Your QA person is correct. More thoughts inside.

• QA question ! - susieQ
  • Provide the service you are being paid to do... - Chief Editor
  • These are not petty! These are major sm - 30 year MTr
    • 2-5 years in acute care wouldn't solve this (sm) - Another QA member
      • you are correct. I should have said sm - 30 year MTr
  • I do QA also and agree with that QA - she is helping you really. nm - hvlmt
  • These are basics. All of you should know - QA specialist
  • I totally can't believe that after 15 years - QA99
  • Listen to your QA - you might be up for a review?
  • Sounds like she is giving you - excellent feedback and you
    • not true. Crux is, she is being treated differently than others - in her ofice.
      • It will make her a better MT if she learns to do it right - so what
  • To SusieQ - Albert
    • .... - to Albert
      • that is the most ridiculous bunk i've ever heard! - whole thread belongs on comedy board!
      • What someone else is silly enough to pay you, has no bearing on your ability or character. - nm
        • .. but im sure you know that already - you are RUDE
          • Naaaaaaasty lady. Bad lady. Pooh. - gonna go drown my sorrows in a Pina colada.
            • and if she chooses to swim with..sm - ignore the florida troll-I live there too
              • my original post was perfectly - I was nice, and courteous!
  • I have to wonder if this is made up BUT if you are - genuine, then I would
  • Tell her THANK YOU! - TopMT
  • Wow, that's really awkward that you are being treated - differently than other workers. sm
  • I have only been doing this for a year.. - TM
  • I would do as they ask..sm - AzMT
  • Your QA person is correct. More thoughts inside. - QA Mgr
  • bottom line it's what client wants...sm - every client profile is different but
  • Been doing acute care for 7 years now, - MT
  • I do all of them too! How long have you worked there? - Is it just too hard to retrain yourself or what?
  • I would do as they ask..sm - AzMT
  • Some rules I follow..for #6, I think the first time an abbreviation is used, you expand and paren th - I agree with QA
    • that would be same rules not some. - yikes..me again
  • 15 years of experience and you don't know - these rules?? Very sad. Nm
    • everyone else has responded, - sad? Oh please ...
      • Not trying to be rude. It is just sad that this - sm
  • They are all correct style and grammar rules. More concerning are the gross HIPPA violations sm - MTSO
    • portability and accountability act....nm - It's HIPAA - health information
  • These are all normal things for me as well. - they are correct
  • Looks like your QA is going by the AAMT Book of Style - nm
  • I believe all of the examples you have here are - correct. It's the way I do it.
  • #2 should be 82-year-old female, - Wannie
    • Thanks to (almost) all - susieQ
      • RE: Thanks to (almost) all - Shelly Hendrix
  • With the exception fo #6, which we have been told - me
    • grade typing back in the 60s...lol...sm - taught 2 spaces after a period in BASIC 10th

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According to the BOS 2nd edition, follow-up is no longer used. 

followup--adjective and noun

The patient will have a followup appointment in 10 days.

The patient will have a followup in 10 days.

follow up--verb--The patient will follow up in 10 days.

Of course some companies do not follow BOS 2nd edition, but what I posted is correct according to the BOS 2nd edition.

By Adam Bernstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 15, 2006; C09

Shelley Winters, 85, a brassy actress and raconteur who appeared in more than 120 films and twice won the Academy Award for supporting performances, died Jan. 14 at a rehabilitation center in Beverly Hills, Calif. She had been hospitalized in October after suffering a heart attack.

Ms. Winters won her Oscars for "The Diary of Anne Frank" (1959), as the sloppy and nervous Mrs. Van Daan, and for "A Patch of Blue" (1965), in which she was one of the true screen vultures, mercilessly abusing her blind daughter (played by Elizabeth Hartman).

Her last Oscar nomination was for "The Poseidon Adventure" (1972), the much-lampooned all-star drama about an overturned luxury liner. Despite her girth, she played a former swimming champion who tries to take others to safety.

Acknowledging the film's rich potential for parody, she appeared on "The Flip Wilson Show" in a skit set in a fast-flooding laundromat. She led the cast in a daring escape through a washing-machine hatch.

At first a peroxide-dyed "blond bombshell," Ms. Winters was typecast for years as a gangster's moll and dance-hall dame. She once joked of her tendency to perish as a sinner or martyr, writing in a memoir: "I had been strangled by Ronald Colman, drowned by Montgomery Clift, stabbed and drowned by Robert Mitchum, shot by Jack Palance and by Rod Steiger in two different films and, oh yes, overdosed with heroin by Ricardo Montalban."

