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any opinion on working for VA hospitals....dont know a thing about them.

Posted By: bd on 2005-12-30
In Reply to:

are they pretty much compared to any reg hosp? or is there something i should know?


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Another thing about teaching hospitals
is that you will see things there that you might not see at your 90-bed facilities.

These hospitals do everything and if I were you, I would just wait and see. I think you will find that the experience alone will be invaluable to you.

I know MTs who have been MTs forever that have never had the experience of a teaching hospital and are limited in the surgeries that they have transcribed.

Congratulations on your new job.
I'm interested in working in the Marietta area, maybe for one of the Wellstar Hospitals. nm
xxxxx
Maybe should stop working so dont have to
x
Good thing we all get to have an opinion!
x
I dont want this whole link deleted so they are saying exactly the same thing about being asked to
work and have many backups and no work. Same exact thing. Probably many more that dont come on here that are just as upset.
Dont you think though as thing move in that direction which they already are in EMRs that little by
little jobs will be lost and hospitals will take over more of their transcription work with VR and EMR. I would think that it will be that way.
I dont mind working 1 of the weekend days every week.
I just figure people get sick and doctors have to work them..
One more thing about working in another state...
This is a followup from my post below.  I am happy to see that some of you have been able to work temporarily from another state.  However, is it mandatory to let your employer know (assuming you are an employee of a company, as I am) that you will be doing this?  Do they need to know at all?  I'm wondering about the tax implications.....for instance the state I live in has state taxes but the state I would schlep to for a couple weeks here and there to work does not.  Does anyone know anything about how that would work? 

Same thing with nationals. You work all the time to keep the account caught up when others dont work
and then when they decide to put a whole lot of extra people on your accounts and run you out they could care less about how much you worked.
I am doing the same thing. I recently switched to working when
most people are not there. I am working Friday to Tuesday and there will be lots of work, since I have several accounts and nobody seems to be steadily working those hours. I agree about working nights too. I will do that when the kids are here. That is the only way I believe my line counts will increase to the level you have attained. I struggle for work weekdays and during the day and could not get more than 1,000 a day. I think I will be able to use the strategy you are. Plus I can focus better when it is quiet. I also don't surf the net, or do anything. Just take an hourly break to stretch. Thanks for your help and answers, and poll too!
I live in FL, too, and if I have to evacuate, working is the last thing I'm worried about. nm
x
Stats during normal working hours are one thing
but being paged at un-Godly hours ???     It's just not worth the aggravation,IMO. 
What a terrible thing to call a hard-working MT.
Disgusting name to call someone who has worked very hard, probably gone to college to learn this, invested a lot of time and money, perhaps worked in a hospital, certainly worked very hard, to be called a slob!
Yeah, but hospitals are already largely using VR in hospitals. (nm)
(nm)
Sickest thing, I made more money my first year as MT as I do now, for working
zz
Why dont you stop coming in and agitating everyone under all your different names. Dont you work.
:
Dont you think MQ will just keep hiring new people who dont know they lost lines because they are

new. I betcha.


k, that is your opinion, i stated mine. poor quality in my opinion shows bad work ethics if they do
;
If you dont try to fill in blank or research, dont
x
The way I understand it if you dont keep below 10 to 15% QA you dont get the bonus even if your QA
score remains above 98% so you see as the other poster said you are between a rock and a hard place and I expect this is MQ way of getting out of paying a bonus to people. I see it this way anyhow. I plan to continue to send unclear things to QA and that is the way it is. I expect depending on the new pay scale on top of this they will be losing a lot of MTs anyhow as they continue to miser everyone out of money.
Do you honestly think they do. I dont. I dont think some of them can even understand some of the

 reports they listen to quite frankly.


If you dont want to read a thread, then dont.
x
Most Dr. dont care and dont know how they get
x
Since dont know of any cars that dont use
x
I dont know. I didnt care then and I dont care now.
Just me

You get more working the evening or night shifts and working w/o benefits. And producing like a mad
,
Most hospitals have ......

contracted their work out to the national service, a practice I hope comes full circle eventually and hospitals reopen their own departments in the name of confidentiality and quality control.  I only know of 2 hospitals out of about 8 in my area that have their own department (I work for one of them).  It is by far the best MT job there is, or that I have ever had.  I am at home, but a regular employee.  The hospital is only 20 min from my house (we have to live local).  I have worked for the big nationals and saw nothing but a decline in pay.  Now I get regular raises, good hourly pay, production incentive pay, benefits, and vacation time.  I wish more MTs could find my situation.  I have hopes for the future once the industry figures out that they are cutting off their nose in spite of their face.


