There is no way you can compare security
Posted By: at home versus public place. (NM) on 2009-05-04
In Reply to: And folks think I'm paranoid - MTTwo
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Right. Can't compare the two. Just like you can't compare clinic and doc office work to acute
.
The best way to compare the two is...sm
open a document you have type and count it in a 65-cpl versus a gross line count....any counting program can be set to count in gross lines. Personally, I count my lines in Word Perfect. It has a line counting feature where you can tell it not to count blank lines and then you just multiply by what you are getting paid by the line. You come out much better on the gross line count.
I don't think you want to compare yourself to Yente
Busybody supreme! 
You must compare your documents..
with MS-Word Word Count, which is the standard. MS-Word count tool is used by FlashCount.
In case of any problem, feel free to ask.
Webmaster@MTStars.com
Compare it to a 'regular' job . . .
I tried one of those plans that swore up and down that it wasn't a multi-level marketing program, it was just "direct marketing" to your circle of influence. It cost me money to join (does a regular job?) and while I didn't stockpile stuff in my garage, I did have a quota that I needed to personally purchase every month in order to stay an "active member". Part of my $60/month that I spent actually went into the pockets of the 7 people above me. If I achieved the next level (certain number of individuals below me) my quota for the month would double. I would go to your state's Attorney General's website and search for pyramid scheme/ponzi/etc . . . Having to spend $120 a month to make money, especially when you can alienate a bunch of your friends in the process seems a little too much to pay . . . just my 2 cents . . . best of luck whatever your decision.
Compare old documents
Look at some of your old documents and see what your gross line is and then see what they would have been paid if you had been using a 65 cpl. In word you can do that. Now some software will count double character for capitalization, bold, underline, tabs are counted, indent and count spaces. So that will also make a difference. When one of my accounts was using Sylcount we always counted that way. I do not think that there is a simple chart to use and since your documents could be very personalized with formatting, i.e. indenting lines which makes a gross line smaller, to me it would be best to compare your specific documents rather than a generic table. There are a lot of variables (how long is your gross line) and I don't think a comparison table could take that all into account. But I would think I think an estimation has always been 30% less lines for cpl versus gross.
how does 11/cpl IC compare to 8/cpl employee
are there pros and cons to both, and is it fair to say that it all weighs out about the same, considering what the IC has to pay in taxes, do they travel for their accounts, do they have any benefits, etc.?
Oh, I know. I wasn't trying to compare myself to anyone.
I was trying to figure out if this is even possible. I know when I did acute care I could never get 200 lph. Now I am on a clinic account and doing close to 300 lph. I just assumed I was at the max, so to see this post, it just made me wonder if it is possible to do more, not that I am going to strive to do more at this point. Right now if I go above 300, I am afraid my accuracy would suffer. I was just curious if there are others out there doing 400-500 consistently as these MTs are said to be doing. If there are, I would love to know some secrets! :D
You can't compare apples with
oranges as he had lost his job and who knows the real truth. Tragic loss of lives.
Suffice it to say, it's pretty scary out there these days with so much misery over job loss, home loss and no hope in sight. It's like the domino effect. It's all happened so fast and there is no stopping it. Certain people will act out. No doubt immigrants are much harder pressed in times such as these. Even doctors are suffering from this economy. Hard to believe but it is true.
Just some things to compare...
Example: If you type 1000 lines a day at 8 cents a line ($80 a day), minus 25% for taxes, you would have $300.00 a week clear. Assuming you do 200 lines an hour, 5 hours a day, 5 days a week, your pay would translate to $12.00 an hour.
IF you can maintain $12.00 an hour after taxes in an office job (sales job, at that), I don't know that the benefits offset the cost of keeping a wardrobe up, gas, meals out or items to take for your lunch, and child care, plus the hassle of being back out in the public.
To answer your question on how much income it would take for me to leave this field - Considering all the pros and cons, I personally could not afford to change careers. It would take an offer of double what I make now to make me even consider it, and there are NO jobs that pay that around here.
I wish you the best of luck with the decision.
Perhaps OP is not new at all. How could you declare MQ the greatest with nothing to compare.