By the late 1950s, Ms. Winters had carved out a successful career in character parts -- the brash and frowzy secondary roles that she said would sustain her career as she aged.

She once called the role of Charlotte Haze, the mother of a teenage vamp in "Lolita" (1962), "one of the best performances I ever gave in any medium. She is dumb and cunning, silly, sad, sexy and bizarre, and totally American and human."

In her later years, Ms. Winters appeared on talk-show programs to detail her indulgences with the leading men of Hollywood's golden age.

She also wrote two kiss-and-tell memoirs, in which she counted among her amorous conquests Errol Flynn, William Holden (they had an annual Christmas Eve rendezvous), Sean Connery, Burt Lancaster and Marlon Brando.

She said Brando invited her to the set of "A Streetcar Named Desire," locked her in his trailer and began to simulate violent lovemaking by shaking the room, pounding the walls and screaming with delight.

Ms. Winters wrote that she found this silly, adding: "When I refused to yell loud enough for him, he whispered, 'You're not helping my image enough. For God's sake, you studied voice projection. Use it!' "

Shirley Schrift was born Aug. 18, 1920, in St. Louis and moved to Brooklyn, N.Y., when she was 9. One of the most stinging memories of her youth was seeing her father jailed for setting his men's store on fire to collect insurance money. Much later, he was exonerated, she said.

"I developed a whole fantasy world during my childhood," she wrote. "Reality was too unbearable. This ability to fantasize has been a powerful tool in my acting."

After winning local beauty contests, Ms. Winters left school to model dresses. She also was a nightclub dancer and appeared in summer stock.

She wrote of having more gumption than talent early on. During a nationwide scouting hunt to find the ideal Scarlett O'Hara for the film "Gone With the Wind," she told the casting agent with a Brooklyn accent, "Lawdy, folks, I'm the only goil to play Scarlett."

She won small parts on Broadway that led to a film contract with Columbia studios. When Columbia let her contract run out, she called Garson Kanin, a casual acquaintance then directing his play "Born Yesterday" on Broadway. She asked to be understudy to star Judy Holliday. Instead, Kanin told her to look up film director George Cukor, who was casting for the doomed waitress in a movie script Kanin had co-written.

The film was 1947's "A Double Life," and it would provide Ms. Winters with her first notable part. She played the mistress and unwitting Desdemona to a psychotic Shakespearean actor (Ronald Colman). Colman won the Oscar that year, and the film's overall acclaim brought much attention to Ms. Winters's talents.

Then under a long contract at Universal studios, she was rushed into a series of forgettable musicals and gangster melodramas. Periodically, she grabbed better assignments as a freelancer. Among her notable work was playing Myrtle Wilson in "The Great Gatsby" (1949) with Alan Ladd, and a hostage who develops romantic feelings for thug John Garfield in "He Ran All the Way" (1951).

Ms. Winters wanted badly to do a big-budget picture, and she devoted her time to pursuing one of the most sought-after roles in Hollywood: a mousy factory worker impregnated by social-climber Montgomery Clift in "A Place in the Sun."

Desperate to prove her ability beyond what she called blond bombshell publicity, Ms. Winters showed up for her first meeting with director George Stevens looking so meek and pathetic that he didn't recognize her.

He was so pleased with her immersion in the character that he offered her the role immediately. Ms. Winters, who received her first Oscar nomination in the part, later called Stevens the best director she had known. They worked again on "The Diary of Anne Frank," when she recalled Stevens playing the song "Purple People Eater" to loosen up the cast after tense scenes.

By the mid-1950s, she was veering into scene-stealing secondary roles, such as the secretary and mistress to Paul Douglas in "Executive Suite" (1954); a trampy actress who gets murdered in "The Big Knife" (1955), starring Jack Palance; and a widow who falls victim to a murderous preacher, played by Robert Mitchum, in "The Night of the Hunter" (1955).

"Mitchum, who was and is famous for playing jokes and kidding around on the set, was contained and serious throughout the filming," she later wrote. "Charles Laughton directed the film slowly and carefully. And we knew when we saw the first rushes that we were part of something classic and timeless. 'Night of the Hunter' is probably the most thoughtful and reserved performance I ever gave."

Ms. Winters studied acting with Laughton but also was a follower of the "Method," a naturalistic performance style in which actors plumb their own lives for motivation.

