A community of 30,000 US Transcriptionist serving Medical Transcription Industry

I am so angry, this might not make sense, I am hoping it will......sm - Cyndiee

Posted: Dec 14, 2011

I have been a very successful MT (mostly) for over 18 years, building up my experience, my abilities with ESL and difficicult dictators, constantly growing in knowledge, and each time fought to be careful with which job I chose and to better myself each time.

Okay, I know things are tough, but I just read something really ABRASIVE AND SAD. An ad that touts loudly "ALL STRAIGHT TYPING" "YAY"!! Very celebratory.

Next line----and this is for experienced ACUTE CARE -- 7 cpl.

I made that back in the mid 90s and thought that we were growing, moving forward, and that with all the very hard work, I would never have to go BACKWARDS in pay. WAY BACKWARDS!!!!!

So, now we are having "all straight typing" flashed in front of our hungry eyes like a SUPER PRIZE, an honor to be highly sought-after, nah, NEVER MIND THE CPL, girls, you will be STRAIGHT TYPING!!!! (and I will say with all honesty that my last job that I was at for several years, I was making 8.5 for a GROSS LINE, which was on average about 11 to 13 cpl in line count and pay.

As long as we fall for this payment, we will be stuck as veritable chattle and serfs for the rest of our miserable lives, or we can get our own accounts, which I am in the process of finally buying a call-in voice system for my docs rather than be told I have to make what I was making 30 years ago....or we can quit, retrain, whatever. I have never been as disgusted to be in this field as I am right now. Look on the Job Seeker's board and you can find this wonderful ad. Sorry if you think I am too snarky, this really hurts after all this hard work and the investment of really my life's work.

Yay for straight typing at 7cpl....... a Joke - lka

[ In Reply To ..]
I just saw that ad and hope NOBODY applies for them. Not only would it be bad for an employee status, but they are asking for IC status, which when all is said and done, you would be working for about 4 CPL........ These people make me sick and how unprofessional to put "yay straight typing". I am an employee at a MTSO part-time and make much more than that...

Please people, do NOT apply for jobs that low especially as an IC........

the heyday of MT is gone - em

[ In Reply To ..]
A friend of mine has a small MT business and she is losing accounts left and right to EMR. She's very frustrated like you, that she spent all these years building her experience and her business and now it's all falling apart.

I'm afraid the peak of MT has come and gone. I'm investing my time and energy in getting out.

Very true... - MT

[ In Reply To ..]
Same thing happened with the last company I worked for 20+ years (and had been in business for 30 years). Small, the owner valued her employees, good pay, 5 weeks of vacation, etc. She lost accounts to EMR and so had to to close up shop and retire. It didn't matter how the doctors felt; administration makes the decisions now. It's sad because it's just going to keep happening more often. Unless you work for doctors who actually make the decisions, it's inevitable that jobs/pay will be cut due to point-and-click EMR, Epic, offshoring, etc.

Agree. That employer advertises all the time - because no one will work for them

[ In Reply To ..]
People are on to them. They specify a very specific schedule and then go on to say that as an independent contractor, blah, blah, blah. I don't think they can get any one to work for them at any rate.

So, as our payscale, benefits, and general work environment are all....sm - Cyndiee

[ In Reply To ..]
getting downgraded very quickly to "below newbie" levels (or at least what the Newbies USED TO GET), why don't these companies save themselves a lot of aggravation and stop making themselves so ridiculous, and just finally take ALL the MT JOBS RIGHT OVER TO INDIA, THE PHILLIPINES, ETC.....most are going that way now, and now we want 10-year-experienced, acute care MTs in all specialties and subspecialties, working as ICs without benefits or time-off, working at the same wages as 30 years ago??? And we who have been here all this time KNOW THIS and can verify it with our check stubs! Oh yes, and we will call you an IC, but you MUST WORK WEEKEND DAYS, YOU MUST WORK BETWEEN SO-AND-SO HOURS, WE WILL SET YOUR SCHEDULE AND HOUND YOU TO KEEP IT, in flagrant offense of Working Status Laws with the I.R.S......BECAUSE WE CAN!! yes, we can get away with it as we downgrade you and take more and more of your jobs away, tell you how grateful you should be for "the benefit" of working at home. What? It is a BENEFIT for the company, we use our own equipment, references, electricity, office space, DSL/connectivity, EVERYTHING, while giving up the above-mentioned accrued time-off, any benefits, ....oh yes, it is "PushMe-PullYou", the creature who had to have it both ways!! When I had to work at home in order to raise my three children, it was the HARDEST JOB EXPERIENCE ANYONE CAN HAVE if you try to do it correctly, taking good care of your child/lots of love and interest, while keeping up a vast work load at greaater than 99% accuracy. Yes, that was a REAL vacation. I loved working in hospital, but wanted to be there for my children, always.