I suspect MQ has a lot of people positioned for damage control on the boards these days. It was a stupid post that would be meaniningless to anyone but MQ damage control. Watch and see what is coming down the road in the next six weeks with MQ and MTs. That's why there is damage control in place and there will be for the next six months or until MQ is bought out.
Hard to compare lines from different
companies and different accounts.
Are you paid for spaces?
Headers/footers?
65 character lines?
What is percentage of ESL?
How large is the account?. Hard to get lines if you do not get the same dictator more than once a week.
Is the platform easy to work on?
Can you use an expander?
Do you have to enter demographics?
Is the account verbatim?
Can anyone compare Spellex to Stedman's and
tell me which they think is better and why. I've always used Stedman's but DOS-based. Changing jobs and now need something Windows-based.
Can't compare autocorrect to an expander (sm)....
After 20 years as MT I found a word expander, and still mad that I went so long without one! I would not consider being without one today, it adds so much to my productivity. And an Expander does much more than autocorrect does, so I personally don't think they are even comparable. For example, you can make entries bold or italicized; you have no limit on how much text you put into each entry; and most importantly, your possible choices show up on the screen as you type letters, so you can be very specific in your use. Autocorrect does just that, it makes an automatic correction, and so quickly that you might not even realize something was changed/expanded. Expanders are not cheap, but to me they are as essential as a medical dictionary!
Does anybody use ShortKeys? How does it compare with ShortHand?
I tried ShortHand but I never could get it to work like AutoCorrect, which is what I prefer. I don't like to take my fingers off the home keys to hit "Alt" or "Ctrl" or whatever.
ShortKeys is okay, but it has some limitations. I just wondered if anyone had tried both and how they compare.
TIA.
Would like to compare Meditech speed (see msg)
We home MTs have a much slower download/upload time than those working on site, and I'm trying to determine if there is something our IT department can do to speed it up for us. Since Meditech is so big with so many clients, I just can believe the rest of the country would work like we do.
What I would like to compare is:
After entering your patient information on the data entry page, how long after you hit the right arrow key to open your document for typing does it take before you are ready to type that document?
For me on the very best day it takes 20 seconds of staring at my screen before I can type, some times as much as 60 seconds.
Looking forward to comparing. TIA
Are you in a position to compare your progress SM
with others on your accounts? (If you work at home maybe invite them to email you through this site to discuss?) That's the only way to get a true picture of how you're doing so you can figure out how to fix this situation. Have a nice Thanksgiving tomorrow.
I'm done trying to compare apples to oranges. sm
You are free to go on beating the dead horse, however. Best wishes.
seriously, do not compare an hourly wage job with
nm
Store chicken doesn't even compare (nm)
x
Just FYI, you should compare line count with another program (sm)
FlashCount gave me a much lower line count when I compared it to Abacus. I notified them about this and they never responded.
Fun topic: How do you compare with TV sitcom marriages???
Are you and your spouse more like.....................
A) Tim and Jill (Home Improvement)
B) Roseanne and Dan (Roseanne)
C) Howard and Marion (Happy Days)
D) AL and Peg (Married with Children)
E) Raymond and Debra (Everybody loves Raymond)
F) Steven and Elyse (Family Ties)
G) Other ____________
We are probably most like Tim and Jill but a little bit of Raymond and Debra thrown in. LOL.
Compare line count results
Hi,
[disclaimer: We are the publishers of MPTools.]
One neat function in our new MPTools is Compare Line Count results. It asks you to specify a document, and shows you the results of its multiple line counting methods, including headers/footers and formatting codes. MPTools is available as a no obligation trial, so you can download it, install it, and check things out.
vJoe
Pull up some documents and count them out each way to compare. nm
s
I use the Compare feature on the tools menu.
x
OMG- especially when they compare it to some kind of edible substance! *gag* nm
n
You need to know the program your company is using to count so you can compare.
xx
I dont think you can compare the 2. Talking about 2 totally different things.
:
Long distance site to compare prices. sm
http://ld.net/?6040
Only if you're using the track changes or compare feature. Once somebody else has the document
x
It just goes to show that there is really nothing that can compare to real live transcriptionists -
nm
Totally agree with you. Often compare my work with that of a painter
You give him a job, give him a price and if he does not perform - you find another painter!
