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

Appropriate pay for private jobs? - kmh

Posted: Oct 14, 2014

I currently work for a national company doing acute care, both traditional and ASR jobs. I have work, but it doesn't pay enough to support a family. I've been approached about doing some jobs for a doc's group, which could turn into something.

I have no idea what to charge them; however, I know they won't be getting any sort of insurance reimbursement or bundling for the transcription service, so it cuts out the middle man.

I don't want to short myself. Please advise: Is it better for a line rate? And what should the rate be? Or hourly? Per page? Per report?

Thank you!!

Local work - anotherMT

[ In Reply To ..]
When I first started working locally years ago I checked around with some services within 100 miles of my town to find out what the going rate was. I started out undercutting that by 1-2 cents per line and then raised my rates every few years. I have always charged per line because that is productivity-based rather than time-based, but that doesn't mean another method wouldn't work for you. Good luck!

Have 1 client for 6 years. sm - Anon

[ In Reply To ..]
He uses an office EMR, but he's a cardiologist working out of a primary care practice 2 days a week. The EMR doesn't completely suit his needs, so he does some narrative dictation which I used to transcribe, then copy and paste into the EMR which I have access to. After a few upgrades of their EMR, the copy paste wasn't working anymore and it was coming out weird with two words on a line then it would wrap, and the line spacing was goofy. We (the EMR company) couldn't get it to work properly for me. I used to charge 0.14 per 65 character line which was easy to count when I did it in a Word document and then copied/pasted. I can't do that now, though. What I did was take an average of 3 months' worth of patients to see how much to charge per patient transcribing directly into the EMR, and it turned out to be $3.25 per patient. He and the office manager said fine. So it depends whether you can transcribe in a Word document then copy/past, then you can charge by line. It you have to type directly into the EMR, then I would charge per patient. If you can find out about how long the dictation is for each patient, then you can get a ballpark idea for how much to charge. I wouldn't start lower than $3.00 per patient though and negotiate from there. Something to think about.

My private accounts - sm

[ In Reply To ..]
I have three accounts I charge by the line - 0.15 cpl. They dictate to my 800 number + software (for which I pay per-minute rate + license fees) and I return their dictation to them via FTP site (the hosting website for which I also pay).

I have one client whom I charge "per note" (basic SOAP note) as I type that into a Word document which I then copy/paste into their EMR. I charge him $7 per note, regardless of size of note (most notes are two pages, a few are one page, rarely 3 or more pages). He also does Comprehensive Executive/Wellness Physical Exams which are 4-6 pages and for those I charge him $19 as they take 30-45 minutes to do and are more complex and detailed.

Like the above EMR poster, I came to these per-page rates by averaging several months of patients at the old (Word only, no EMR) rate of $3 per page, factoring in average time spent per note and the added component of EMR'ing it for them.

My per-line clients I have had for 6 years. My Word/EMR client I have had for 15 years.

Yay for you getting an opportunity to go private! The control and autonomy alone is worth whatever you have to do to make it work. They might be able to turn you on to other practices looking for a sole MT over big-box companies.

Good luck!

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