Do All Hospitals
In Tennessee pay that well? I have been considering moving to Tennessee to try to get away from the hurricanes.
VA Hospitals

I did the VA Hospital dictation here in Portland and it was all contracted out to companies, no employees.   But you might contact your local VA Hospital but if it is as an employee 95% chance you will have to go into work and not do it at home, if it is at home it will be as an IC and no benefits.    Just what I know about it.  If you think your ESL's are bad at a regular hospital, this is worse as there is a lot of ESL's there on their rotation and they could care less how they dictate as they are only there for 6 to 8 weeks.   Changes that often.   


 


The hospitals are not going to get
dial into.  They'd be better off hiring MTs and paying benefits than doing that.  And if you dial directly into the hospital, instead of into the MTSO's dictation system, then the MTSO has no say in 800 lines.  The truth is, hospitals usually do not want to just turn all of their dictation over to a service and they certainly aren't going to pay for long distance incoming calls in addition to what they pay the service.
just sometimes it is the hospitals...
they are actually told to hold back dictation at times, due to costs. sometimes the hospitals sneak around and try other services, or voice recognition.

in the future, there will not even be any voice dictation...just templates where information is added, like data entry...
Not that many hospitals.......
still have their own dept.  That's how Medquist and Spheris and all those huge nationals exist... They have whole hospital accounts.  Out of the 3 large hospitals in my vicinity, only 1 still has their own department.  I trolled their website for months before I found an opening, but I eventually got in.  Some  hospitals don't have their MTs at home, mine does.  It all depends.  Most hospitals have a website, so fine the one you're interested in and check out their job opportunities, and then check it almost every day and if they do have a dept, they'll eventually have an opening.
Well - believe it. Hospitals pay that. I can tell you
at least hospitals in the Philadelphia area pay up to 24 cpl. MQ charges 23 cpl. I have one small department of a hospital at 17 cpl. It is out there - pull your head out of the sand and go looking.
I wonder if hospitals know
There are American transcription companies opening up here in the US that actually work for companies in India?  I had a job offer from an American company and they let it slip that they were actually getting paid by Focus Infomatics.   I thought about this and what an idea!  You open up a company in the states, the facilities think they are getting American work, then you actually have the work done overseas.....hmmmmm
hospitals

do hospitals now go by minutes instead of lines in regards to productivity?  if so, what is the usual they are asking for an 8 hour day? 


thanx!


All hospitals are different. Concerning
your "past," if it has been exspunged from your record, then basically it never happened. This happened to my BFs son and his attorney told him that since his record was exspunged, nothing ever took place, so he does not have to mention it on any job application. You might want to call your local court house or your attorney on that particular question.

I would say go ahead and apply. Good luck.
All hospitals are different. when I sm
first started, ERs did their own stuff too. But as the years went on, ER combined with the MR departments and was considered part of acute care. It is not as detailed but you get some of the same language in an abbreviated from by doing ERs, even some OP reports. I don't like ERs either though simply because the docs are usually in a hurry and they are motor mouths. I do think though that MTs now should consider ERs as part of acute care especially if they don't like ERs.

Some MT companies do split them up though and hire folks for just ERs.
SM hospitals
It's been years since I have heard of any hospital that has ANYbody working in-house.
Ditto....granted I am not working much these days, but am currently trying out a new way of working
when I do work which seems to be helping.  I am timing myself and keeping a log of how long it takes to to type however many minutes.  I am averaging anywhere from 13-18 minutes of dictation an hour now doing this.  Granted the time fluctuates between who I am typing, and if I have to look up names, addresses, etc., just depends on the division I am doing at the time.  But work that used to take me 3 hours to do is now taking me under 2 hours, I am also trying to put in more macros as I go along, which slows me down initially but pays off in the long run of course.  I was working "all the time" before but took forever to get done since I was not applying myself. This new "attitude" has helped me a lot.  My goal, in the Fall, is to do 90 minutes a day consistently at 6 hours, and then maybe get up to 120 minutes a day at 8 hours, still while having at least half of the day free (do 60 minutes at night, and the other 60 by Noon).  Thereby doing 1200-1400 lines a day.  I have never really buckled down and done more than 8000 lines per pay period, so it will be a nice change.  Maybe you can do something like that and have a specific knock off time as was suggested below. 
Working holidays? Out shopping in stores where someone IS working

that holiday you refuse to work?  Grocery stores, food joints & seems any store is open on holidays and you expect them to be fully staffed, so why shouldn't we?