There are so many variables at play that it's dangerous to compare to others along these lines. s
I know that there have been occasions when I've had a run of one of my more familiar docs -- one for whom I have a lot of canned text and who tends to dictate with a great deal of regularity, and quickly -- and I've been able to break the 500 lph barrier, but only briefly. Otherwise, working a large hospital account as I do, with dozens of regular docs and a hundred or so others who just crop up now and then, I can't conceive of anyone averaging anything close to that ... I'm luckly to average above 250-275 lph on a typical day, and some days -- when it's resident and ESL heavy -- that can go down to 150-200.
But, again, it's really pretty silly to compare lph between different MTs unless the variables are the same.
My friends with large families shop at Walmart. I don't. I can't compare
prices or taste. These are not ignorant poor folk who don't know better shopping at Walmart. Walmart has definitely cut into the supermarkets business. Bottom line here folks, people are making Walmart successful and they keep growing. Not for nothing are people shopping at Walmart. They have to be offering something to the shopper.
Compare again and if you have a discrepancy, email me directly. We worked very hard to create this
free software with extra features others counters do not have. We have tested and retested the counting capability as compared to others and it operates correctly.
To all MTStars visitors: Please do let us know if you experience problems. Email to webmaster@mtstars.com or admin@mtstars.com
Thank you,
Administrator
There is really no way to compare number of reports to a line count. The more experience you obtain
faster it will go and the lines will increase so don't give up. All of oldies have been there. Most companies require 1000 to 1200 a day, so you are not far off from that. Just keep plugging along, you will get there. Use Expanders for your most common phrases, words you find you have to look up constantly, etc. for starters to help build your speed.
If security is what you want,
I'd look for something higher paying before relocating. Don't know where you're at, but there are numerous clerical jobs in CA on usajobs.opm.gov. One in SanDiego right now for $33K in department of health for someone to do transcription.
Job security??? There is NO job security in
x
Job security
I have been doing SR for nearly 4 years now and love it. In fact, I almost resent having to actually type a whole report.
I believe there will always be a need for us. Not every doc is SR material. What about those specialties that require specific formating? SR can't handle those.
I think as long as we are willing to adapt to the changes, we will have the jobs if we want them.
SR nearly doubles the amount of work produced in a day by the transcriptionist, so I think the problem is going to be for the newbie finding that first job. Those of us already in the profession will be fine. 
security sm
This is what worries me as well, what about storing it all on a portable drive and not the hard drive? Then what if you lose that extra drive even if you hang it around your neck, etc., or it gets stolen? Lots to think about here. Not especially talking about people on this board per se. It's very worrisome that everything is going all over the place. I also hear of people going to others' homes such as relatives, etc., to do their work and the company is none the wiser. I don't think there really is 100% confidentiality, as hard as everyone tries. There are some MTSO's also who do not check out these homes - how can they possibly???? Some of us are going by the book, but I wonder about others, especially if the work is being hauled outside the home to a public place or being performed with people coming and going all over the home. I am not talking about most on this board because we care enough to keep our finger on the pulse of what is going on in the field. What about the tons of others "out there" who we don't know about? Thank God for this board and the questions we ask and the help we give each other, we care enough to check everything out and talk it over. We need each other. Again, it is not about our members, moreso about those who don't care to come in here or don't care. I don't want to be part of a class action suit, no way!
Job security....
This quote was taken from a report on the AHIMA web site about Turnaround Time in medical transcription: (link: http://library.ahima.org/xpedio/groups/public/documents/ahima/bok1_039584.pdf)
"Despite multiple replacement technologies, including point-and-click menus, front-end speech recognition (FESR), and documentation by exception, most industry experts and stakeholders believe that transcription services will not be fully replaced anytime soon. The need for a comprehensive free-thought narrative is integral to producing a record that supports continuity of care."
Don't be too sure about EMR job security
I worked for a large facility that went EMR without prior notice in December. This account went from steady work 24/7/365 to almost nothing. Depending on the EMR system in place, transcription can and is being replaced. Scary, but true.
