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

Shouldn't ICs be able to make their own hours? - frustrated

Posted: Jul 21, 2011

One of the reasons I got in the business in the first place was to make my own schedule. I thought that one of the main rights of an IC is you are able to set your own hours. Why does this not seem to apply to medical transcription???

IC hours - JC

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I've always said the reports dictate when I work. Do you mean your company tells you when to work?

yes, they absolutely do - frustrated

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The last time I tried to change my schedule I was told that I had to work certain hours on certain days. I'm being treated as an employee w/out any of the benefits. There was one instance where I had to leave early, and they assigned me some reports and said I needed to finish them before I could leave.

IC hours - JC

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Ugh. That's frustrating.

IC hours... - sm

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Doesn't sound like any IC job I've ever had!

No. This has been discussed...MANY times. Some may, - but it is NOT part of the definition of IC. NM

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x

Isn't that illegal? - just sayin

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.

why didn't you refuse? - curious

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They can only abuse your status if you allow them to.

Perhaps you need to not work for this client?

telling ICs when to work - biskie

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Nope if they tell you when to work, that is illegal. I have heard when they start doing that you are an employee and can sue for benefits and pay therein. All they can do is accept or not accept the ICs work is my understanding. Might be worth a chat with an employment attorney

Anyone have any ideas how I should proceed? - frustrated

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What I feel like doing is talking to management and giving them the opportunity to either let me make my own schedule or offer me an employee position. But I guess I would need to have something else lined in up in case they give me the boot. Right now i'm sitting at home while family is in town because I have to start the second part of my ridiculous split shift in an hour.
This isn't working for me anymore.

Just terminate your contract. They can do it to you, do it to them. - Hayseed

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If you contracted to make your own hours and they are forcing you to do otherwise, simply terminate. Right? That's how they would do it, right?

What does the contract YOU GAVE THEM say? - IC MT

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Does your contract that you had them sign when you took them on say what hours you will work?

If it's not working for you, stop working. Tell them you can no longer accept work from them. Simple.

Exactly. It is just that simple, even if you do go broke - suiting yourself. This is the real world. NM

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x

It does! - mt

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Set them. Clients (including MTSOs) don't have to use you for those hours, instead prefering another IC who will cover the hours they need.

No one ever said you couldn't set your own hours. You can. You can do whatever you want, as can your clients.

This is the problem with people who get into MT thinking A) I want to work from home and B) I can do it when I want.

Working at home only works if you realize it's a REAL job.

And as to naming your own hours, you have to decide then who to accept as clients. If you accept an MT service as a client, realizing they are a middle man and have obligations to THEIR clients, you need to ask up front if they need coverage for particular hours (and then if these are hours you don't want to work, decline the job); or you have to go find doctors/clinics/hospitals yourself, cut out the middle man, and work whenever you want. Oh and in case no one lets you know, that cut out the middle man also means you are responsible 24/7/365 :)

Clinic work - anon

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If you want to make your own schedule with a 24 hour TAT you need to find clinic work. That's what I do and I work whenever I want with an occassional phone call for STAT jobs.

well.... - frustrated

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I can't just stop working, I have bills to pay. I would need to have something else lined up first. I'm going to try and work something out with the company i'm with, in the meantime i'm looking around. I dug up my contractor agreement and there isn't anything on there about working certain hours. It just says transcribe "as needed."

what did you write in the YOUR contract that - you gave them

[ In Reply To ..]
If you are putting yourself out there as an independent contractor, you should be giving every client YOUR contract that states your rates, your TAT, what you do for how much money, who your security officer is, giving them a confidentiality agreement as well as HIPAA documents. Did you give these to your client?

So many MTs want to get mad at MTSOs for treating them like employees (and oftentimes that isn't even the case) and yet so few MTs have a clue what being an IC really means. It's not "I'll work whenever I want."

You're running a business and it sounds like you need to do a little more homework before you should be opening your business doors. Hopefully, they'll take you as an employee (do they offer employee status?)

There are many drawbacks to this too. - I had heard people

[ In Reply To ..]
make the 24 hour TAT sound great with clinic work. I had to take on multiple phyisicians to make it. Then, you get days having to work a whole lot of hours to get all the work done where they have sent in multiple dates of service or had busy days, working extremely late and extremely early. The hard thing is that it didn't matter what was going on with my schedule that day I had to complete the work.

I actually have gone to MT part-time because of this. The schedule, or lack thereof, was killing me. I work in a doctor's office doing something else and would not recommend anyone to switch over to clinic work. We are going EMR within a couple weeks. Government gives great incentives for this and nice penalities in a few years if they don't start using. We are having reps stop by constantly trying to sell their systems, and most of our referring notes we are getting in from other providers are on the point and click type systems, probaby upwards of 80-90%.

As an IC, you should have a contract - Maggie

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If your contract says you can work whenever you feel like it, regardless of workflow or TAT, then you can. If you sign a contract agreeing to work mornings, or evenings, or whatever, then you need to work the hours that you said you would work. If you don't have a contract, then you're not a very good IC or you would have drawn up a contract before you started.

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