When her studio contract expired, Ms. Winters revived her stage career. She won praise as a heroin addict's wife in Michael V. Gazzo's drama "A Hatful of Rain" (1955).

Critic Brooks Atkinson wrote of Ms. Winters in the New York Times: "She is simple, aware of all that is going on around her, good-humored and full of compassion and decision when the last scene comes around. She had the taste as well as the craft for a lucid and disarming character portrait."

Also in the Broadway cast were Ben Gazzara and her third husband, Anthony Franciosa, of whom she later wrote: "If there had been an Olympic sex team that year, Tony would have been the champion." They later divorced.

Ms. Winters began writing short plays, culminating in a series of one-acts produced off Broadway in 1970 under the title "One Night Stands of a Noisy Passenger." In the cast was a young Robert DE Niro, who also played her drug-addicted son in Roger Corman's film "Bloody Mama" (1970).

Many of her later roles were Jewish-mother parts, from "Next Stop, Greenwich Village" (1976) to "The Delta Force" (1986). Her last film was the Italian farce "La Bomba" (1999), which reunited her with her second husband, the Italian stage and film actor Vittorio Gassman. She said they divorced in 1954 after she discovered him romancing his 16-year-old Ophelia in a production of "Hamlet."

Her first marriage, to a Chicago textile salesman named Mack P. Mayer, also ended in divorce.

Survivors include a daughter from her second marriage.

 

if that is all they WANT to type.   Is the person who wants to be a supervisor willing to make up for those people?

You have crap supervisors, editors and mts in the business like you have good ones.   Sadly, the really good ones of all of them are few and far between. 

While I feel empathy for her family wondering what happened and wanting closure, frankly I'm tired of hearing about the case on the news, and that we have tied up FBI and even the military resources to look for her.  We have people that go missing in the US every day... and people visiting countries disappear - and you only hear about the ones who have families that are rich or well connected with the media. 

In my town there's a college girl who has been missing for over a week and it finally made the newspaper in a small blurb today.  This girl missed a flight to visit her family for a vacation and hasn't been seen or heard from since then, and her family says this isn't like her and that she was excited about the vacation.  Are they getting the attention this chick in Aruba is getting?  No.... because they're an average middle classed family.

I do know how you feel.  There are a few things I've done to cut that type of sress down...

I'm not sure what your company is like, but for mine, we have a primary account, and many people also have secondaries (mine is so busy that I don't usually need back-up work, so I have one major account).  It pulls from several clinics, but with a pool of about 20 or 30 dictators, after awhile, you get the hang of even the hardest ones.  There are some dictators that are just really bad, and I struggle with.  When I can't figure something out, rather than spending 10 hours searching and struggling, I use blanks.  I give it a good faith effort, as best as I can, and then I move on.  Since I usually clip along at a good pace and am pretty confident in 99% of the work I do, I don't let myself feel bad for sending something to an editor, if I truly don't know what it is.  Of course, I do the research, but if I'm looking for something for more than a few minutes, it's been too long.

You may need to look for a different account/specialty or even a new company, if you think that is the problem.  I know that, at one point, I ended up moving from a difficult but high-paying account to an account that paid less, but I was more comfortable with.  I ended up making more with the lower-paying account, because I wasn't having to stop every 2 seconds, and I wasn't tearing my hair out, and ending up in tears at the end of the day.  Of course, people should move up as they feel ready for that, but perhaps you need a workload that doesn't create so much extra work for you.

Those are just some thoughts, but you CAN do it.  Be proactive in finding a situation that works for you.  You are more of an asset to your job when you are comfortable and not stressing and struggling.

Hang in there!

 I would want to know what type of docs run the clinic - whether anesthesiologists, physiatrists, ortho, neurology, etc, as this will guide the typical direction of the dictation.   Because pain med Rx writing is always under scrutiny, there will probably be a fair amount of repetition for every pt on medicolegal issues.  Most, but not all, of my experience is with neuro/physiatry-based pain management.   For both these, I found the doc more likely to do further workup, which leads to much longer and involved reports. In the middle would be those docs who do extensive review of the patient's history and only minimal further testing.   The extreme other side of the coin are those, what I call, in/out pain clinics where the pt shows up every 30 days, re-signs their drug contract, has their BP checked and leaves with a new Rx.   I would always expect the initial H/P to be extensive and the f/u notes relatively brief.  Typically lots of phone call documentation and referral/followup letters or information.   Anesthesiologists lean more toward a lot of injectable therapies, blocks, epidurals, etc., at least initially, putting more of an op bent on their practices. 