So, if we are to get excited because we GET TO TYPE!!! OH WOW!!! at 7 cpl, what a slap in the face of someone who 1)Went to formal college for this as part of an Allied Health Career; 2) Has spent thousands on upgrading a vast library of reference books, electronic dictionaries, newer, better, more efficient PCs and software, and then took all the CMT readiness and practice courses; 3) Payed membership for years for AAMT, as this was said to be a sign of PROFESSIONALISM and DEDICATION.....Okay, enough. Just take the jobs where you won't even have to PRETEND you are fairly employing anyone, you can bring all the jobs to the third world countries, pay everyone 3cpl or whatever they make, I have a feeling they are not catching up on us FAST, and we can finally leave a career that we loved, trained and studied very very hard for, one which we tried to make better and more respected....I am lucky to be able (I think) to retire in about 5 to 10 years, I shall get a doctor practice, of which I have many around here, and just forget about my "MT Career."

I could not agree more or have said it better. - nm

[ In Reply To ..]
nm

You took my feelings right out of my heart!! - Please see message

[ In Reply To ..]
I actually posted on the main board a couple days ago under a title something like "MT career could be over, blessing in disguise". I've worked really hard to take care of my body in this profession, but I have recently found out about an injury caused from working myself to death at this job. The damage is so bad that even after surgery, I might not regain full function in all digits of my hands; therefore, my MT career could very well be over.

I have cried ever since reality has set in, as I love the work I do and learning every day, but I am sick of where this profession has gone, and how we are treated! We are so much more than what we are given credit for!

This injury may be a blessing in disguise and God's way of showing me it's time to take a different direction in my career. I have gained a lot of knowledge throughout the last 20 years; it's not just about the typing!

Maybe it's time more of you start thinking about doing the same thing before you develop a life-changing injury. I never thought it would happen to me.

Do you have carpal tunnel, because I had to have the surgery...sm - Cyndiee

[ In Reply To ..]
way back in 1999. I had been suffering increasingly with numbness, tingling, pain and ice-pick feelings in my hand and arm (right) all night long...I had a great neuro surgeon and I healed really quickly and well from it. I immediately went right back to MT, I have flares of pain here and there, especially when the weather is very cold and snowy/rainy, and I surely cannot bowl anymore, but now I am getting it in the left hand, very painful. But I am a fighter. There is nothing left to fight for nowadays, though. I SCOUR numerous MT boards for jobs, and I have tried to maintain my standards. I have been willing to come down a bit from where I was, I realize with this economy we are all battling in different ways, but who in this world is taking an almost 50% pay cut??? And in most cases more demands put on you? Your IC status is not respected??? I just feel that the really experienced, really knowledgeable, really talented MTs are NOT WANTED anymore, we can demand more money (or at least, we SHOULD be payed more money). They want kids who have enough knowledge to be trained like a robot, do what they are told, and "hey, be glad you are working at home, and you are actually TYPING instead of all the crappy VR/SR editing messes with lousy pay!" For the first time, I am downplaying my experience and education, etc.....I am an expensive ANTIQUE right now, an extremely efficient, educated MT who is very well experienced in ALL PHASES, ALL SPECIALTIES, even fantastic in ESL and hard dictators........so what????

No, it's not carpal tunnel; I kind of wish it was! - Takecareofyourself

[ In Reply To ..]
It's a different nerve that affects different fingers. It can actually do a lot more damage if not treated before it becomes severe. It is similar to carpal tunnel as it considered an occupational disease; although, it's not one that we think about getting frequently or at least I didn't worry about it.

I'm glad you healed well from your surgery years ago!! Take care of your body and don't kill yourself for this profession. The more they cut our pay, the harder we have to work to try and make money!! I know that's what happened to me. I quit taking breaks, and I sat in my chair hour after hour afraid my work would run out. It's so not worth it.

I hope you qualify for Permanent Disability! - A small silver lining, at least! -nm-

[ In Reply To ..]

Not only that, but the "straight typing" they're - so excited about is likely the - sm

[ In Reply To ..]
dregs of the dictators. The ones who are too bad to ever be able to use VR, and who are such a pain to transcribe that their inhouse staff (if they even have inhouse staff anymore) won't touch them. Yes, for that *incredible* per-line pay of 7 cents, you'll get ESLs, mushmouths, and interns who think they're dictating the next Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, and change their minds every other sentence. You'll get the narcissists who think they're so doggone special that the rules, be they hospital dictation standards, English grammar, patient care, or even common decency don't apply to them. You'll get lots and lots of broken files, too. All the incomplete dictations, or reports with no sound on them at all. Of course, you'll first spend 20 minutes trying to put together the demographics that they didn't bother to dictate or key in, and after you finally get that mostly filled out, THEN you'll get nothing but dead air, and no report.

You'll spend time looking through those 100-page account specifics as you try to figure out what it is the dictator is asking you to do, only to find it's not covered, because it's never happened before. So yay - you get to spend half an hour on the phone trying to explain it to your supervisor.

Or else you'll be wondering what to do with a report that wouldn't completely download, but now you can't get it to go away, either. It won't download, it won't erase, you can't deallocate it, and shoot - you can't even kill it with CTL-ALT-DEL and the Windows Task Manager. Meanwhile, you can't get on to the next report until this one is gone.

I would be pretty leery of all that rah-rah "straight typing" hype - because it's just far too likely it'll be garbage-work that will earn you far less in the long run.

So sadly, I can almost "bet the farm" that you are right on with that assessment!! :(..... - Cyndiee

[ In Reply To ..]
nm

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