Golden opportunity for hospitals right now! - Idle MT

     As we all know, thanks to the way most MTSOs operate, there is currently a glut of experienced, talented, highly-qualified MTs who are looking for something better than just a chickenfeed job at a national. 

     Some hospitals have begun to question the quality of work they're getting back from the nationals (and the HIPAA compliance), since ever-increasing amounts of the work those nationals have is getting offshored. 

     For any hospital even remotely considering bringing their transcription back in-house where it belongs, I would say they have a golden opportunity to do so RIGHT NOW. 

     Wages have become so ridiculously low at the MTSOs, that I think most experienced MTs would jump at the chance to work as a hospital employee once again, instead of where they currently are.  

     If big changes in medical documentation are coming in the next year or so, it's likely there will need to be more computer and software changes for everybody - MT and employer alike.  What better time for hospitals who have wanted some full-time, but at-home MTs, to get not only the computer equipment necessary to make that happen, but the experienced at-home MTs to do the work! 

     In lots of ways, a 50/50 (half in-house, half remote) workforce is a smart way to go, because then a hospital has access to an even wider selection of dedicated MTs, and could accommodate both those who desire to work at home, and those who are tired of working at home and want to go back in-house again.  In that way, they would need to dedicate a lot less space to housing their transcription departments.  Many hospitals rent offices off-site for their clerical workers, and what better time to do that, too?  There are empty offices virtually everywhere these days, and rent costs on them are dropping every day.  

     I've heard of some hospitals that have opened their own daycare centers.  Not only does that make it possible for more people to work on-site, or to commute a little further to do so, but it also could be a great source of additional income for them, and what a great, safe environment for the kids!  

     Many medical facilities seem to spend far too much money on aesthetic frills:  New waiting room furniture, original artwork to hang on the walls, an energy-gobbling fountain in the courtyard or at the entrance, etc.  Others build huge, cavernous parking structures.  Instead, they should work with their communities to get public transit stops at the facility (train, bus, light rail, subway, etc.)   

     Instead, the focus should be on their employees.  THEY are "the hospital", not the art on the walls, or the new granite countertops in the restrooms.  If you attract top-notch people, you will have a top-notch medical facility, and the patients would rather have that, and people willing go to the extra mile for them (and their medical records!) than all the outward fanciness.  Inner beauty in a hospital trumps outer beauty, any day.

     They should take a long, hard look at all the middle-mangement they hire.  Do they really need that many MBA-degreed assistant managers?  It would seem more cost-effective to instead offer training for current employees in each department to become team leads, instead of bringing in people from the outside for those positions.  Then, when decisions are made about work flow, cost-cutting, expenditures, morale, ergonomics, safety, and just about everything else of importance, you would have people who actually know the job in positions of leadership, not just corporate-types with the fancy degrees and big egos running the show.  That would probably save hundreds of thousands each year.

     Back to MT again.  The glut of experienced MTs looking for work, and the ever-lower prices MTSOs are trying to woo new clients with, can only mean one thing.  That quality of outsourced transcription is going to continue to decline.  The direction of the entire MT service industry right now seems to point very squarely in the direction of ALL outsourced transcription going offshore in the very near future.  As I write this, there are already rumblings of big layoffs of U.S. MTs in the future at many of these national services.  Look at all of us with NJA every day.  We know where that work is going.  And we've seen their VR, too, and we know that it won't fly without experienced people to edit it so that it's halfway acceptable.  But they don't want to PAY us for that experience, nor do they want to charge the client for it.  

     So, although most hospitals will continue to outsource to offshoring MTSOs for the foreseeable  future, how much do you want to bet that many hospitals, in an ever-escalating climate of HIPAA-compliance and EMR accuracy, might decide that at the very least, SOME on-site transcription is better than none at all, which would mean blindly sending all their work out to MTSOs, and blindly trusting that the work will be done onshore?  Or even correctly?

     Any hospital even remotely looking at the possibility of bringing their work back in-house (where many of us think it belongs, anyway),  should jump on this unique opportunity of a stagnant economy, and a large number of the BEST MTs in the nation all hungry and looking for a decent job.  In the old days, a hospital might advertise for months and hardly get any MT to reply.  But now, the chances are that so many would apply to secure jobs like in-house transcription, that they could pick and choose from many top-rate transcriptionists.