As far as interesting, pain patients are very repetitive in their complaints and their needs.  Typically,  by the time a pt gets to a pain management practice, the cause of their pain has already been extensively worked up.  There are true chronic pain sufferers and those who are drug-seeking only.  Things do get interesting with the latter because they are very creative when it comes to trying to con or manipulate the docs.   If I were in your shoes, my first question would be what speciality of docs run the clinic.  As far as job security, it is way up there for legit practices.  More often than not, the average family doc is not willing to prescribe pain meds beyond a certain amount of time/quantity and feel forced to refer the pt to a pain  management practice in order to protect themselves from the medicolegal aspects of the business.    Hope something here helps - best of luck to you. 

Homosexuals as well as other "minorites" have been treated as second class citizens for so long now.  Let them be proud of it!  Do I think they go a bit far sometimes?  I sure do!  But I don't have a problem with it.  If a same sex couple wants to hold hands on the street then let them.  We don't need to stare in disgust and shield our eyes.  They are just trying to have the same freedoms as we have.  Discrimination is alive and well even today.  I know this because I have gay friends and hear about it all the time.  I feel that as long as you are happy and living your own lives then then let them be.  I know many "straight" people who are living in dead-end marriages,  completely unhappy and not doing a darn thing about it.  But their union is so much more sacred?  I think it's hogwash.  We are all different.  Let's celebrate those differences, not put others down because they aren't "fitting the mold" of what's acceptable.

I'm looking forward to Rosie being on The View.  I don't think she'll slam her sexual orientation down our throats at all.  She has very precise views, yes.  And she will talk about them.  She's VERY political and I feel that has nothing to do with her orientation.  SHe's given and helped raise MILLIONS for children and others who are less fortunate than her.  So why is it any time Rosie comes up people automatically make fun of her being gay?  Get over it people.  SHe's a person just like you and me.  jeesh!!!

My 15 YO daughter has a part-time job...she works 2 days a week at a local fast food restaurant.  Her best friend, on the other hand, doesn't work.  Her mom thinks she shouldn't work until she gets out of high school. I say, that's up to her, but I think it's to her daughter's disadvantage.

It was my daughter's idea to get a job, we didn't push her into it. She likes going shopping, movies, Starbuck's, and loves having her own money to do it with.

Now, her BF just turned 16 and her parents (she has 4 of them...my daughter only has 2!) bought her a car and set her up with her own checking account to pay for the gas. She has no responsibilities whatsoever, which drives me up the wall!

Oh BTW, she just got her license YESTERDAY...and last night, she was driving around to Wal-Mart, Target, Starbuck's...ALONE...with her 10 YO brother in the car with her...and we live in a small, but very busy part of town...you know, one main road that leads to everything! Is it just me or is this crazy?

Opinions please, as I know y'all have 'em!

I had no formal training.  I lost my job and my future mother-in-law was an MT with her own business.  I asked her to train me and she did.  For three years I drove over 50 miles one way 3-4 times a week to work in her office.  I feel it was better training that I could have ever gotten from any school. 

My MIL has told me she had many people try doing transcription without experience and I was the only one who worked out.  She even had people with training who didn’t do as well as me.  I believe it truly depends on the person and you should know right away if she will work out or not.  You have to have an ear for it and that can’t be trained.  You have to have good English skills and you have to be willing to work very hard.

It is possible.  It will take a lot of work on both your parts.  My MIL knew from the beginning that I would work out compared to what she had seen before.  You should know this too and be prepared to cut your losses if you feel she isn’t the right person for this field.

If you get your own accounts the charge is usually less than that of a large nationals or even semi-large nationals and that is why they will lean towards you.  You don;t have the overhead of a large national and can charge less and still make great money.  Also they sometimes like having only one person handle the account.  You learn that account, make your shortcuts and you can really produce the lines.  Since I don't have the overhead of an outside office, employee benefits, etc. I do pass those savings onto the doctors and I still make a great living.  (Hitting over 5K this month and that is just me not my IC's)   And yes it is possible as in the past two months I picked up two accounts and just heard about one yesterday and these are tapes with pick up and delivery but the pay is very good and I will take them.  As for taxes, all the nationals do is to hold out your money for you to pay your taxes (with the exception of your 7.5 SS) and you just have to plan for that and budget and be strignent about putting the money aside.  With all of the write-offs I have so much more usable income with by husiness and being an IC than being an employee.  It is not MORE EXPENSIVE.  You are just in charge of holding out your taxes.  Go for it but I do not think you should go into it thinking you will get the 18 to 20 cpl that nationals charge.  But that is me. 

