Very busy - just did my total for the month. This is the best year I've had in my 25 years of MT!

• Work picking up? sm - Curious
  • Very busy - just did my total for the month. This is the best year I've had in my 25 years of MT! - Experienced-MT
  • We have more work than we can keep up with. NM - TM
  • 5K above last year - pj
    • Woo-Hoo, me too....! - sm
      • Me too YAHOO!! - MTE
  • Well today is a holiday...... - sm
    • That's what I'm afraid of!! nm - curious
  • Not here! - wish it would pick up!
  • My lines have increased by 1,000 per mo. and it's - sm

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In my exeprience, it has been MT friendly.  I did have some start up issues because of Vista, but that was easily resolved if you get a cust. svc rep with a little knowledge.  My issue was with getting word to run inside of the scribe program like it was supposed to.  It kept opening outside of scribe.  By Vista being so new to the platform, It was registry problem that needed some tweeking. 

I started in a small hospital in the Midwest and spent 6 years there, then moved to the West Coast.  When I started, we had two reference books, Dorland's and the Surgeon's Syllabus (a red much used book).  We were on Royal typewriters, four carbon copies, all colored with different color white-out for each copy.  Our dictation came in on wax records with the stats at the switchboard station.  They would call us when one came in and we would walk down and get it.  They were on lilac wax and the others were on a salmon color.  We had little record players at our desk and we would transcribe the wax records, then put them in a press to take out the grooves and use them over and over.  I loved working there.   We then graduated to the Norelco reel-to-reel, and then to the Dictaphone plastic belts, then the magnetic belts, and then the MT/ST, then the Mag-Card, and finally to the computer, then to the Lanier pop-up tape system, then to the Sony Network, and then to digital voice.  It's been a long joury and I was with one employer for over two decades before being sold to MQ. I had the best boss in the world, generous to a fault, but then MQ came along and offshoring and the MT business went down, down, down. I make half of what I used to and I work twice as hard. Benefits are hard to come by and there is no security.  I long for the old days.

monthly or have it deducted automatically from your account.  If you elected to pay monthly, I think the membership went up about $5 to $10.

There wasn't any high pressure sales.  I basically called them and asked could I come in a check it out and they give you like a week trial or two weeks (my memory is sooo bad!).  Then if you decide to become a member, you fill out the paperwork and they weigh and measure you (fun, fun) and file it all away.  And then periodically they will ask if you want to be weighed and measured to see how much you've lost.

They are really encouraging there (at mine anyway).  They gave way prizes for different things like if you came a certain amount of times in like three months, you got a T-shirt.  And then there are prizes for when you lose 10, 20, etc pounds.  And at mine everyone had a little paper doll that started out at 0 and when you lost weight you moved your little paper doll around on the wall.  It was kind of fun.

Well, I've just convinced myself! 

Now it seems, I'm just scraping by, juggling the utility bills and paying whichever one has sent me the 24-hour disconnect notice this month; it's become a grim miserable job compared to what it was.  I'm nearing retirement age, but I doubt retirement is going to be in my future for a very long time.

The single worst thing that ever happened to us was going from the gross line count to the character count, and not adjusting the line rate upward to parity -- not to mention the adjustments that should have been made to accommodate all the extra time spent struggling to make sense of huge increase in ESL dictations that has occurred over the last 15 years, and of course there should have been COLAs as well, which we all know has not happened.

In the 1980s, with the advent of powerful and affordable PCs, free lance transcription became much more common.  So if you were experienced, disciplined and organized, you could be much better off economically by working for yourself -- although there were definitely advantages to working in-hospital.  There were great benefits and the salary was indeed enough to support a small family (albeit very modestly.) 

For a number of years during that time, many of us worked part time in the hospital for benefits, but made our real money at home.

But in my case, the time came when it just made no economic sense to work in-housel, I was better buying off buying private insurance for major medical care, tax-deferred annuities, and self-insuring the little stuff. 

I would just pick up tapes from the hospital every morning, and drop off the work (which I printed out) from the day before.

