You're okay making LESS than you made 10-20 years ago?

• Poll: MT Job Satisfaction - MT student
  • Yes, but... - eb
  • Starting this day and age, I'd not make it..quality is a side issue..speed is what they want..14 - my spot
  • Love it! - Alice
    • You're okay making LESS than you made 10-20 years ago? - huh???
      • Good Heavens! - Alice
        • My dear Alice, while you are being critical, what do you - think of the company who is paying less and less?
      • I'm w/you on this one! It's crazy to accept LESS THAN 10 YRS AGO. And that is just what MT com - have done. They took our
  • Absolutely not - MT since 1978
  • Nope! - Kate
    • I left and came back-that is the part I should NOT - have done and now regret! NM
  • job satisfaction - DaMT
  • Absolutely would. Love my job/career! Make great money. nm - Nother 25 year MT
  • While I have made great money doing MT, - 25 year MT
    • I am in total agreement with what you have written - 25 yr MT too
      • Great while it lasted and I was home with my kids...but - Another 25 yr MT
  • Thirteen years here, and my answer is absolutely not. - Getting out. nm
  • No, after 25 years (sm) - Studying MT
  • Going on 17 years.....absolutely....I would do it all - over again...SM
  • 45 Years PLUS - old time MT
  • 36+ years. I wish I had finished my Masters. sm - Nina
  • No way. Did it 15 years, out now. - nm - I.B. Chillin
  • Been doing this 6 years at home for 5 - anon
  • LOVE my job! - texan
  • Burn out after 11 years - Illinois MT
    • To MT Student - Listen - midwest MT
  • Knowing what I know now, NO, I would not become an MT. nm - well.....
    • What would you do if you - weren't an MT?
  • I couldn't believe something I saw in an employer's list of must haves. - She was paying by the line, but yet...
  • Love in house, hate nationals at home nm - Just another MT
  • 25+ years here. Would never do anything else unless SM - Blu
  • Love/hate relationship - Medtype10
  • Ten years here. I would get a bachelor's degree. This job is looked at like cashiers at the sto - No, would not do again.
  • Run, Toto, RUN! - Regretting
  • Absolutely, I love my job! nm - Nyer
  • Yes, I love it and have no regrets. The positives - Laurie

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You stated in your original post that you don't want to work weekends or odd shifts. What is your definition of an odd shift?  Second shift?  Third shift?  Sounds like you want to work M-F on days.  Sounds kind of rigid to me. 

Personally I like second shift, so everyone working days means more work for me! 

I feel like I can't get out of this rut of making enough money to just pay my bills and nothing left over.  What would you say the average annual salary should be after 2 years of acute care work?

Thanks

We got one hour of PTO (paid time off) for every 10 hours worked, so that's just a little less than 3 weeks a year. We had a 401K that was pretty decent, good health insurance, life insurance equal to two years' pay, and they offered AFLAC and disability insurance as well.

Oklahoma's cost of living is among the lowest in the nation....I don't know how people living in California can make it on $8-$12/hr.

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. 

I worked for yeeears for a company where I was the primary MT on the account.  I produced what they considered to full-time MTs (no bennies except taxes being cut and matched).  I earned $4000/month.  I later went to work in the office and happened to see an invoice to the client.  I did the math and I realized they were clearing an additional $4000/month just based on my production.  So they were making twice again as much as what they paid me.Was I immature enough to think I DESERVED MORE?  No!

I had a good gig and I knew it.  I knew how valuable I was to both the client and the MTSO.  I knew how long I had worked this account, how certain doctors would only accept my work, how many of those doctors seeing my work at the hospital went back to their practices and signed on with that MTSO because of the quality of my work increasing the MTSO's business in the process.  I was loyal to them  and they were loyal to me.  On the 3 occasions I ran out of work, they paid me 2 weeks pay just so I wouldn't take a job somewhere else.

But let's analyze this since you seem you jumped on my wardrobe size.