Patti

Depends is it all digital, will you be picking up and delivering, printing or what.  If it is all digital and you don't have to print or deliver I would go probably 12.5 to 13.  Once you get the doctors down and you macros, templates, auto correct or whatever shortcuts you use, it will be good money.  Also is it gross or cpl, character line.  I pick up and deliver, print, and start my accounts out at 12.5 but this is Portland and I count gross lines.    Just don't tie into a written contract that prices cannot be negotiated or raised within a certain amount of time.  It will take you a while but bet even at 12.5 to 13 you will be up to $40  to $50 an hour fast.  So I think you are in the ballpark.  Don't want to go too high but not too low.  So if you can get a lot of shortcuts and once you get used to them you should be able to do 300 to 400 lines per hour which is good money.  Good luck. 

have reason to question my returns! 

If he is going to be fairly easy to do after a while and you can easily get your lines per hour up to about 250 to 300  and perhaps more if you can get his exams down and save them and insert them as he dictates them.  I would charge around 12  to 12.5 cpl per gross line.   Even with pick-up and delivery it is only once a week  20 miles is perhaps a gallon of gas a week or less which is only $3.   My toner in my printer lasts me 6+ months and I run approximately 600 - 700 sheets per month  This could very well work out to $35 to $40 per hour.  Of course it could turn out to be the other way but they usually don't for clinic notes and even even the worst dictator  if you have him every day you do get used to them.  But I would not overprice to start but do gross lines at 1" side margins at a Courier 12 font and you will do fine at 12 cpl.    If he wants a different font used, and most of my accounts do, I simply change the document back to Courier 12 and my margins and do that for my line count.  I use sticky paper and so as to not use so much use .5 margins on the side.  Good luck.  

I think a pool should consist of priority down, by reports, and whatever you draw as a report that is what you transcribe.  This picking and choosing sucks.  The work should be done oldest report done first, and in that order.  No one should be stuck with all the crap!  I work nights, and this is happening to me because everyone on days picks and chooses and they get the easier reports.  I'm working the shift that no one really wants to work, and guess what I get to choose from the bottom of the barrel.  I'm switching to days!

I am constantly reading on this board how you cannot make any money and how terrible this profession now is, but in my opinion, we - or let me rephrase - I am still making darn good money!!!  I have no problem getting 2000 lines in 6 hours a day (which is about 200.00 - do the math) and my experience has been that the in-house positions are not where any money is!  I have been offered two in-house positions in the last 6 months - one offered me 14.00 an hour (with 15 years experience), topping out at 17.00 an hour and 75% ESL dictators!  The other offered me $10.00 an hour! 

I agree that we deserve more money for what we do - I agree that we are still being paid the same or less than we were 15 years ago when I started this - but I do not agree that going to work at Wal-Mart or McDonald's is going to pay me the same money that I make. 

So in my opinion, yes it is worth it!

You say:  *Years do not give you a leg up in this business, knowledge and application of it do.*  But where does the knowledge, verbal and technical, come from if not from years of working on different accounts in different environments?  No school, no matter how good it is, is going to teach you everything you need to know by graduation.

I cannot understand a service owner wanting to turn her back on a class of workers (long-time transcriptionists) in a market that cries about a shortage of skilled workers and uses that as an excuse to offshore.  It's no different from saying you don't want to hire based on gender, ethnicity, national origin or religion based on your preconceived notion of any of these things.  Why deny yourself access to any portion of a supposedly limited talent pool?  Is it a pain in the tail to have to wade through resumes, perform testing and do interviews to try to find the right person?  Sure it is, but that's part of the owner's job just like transcribing a disorganized, Klingon-speaking dictator who is barely audible is a pain in the tail part of a transcriptionist's job.     

I have to wonder how many experienced, valuable, long-term transcriptionists who might be looking to make a change in their situation have been turned off by this MTSO's comments and now would not consider working for her because of her perceived attitude.  Those who know her personally may be able to look beyond it, but others won't.  If her service is as good as you say, then it appears that her comments may lead to an unfortunate lose/lose situation all around.