Security
Using our computers overseas should be no different than the government using their computers overseas. I have family who work at the Pentagon and travel extensively to ungodly places with their laptops and all their work. If they can do it, why shouldn't an MT?
Ewido security
x
Well, talk about job security
This morning, she came in my office and brought me a flyer...
HEADING:
Medical Transcription Services at 7.6 cents per line...
Extraordinary Quality Medical transcription at 7.6 cents per line (65 character line)
24-hour Turn Around Time (TAT) compliant
2-4 hour Turnaround available on request
Secure and fully HIPAA complant
HIghly experienced Medical Transcription Staff will ensure that your transcription is completed efficently with the highest level of quality.
yada...yada...yada....on and on with their ad...
How can a company possibly work for this? Wonder what the transcriptionists get paid? Would this be outsourced?? I wanted to ask these questions, but our manager doesn't care about anything but the dollar. I've been here 17 years and the work load is overwhelming. So am I threatened, YES! Should I be?
it sounds like security
is the primary issue for you. Great equipment, and great people mean a lot. Course, so do great dictators, so you may want to look into that...but since security is your big worry in life -- I think you might want to take it. You can always make another choice down the road if you change your mind. State and federal jobs on the resume can be a plus too, if you move on.
I'm almost 5 yr older than you, working for a national and the sole support of my household, and just co-signed on a daughters school loans of $125,000. To me, that is kinda scary. But personally i still have confidence in our field of expertise, and in our future. But you have to go with your concerns and what is most important to you. Good luck!
Thank you Microsoft for job security!!
LOL
So if MT 'incompetence' is job-security for you, then
.
contracts and security
Yes, the only real "comfort zone" is what is covered in a legal document. There's your security to a certain extent. That's not to say that will eliminate all problems, but it gives people an idea you're serious and professional about your servies and you don't expect to be taken advantage of. Demand all that you want. Then decide down the road how strictly you want to hold the other party to those demands.
Think of how business people operate -- they argue at the conference table over clauses in contracts and then go play golf together the next weekend. It's expected. It's part of running a business. Business is business, social is social. Draw a line here between the two. Be nice when you type a term paper for your neighbor's kid. Be strict when you deal with clients.
Anyone can challenge a contract or agreement, and sometimes you will lose or it won't be worth the fight to pursue it. Every situation is different. That's why it's best to get the best attorney you can afford, the most experienced in this, to draw up that contract to begin with. Obviously the clients for whom we work have their own lawyers and the money to pursue things. But looking at the overall picture, it's just easier to give into your demands as a Transcriptionist than fight, especially if they really want to keep you which seems to be the case here. If there is a disagreement and you walk, their work is going to get backed up until someone else is trained and up to speed (in most situations). Who wants that hassle? It's easier to give into your demands. Lawyers aren't cheap for anyone, either side.
I'd sit down with these people and explain what they have done to you because they really may not realize how it is affecting you. Be pleasant about it but firm. Then have that contract ready and re-negotiate. Tell them your lawyer has advised you to do this with every client you have and you are changing your way of doing things to protect your business. Who can fault you for that? It makes perfect sense. Then you'll know where you really stand with them and you can make your decision to stay or move on. And when you deal with anyone else, present the contract to them and make sure all parties understand what they are signing before you do one bit of paid work for them.
One other tip: This is not meant in any way to offend you, as I'm sure your sklls are good, especially if they asked YOU to find a replacement. They assumed they would get someone just as good as you. Don't do it. Don't ever hire a fill-in who is equal to or better than you. You want them to be exceedingly glad upon your return!!! Doing this even puts you in a better bargaining position as far as rate increases in the future. If you want to help out a friend, get her/him an account you don't want. OR, hire them as a subcontractor for you so that they do not deal one-on-one with the client except to do the work. They are not to be involved in any negotiations whatsoever. But I still prefer hiring below your level of expertise. It's better for you that way.
Did security updates; seems all better now. -- nm
As an IC MT do you pay into Social Security? SM
I am an IC MT in California. Does anyone know if we can pay into SS so that we get compensated for retirement? As of yet, I have not but would like to in the future, if it is possible.
TIA
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