I usually had 24 hours to transcribe tapes which I did during school hours, when things were peaceful and quiet. 

I transcribed a couple thousand GROSS lines day.  Every single character line counted, so by taking advantage of headers/footers, creative macros, word expansions, etc., I really boosted my productivity far beyond to what I could do in-house on the self-correcting Selectric, Wang or Mag Card, or whatever 10-years behind technology was currently being used, plus all the office distractions and politics, and I definitely did not to have to work 24/7 to earn a good living. (Oh how I loved WP5.1!)

In fact, 2000 gross lines a day, 5 days a week at 10 cents a line (courier 10-pitch font, one-inch margins) was very very do-able for an experienced productive acute-care MT, provided she had good equipment, good reference books, and stayed focused.  It would take about 5-6 hours a day to get that amount of work done.  So figure the math out for yourselves, that's just a tad under $50,000 a year, certainly not a high standard of living in those days but adequate when it meant you could stay home and be actually be a full time parent when your children were home from school, and very comfortable, if you were married with a working spouse, or had rerliable child support, or social security for your children (if you were widowed.)

If you chose to work some weekends and evenings, it was not that all that difficult to hit that $75,000 a year mark, which I did for a couple of years so I was able to pay the tuition at a good boarding school -- and cruelly thwarted my teen-aged son's only ambition in life, which was to become a high school drop-out.

Things have gotten bad, no doubt about that, and the worst part of it is, is that most of the big MTSOs are still charging the hospitals as much as we used to earn, and sometimes even more, but the MT is no longer earning it, and often can't get enough work to meet the line counts required by the MTSOs for benefits (although the cost of those benefits are reflected in the cost charged to the hospital.) 

I don't know what the answer is, as the electronic immigrant is such a huge threat.

It's pretty darn awful, and I feel very very bad for those of you starting out in this field, and I do hope things change for you (and that someday soon I can retire.)

And the point that the person made is that that she was worth $75,000 a year, not necessarily that she was getting it or could get it, and I absolutely agree with her.  This is a hard tough job if it's done right -- it's mentally tiring, it's hard on your back, your hands, your neck (and your behind.)

It requires a lot of time -- it requires focus, you must stay alert, and must give 100% of your attention to what you are doing 100% of the time, it takes education and brains -- and now a word of truth which my 35+ years experience gives me the right to say aloud -- it's not fulfilling, wonderful, lovable and enjoyable, it's often as repetitious and tedious as an assembly line but infinitely more frustrating.

PS: I recall one of my colleagues from those early years of my career, now gone from this earth, telling me that the 1960s were really the "fat" years, that things actually began to decline salary-wise, in real dollars, in the 1970s. 

nm

And the clients have always liked my work.

That is the only CORRECT in my book ... he who signs the paycheck.

My problem with changing accounts was not the terminology, the dictators (I do 4 big hospitals even now), but it was shuffling around to remember account specifics. That is ridiculous.

It is another case of an MTSO (not the client, the MTSO) treating the MTs as a cost center instead of a revenue center. The "money" was for the suits and the editors (no offense) and the MTs who did the work were at the end of the money line.

I've never run out of work, been slow at times, and asked for more.  If you are a well-rounded MT the work is there.  If you are limited to one or two specialities well, work is limited as would be anywhere.  As for the pay, my check was been screwed up twice in 3 years.  I had the difference in my hands the next day, the fedex the check to me. 

Question to you?  How did you treat BTS?  Where you there to work if and when they needed you?  Was your work 98% or better and within TAT?  Most employers will treat their employees they way they are treated.  It's a give and take situation people.  I sign on do my work, send it to the clients and have no problems.  If they need extra help somewhere I usually (but not always) say sure (who can't use the extra money anyway).  When I want time off, they say no problem. 

Did you ever try talking to the owners about your problem with pay or work or to your manage?  You can't complain if you don't try and solve the problem first.!!

and can honestly say I've never had a background check to my knowledge.  They really should let you know beforehand and I guess it is possible I've had one and not been aware but highly doubt it.