First you need to understand this is a country where capitalism is own of its primary foundation.  Next you need to understand that out of that profit, the owner had to pay herself (how many times did she call me for help at 11:00 on a Saturday or Sunday because people bailed on her and she had alread worked 20 hours that day and just needed someone who would help her out?).  In addition to having to do MT work, she had a business to run.  That means maintaining good will.  You know, visiting your clients, checking in to see how things are, what can we do for you...in other words, being the marketing person also.  And god forbid she have a private life.!  She had to pay an office manager to manage all the qurky personalities of the at-home MTs, the daily vascillating work flow, putting out fires and preventing them, etc.  Next she had to pay her bookkeeper because god forbid anyone's paycheck was late or incorrect.  Then she had to pay a computer tech to help set up the new MTs, manage computer issues, make sure all the clients got their work, set up new clients, maintained the ASP, etc.  She also had to pay the in-house MTs.  She had to pay her accountant to make sure the books were in proper order and do yearly taxes, keep up with adding new state taxes to the computer when she hired an MT from another state.

She had to pay rent, electricity, phones, toll free lines for all her long-distance MTs, liability insurance, provide computers sometimes with no notice because someone's computer died overnight and she couldn't afford down time for that MT or the client, provide computer equipment for the client's, provide C-phones and Lanier stations, pay someone to clean the office twice a week...

Is the big picture a little more clear?  Where does this new-age feeling of entitlement come from?  Geesh, am I the only one on this site who can remember trying to pick 100 lbs of cotton in a day and feeling satisfied if I got near that figure?  And I'm in my 40s! 

The world doesn't owe you anything.  It was here first.

and with a really good incentive plan.  I live in the Kansas City area.  $10 seems like a low starting point even with only two years experience which is the usual benchmark for hospital MT jobs. 

It's been my experience that the low end of the pay scale for hospital employed MTs was around $12 an hour.  Also, it's been my experience that the pay offered is usually based on years of experience and how well you perform on the transcription test.

I would say if their pay is that low, they should at least be making it up with incentive and it doesn't sound like they are.

JMO

x

My husband doesn't want to work.  Never has and probably never will and it took me 16 years to figure out that nothing was ever going to change.  He has been in and out of college over the years with a number of different majors and when he is on the verge of actually finishing something, he up and quits, because I believe he doesn't want to actually go out and get a job.  He loves the going to school part, the studying, etc., but the actual finishing and putting his education to work, that's too overwhelming.

For years I made excuses for him, supported him, and actually believed that as he got older he would mature and finally find his way.  He's 42 now and runs off every day with one of his unemployed friends to play frisbee golf or go hiking or water skiing or fishing while I'm sitting at home at my desk typing until my nose bleeds!

I was one of those women afraid of being by myself.  I recently had a major depressive snap where I cried nonstop for three weeks.  I found a great doctor who became a great friend and she helped me find the right medicine to get my head clear and then she helped me realize that I don't have to be afraid of anything.  I was already supporting myself and my kids without anyone elses' help.  What was so frightening about leaving my husband behind?

So quietly I made my plans to leave.  I let my husband know that I was going to move back home to the area where all my family still lives when school let out this summer.  He didn't believe me because I had said it all before.  So I just made sure he knew I was thinking about it again.  Then May came along and miracously a job opened up at the hospital in the small community I wanted to move back to.  This hospital never has openings because they virtually have no employee turnover whatsoever.  Everyone's been there at least 5 or more years.  I took it as a sign and made my move.  Within two days of submitting my resume, I had an interview set up.  Without even waiting to see if I had the job, I packed up my kids and our stuff and told my husband "I'm going.  I love you, but if you want to be with me you need to get a job and actually be my partner not one of my kids."  And I left.

I got the job, thankfully.  I've been here a month and I know without a doubt that it was the best thing I've done in a long time for me and my kids.  My teenage son had built up a lot of resentment towards his father and their was a lot of anger and tension between the two of them before we moved.  Now, my son is happier than I've seen him in years.  He's more social, made a lot of friends, and even has a girlfriend now.  My daughter misses her dad, but she has always been remarkably wise for her young age and is very open about saying how calm everything is up here.

So there's my story.  I would never encourage anyone to divorce or leave their husband, and I haven't actually taken the step to file for divorce yet myself.  But sometimes separation is liberating and therapeutic.  It has been for me.  I can't remember the last time I felt so peaceful.

If it were only adding up to three bucks, I wouldn't sweat it. $100? Yeah, that's baseball registration for my son for this year. I am not giving tabs, returns, etc. away free when it adds up to that much difference!  Why should I charge less for a Return than I would for a"K"?