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

I wrote to the USMLE exam people today and asked a - question:

Posted: Jul 18, 2013

Namely, why US hospitals are being turned into Towers of Babel because there is no SPOKEN English testing of foreign physicians. As it is, they only need to be able to read/write English sufficiently well to take the exam, which is a very different thing entirely from being able to speak English.

It's passing strange to me that when I'm doing the most difficult work that I do with some of the most abysmal dictators that I deal with, who cannot string 3 English words together intelligibly, and who require the most experience and expertise in order to divine what they're saying and untangle their messes, I get paid the LEAST because of the extra time that it takes to derive some semblance of a medical document that isn't utterly ridiculous. The enormous influx of these physicians is one very good reason that MTs should be paid an hourly wage or a salary - and not by production.

I'll report back on the reply to my query, if any. I'm not holding my breath.

where I work.... s/m - MTMT

[ In Reply To ..]
We have a doctor that is so bad and everyone complained so much (or just kept sending his work back into the pool) that we now get an extra penny per line to type his reports. Wow! Big whoop! After spending half an hour on a 3-minute report, that extra 20 cents really does make all the difference, let me tell ya!

Wow - a penny! Watch out for those mooring fees... - when you get your yacht.

[ In Reply To ..]
nm

foreign dictators - jac

[ In Reply To ..]
I agree there is a huge problem with the extreme difficulty of much of the foreign dictators. It only takes a couple of them doing multiple reports in a day to ruin my life and make me sit there in extreme anger and unhappiness, although I do try hard to do my part. Some foreign dictators do a beautiful job, especially the women (in my experience) because they seem to talk slower. Once I calm down and give them a try, they aren't so bad. But, then I get another really awful one. I have 32 years of experience, am a CMT and have been a QA editor too. Consequently, when I get a new job, they always try to put me on the most awful account they have. Once I see this and start groaning and moaning and making "NO" money at all, they have the nerve to ask why I am so slow. Gee, I can't imagine why. Would you like to do this stuff yourself? I have requested on several jobs that they either switch me to part-time (maybe I can tolerate that better) or to give me another primary account. They always give me a hard time, but I just tell them that I never agreed to work on an account with 80% foreign dictators and even though I am pretty good at my job that I just can't bear the grief that goes along with that work. They always cave in rather than lose a CMT - fortunately. Ultimately, I ended up quitting several jobs because they would put me on a different account that was also in the "worst" category. I am still hoping to find somewhere where I can get the good old-fashioned fun jobs --but then I found out that if your supervisors also are required to transcribe that they simply assign themselves the fun stuff and I have had a couple of them lie to me about what they were doing. If you know the system or have access, you can go in and check who did the work. I finally got fed up and quit that one too. In the old days, I worked for years and years at the same place. I long for that and also hope for a turnaround in the MT business, as I have just partially retired at 62, but still need to work until 70 to increase my Social Security income to the highest amount (there is limit on your earnings this year of $15,120). I will hang in there.

This field is so backwards - Leaving MT

[ In Reply To ..]
What other field can you be at the top of your game and not get financially rewarded for it? Instead, in MT the opposite occurs: The better you are at your job, the harder your accounts are, and therefore the less money you make because the technically difficult work takes longer and is more tedious.

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