90 minute tapes a day from them. Before I gave my notice, I was the lead on the account and had three other people helping. When I gave my notice, he couldn't spare anyone to help me and I got several tapes behind. I kept telling him I was behind and he would just say do what you can.
Long story short, he tried to stiff me on my last paycheck because he said my account was way out of turnaround time and I had cost them money. He had told the owner of the service that I had never asked for help and that I purposefully held tapes back to screw them. I ended up taking them to small claims court to get my money.
Some people are just ugly people that take EVERYTHING personally. You can't win with people like that. They are unprofessional. I wouldn't worry about your boss' attitude. In a couple of weeks, he'll just be a memory.
You must not have been around in 1979...
We had lines that were BLOCKS LONG! It was ridiculous. I sure hope that doesn't happen again. I'll just stay home and swim in my pool. The heck with driving.
Carter was I think 1979 - not old at all.....nm
I am making less now than in 1979
but I am not working 2 full time jobs, have cut down to part time and loving it.
1979 vs 2009
First, don't get me wrong, I definitely think we should be paid more.
However, in 1979, you were likely using a typewriter, no such thing as computer and delete/backspace, no such thing as Google, no such thing as sending in reports with the push of a button, which makes things much, much quicker and efficient, which makes more typed. We should have better insurance, though.
I imagine it took at least three times longer to type a report then than it does now with computers, Google, better references, et.
1979 and 2009
I don't know what went on in 1979 because I was 10 but I do know that in 1990, the school I trained with was still using typewriters and in my first job, although they had computers, were using tapes, which we had to use a magnetic to erase. Heaven forbid that someone erased the wrong tape. Talk about a doctor being PO'd.
I had one too!! a 1979 piece of junk.
And if that wasn't bad enough it was chocolate brown.
My blinker knob fell off and I had to shove a pair of tweezers in there to work the blinkers. I couldn't wear heels or they'd get wedged in the holes in the floor board and one tire had a big bubble in it.
I can't believe I even dared drive that thing.
I lived in So. Cal in 1979 and they lines were atrocious.
x
I'm making less per hour in 2009 than in 1979!
I'm making less per hour in 2009 than in 1979!
I'm making less per hour in 2009 than in 1979!
In 1977/78, I made 6 cpl. at a transcription company. Had full medical benefits, paid sick days, a cushy, comfortable office, and monthly CASH (like, real paper dollars!) bonuses for 'Transcriber of the Month'. Of course, back in 1977, I could fill a 20-plus gallon gas tank for just under $18-20, too.
I'm making less per hour in 2009 than in 1979!
In 1977/78, I made 6 cpl. at a transcription company. Had full medical benefits, paid sick days, a cushy, comfortable office, and monthly CASH (like, real paper dollars!) bonuses for 'Transcriber of the Month'. Of course, back in 1977, I could fill a 20-plus gallon gas tank for just under $18-20, too.
I'm making less per hour in 2009 than in 1979!
In 1977/78, I made 6 cpl. at a transcription company. Had full medical benefits, paid sick days, a cushy, comfortable office, and monthly CASH (like, real paper dollars!) bonuses for 'Transcriber of the Month'. Of course, back in 1977, I could fill a 20-plus gallon gas tank for just under $18-20, too.
Have most people had good luck with their MQ office closing and moving to the regional office. Have
things gotten better or worse for you.
Yes, I lost mine. I upgraded the Office 2000 package to Office 2003. sm
I have over 2000 autocorrect entries and lost them all as well as my supplemental dictionary for my Stedman's spellcheck. Lots of grief!
Maybe you will be lucky and not lose anything. Good luck to you.
Might be able to rent one from an office supply or office machine repair shop
s
I gave a tin of toffee for each office and a Lia Sophia necklace to each office manager. ~nm~
x
I gave a tin of toffee for each office and a Lia Sophia necklace to each office manager. ~nm~
x
Office politics. That is why I enjoy working at home. In the office,
people are in other people business. Just mind your own business.
Can anyone suggest an office in MQ that is not run like this Amherst office. They are absolutely
pathetic. I wonder how many other MTs are in that office in the same situation.
Just DQS from my office was transferred and the rest are getting on DQS before the office closes.
:
Pay kids work around office, renovate office.
x
Every company is different -- I worked FT for one as an employee but worked a split shift - sm
So I never took breaks. I would work 5 hours, break for about 4 hours then do another 3. Another company I worked for did not care what hours you worked (IC) but wanted a min. amount of work each day, 500 for PT and 1000 for FT-- BUT they paid you by how many lines an hour you put out, the higher the lph the higher up the scale you made per line in pay; they have since changed everyone to a flat rate with incentive. But bottom line, if you are an IC it does not matter what hours you work, though many ask for a schedule and ask you to stick to it, they just want you to meet line requirements daily, i.e. 1000 per day, 1200 per day, whatever it is.
Office 2003 so far, but going to Office 2007 as soon as I can. nm
nm
I got up early, worked during naps, and worked when DH got home.
You have to be disciplined to make yourself work when baby is napping instead of maybe watching TV or doing housework, etc.
I might also go the route of having a teen come into your home, or either trying a mother's morning out program at a local church/daycare. I've been home since my youngest was born and he has never been in all-day daycare, but I did have him in a mother's morning out program 15 hours a week at a local church. It didn't help a lot with my work schedule because I had an older son in school and was a room mom and tutored other kids, but that might be an option. The only problem with the mother's morning out program is they are around other kids and tend to pick up every germ. I finally took my DS out of the program because he stayed sick. You were supposed to keep them off if they had green nasal discharge and I did, but no one else did. Every time I got him well after 2 to 3 days back he would be sick again. Other than that it was very good for him because he would not have had a chance to be around kids his age otherwise.
30 day TAT in this office ... office politics at its best
I have kept in touch with an MT I worked with at the last in-house job (radiology). This was inpatient radiology and also an outpatient radiology clinic the hospital operated.
One of the girls, a person who at one time folded towels but who was hired as a clerk, was just discovered to ahve not mailed out reports for 30 days. These include both in house reports and outpatient reports. They have been sitting on her desk because she "has not had time to do them."
What do you make of this? The lead MT is close to this girl (hence her being moved from housekeeper to clerk) and is trying to minimize the impact that not having the reports mailed to referring physicians' offices, as if it is a minor problem (how they found out about it is a doc's office called the MT's supervisor and asked why 30 days worth of reports were mailed to their office yesterday.
They were keeping it from the director of radiology. I think this is BIG and that heads should roll for negligence.
What do you think?
at home vs office - i am in office
well, I really was referring to the MONSTER MANAGER that I have, who has her favorites here, and she assigns them the easy doctors who say the same thing over and over, you know. I have to do something. I am losing my SELF at this point, with no church and no family. The stuff on here about running out of work, my lack of computer savvy, all has me just frozen. MOre about in-office. Do you have little habits like talking out loud to the dr? Someone will complain about you. Do you ever say a cussword? Someone will complain. Do you ever sigh? Complaints. About age - I was offered 2 trans. positoins in San Diego before I came here. I had gone to a seminar about how to look for work over age 55, had revamped my resume and my "presenting" self, and it made all the difference. Things are way different than they were evern 10 years ago, you will be judged by someone younger than you, but in this line of work they do appreciate experience and reliability. And the computer doesn't care if you're pretty. It's not your age unless you are sickly. Don't give up!! if that's what you want.
|