Yes, I took off for the first time on Christmas day, in 18 years and it was great, but I worked Christmas eve and this whole past weekend.


Someone has to do it!


What hospitals?? I'm soooo there


No, even the hospitals don't want to hire new MTs.
Doctors don't want to hire newbies.  In office, at home, it doesn't matter.  It's not about being a stay at home mommy, as you are so assuming and generalizing yourself.  Everyone wants to hire experienced workers, but nobody is willing to train them.  As I said, every other industry in the country trains their workers.  MT seems to be the only one where people are expected to walk into it knowing everything.  It's not an assumption; it's an observation.  Just because my experience and observations are different than yours does not make me wrong.  You're not the know all, end all to the MT world.  I do have business management experience and education, so don't dismiss my observation as lacking just because it doesn't match yours.
Hospitals being sued
Seems to me the hospitals must not be very worried about being sued or they would require fluency in the English language as a pre-requisite for staff privileges.  Secondly, any doctor who doesn't read what he signs pretty much deserves what he gets.   Transcriptionists make mistakes....so do doctors.  Thirdly, maybe hospitals should re-think how their work is contracted out.  Far fewer problems when transcription was done in house.
i am sure you are aware that there are still hospitals out there
that have not yet adopted these rules. I type for one major hospital that still wants the patient's name typed in the report. Another still wants cc instead of mL. Had this person tested and changed it to the "correct" form, who is to say that she wouldn't have gotten marked off for changed verbatim. Nervous MT2, hang in there, and if you test again make sure you ask up front whether they want you to follow BOS or type it verbatim that way you know ahead of time.
but what percentage of hospitals allow that?

From what I've been reading ... the home-based service MT is averaging 8 cpl, for those dictators which make you run screaming from the room. And, I don't forsee things improving. Then again, some are lucky enough to make a line rate worthy of their skills, without worry about the dictators from Hades.

This is a bit out of date:   http://www.bls.gov/oco/pdf/ocos271.pdf


My nearby hospitals pay around $10 as well (sm)
I make 22-25$/hr at home. I live in an area where average pay is low, but likewise cost of living is reasonable.
I miss the hospitals too.
But things are so different there now that the online companies exist. It changed the way transcription is handled in most places. When I went back to working for a hospital last year, the supervisor wanted a certain amount of lines per day versus minutes per day like the old days. It was an outrageous number and with no Expander or medical speller or anything.


Hospitals oursourcing
HIPPA is all about smoke and mirrors, designed to keep the masses feeling "secure." If the powers that be were concerned about privacy and the state of the world, they would have built that provision right in there from the beginning, but powerful special interest groups designed HIPPA and left out this all important factor. I personally know hospitals that directly outsource overseas, and maybe, just maybe it may have to do with the fact that the owners (doctors) are foreigners living in this country and have colleagues in India. Wheh I questioned an administration about HIPPA and what they were doing, I was told, "Not to worry, they take the same precautions and follow protocols we do here for HIPPA." I say, yeah, but who can see from here what potential dangers lurk overseas, especially with so much concern of volatility in those areas of the world. Terrorists live in India, Pakistan, the Phillipines, etc. and all it would take is a nasty vendetta against our nation and POFF!!! There goes our medical records! Now we have to be concerned that the United Nations may take over the supervision of the internet!!
Nationals: Sometimes the hospitals have their own MTs sm
and pull the MTSO off the account when work is low to keep the hospital employees busy.  This probably happens more often than one might think these days.  IMHO
You have 911. There are local hospitals
with free nurse referral lines. That's just for starters.

You just take the cake for stupidity with your original question and now your silly offended replies.
Hospitals Using Outsourcing
Really not so unusual for all hospitals in one city to contract out transcription. Little Rock, AR for example where I used to live, did just that, save for one hospital (Baptist), so I moved east to Memphis, because I could not stand working out of my home to land a hospital job to work in. Cost-cutting measures you know.