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

Voice Rec - me

Posted: Mar 09, 2012

How hard is it and how long does it take to make at least the same amount of money or equal what you're making (at least) while training on voice rec? In other words I'm terrified of having to start on voice rec and at 3 or 4 cpl it seems I will be making half of what I already am trying to survive on. any feedback?

yes, you will make half of what you are now - no lies

[ In Reply To ..]
some will brag about how they can do 400-600 lines per hour editing, but in my experience, they are not editing every word!

Voice rec has ruined our industry and you will have to take a cut... Just accept it.

The trick is to learn to edit at least twice as fast as you can transcribe. This - is VERY doable in itself; however, SM

[ In Reply To ..]
the problem with achieving that is NOT with VR itself when used right, the problem is that many companies are putting through reports for editing that are inappropriate for editing but paying the editors wading through them as if they were.

Please do yourself a favor and don't make the mistake of putting the blame on VR itself; editing's not the problem--it's being underpaid for the work. Good news: Some companies are a lot better than others. Those "editors" who are misleading themselves that VR is unworkable, of course, don't understand how to help themselves and truly are in a major pickle. Most of us are underpaid but surviving, and it's important to realize more people come here who are in trouble than who are doing okay, if not happy.

When you read these posts, you can believe, in general, that people who say they're good MTs but can only edit 200 lph are telling the truth. BUT: People who say they can edit 500-600 lph and more and do a good job are also telling the truth. The difference is in the text they're given to edit (and, of course, in their own skills).

So, learn to edit and plan on recognizing quickly if you're among the MANY being exploited by being underpaid below sustainability. These boards are full of people who've been on the skids for at least a couple of years now and still haven't done anything about it. If you can communicate with others doing your specific work, that will be extremely helpful.

If it's mostly the pay that's unsustainable, you need another employer who pays more or a better account--as soon as possible. If there's a problem with you and you can't get fast, even with good VR, you need another industry and you need to know that as soon as possible. Being scrupulously honest with yourself is critical because VR's here to stay.

For the text you're given to be appropriate for somewhere around 4 cpl, generally speaking, it should be pretty readable and understandable all the way through, even if sloppy. This type of text will have inadequate punctuation here and there that needs to be cleaned up, formatting that needs to be corrected, medications and labs that need to be carefully reviewed for accuracy and corrected, AND patches that don't make sense and occasional missing or wrong words. Those words and phrases, though, should be minor enough that most sentences will make good sense and you can understand most of what's happening with this patient when reading a pre-edited report. You will be reading a lot, dropping in occasional corrections as you read, and only occasionally stopping reading altogether to fix something. At 3 cpl, you should be able to crank the speed up fast-fast and spend a lot more time skimming the text for accuracy than making corrections.

Another way to assess--once you've developed some skill at editing--is that you should be able to equal or at least come fairly close to your transcription earnings on the same reports, or see that you should eventually be able to. Every stop to look up a name costs a lot more editing lines than it used to in transcription, so you won't be really good until you're really familiar with the dictators. This is already an enormous factor at 4 cpl and much more than that at 3 cpl.

Please take special note of that last because it's a critical issue, both in getting good and also part of something to beware of: Employers wanting to bring down their payroll costs will move editors (just as they do MTs) to new accounts or load on extra accounts for that specific purpose. Bad as it is for MTs, it's significantly more injurious to editors. (Notice how most of my points are about what an employer may be up to, not about editing itself? Most of us can handle editing to various acceptable degrees, it's underpay that's killing us.)

Some companies do pay higher line rates for bad SR text, of course, close to those for transcription. That's okay, even good, if you get that stinky, dreary work. I've done a lot of it. Read the laments here and be glad. These tough days it's really all about your paycheck, after all, right?

Good luck. Make your own. Be brave, resolute, hard working, intelligent, self-reliant, competent. :)

Another negative factor is QA - MT

[ In Reply To ..]
I was able to edit quite fast with my last company and one thing that has slowed me down with my present one is QA correcting minor things (i.e, removing the hyphen from near-syncope, putting in "his" or "her" if it's not there, etc.). When we trained employees in VR at my last job, we told them not to do this sort of over-editing if it doesn't change the meaning as it is not how VR was designed. With QA nitpicking VR, it makes it impossible to speed it up.

Oh, yes, Totally agree. Same problem here. NM - VeryDoable.

[ In Reply To ..]
X

Alot of the things you named here are why people - are having trouble - see message

[ In Reply To ..]
You speak of the line rates being undesirable and yes 4cpl is just that and its standard, some places are going as low as 3cpl from what I hear.

Everything you say makes since and sounds logical but realistically speaking these companies are putting EVERYTHING on VR and telling us to basically suck it up and deal with it.

There are two large companies in the industry right now doing just that and a lot of the smaller ones are being brought out by them.

So even though everything you are saying is true, its a no win situation especially when you got people out there working 15 to 20 accounts at a time, but why leave when the next company is no better? I mean really the MTs are being exploited and its sad because this is our career and most of us have been doing this all our life.

You speak logic and truth, but I am talking reality. Thanks for the tips, but the bottom line is VR rates are just way to low.

Well you should be concerned - in many cases editing takes longer

[ In Reply To ..]
than typing. The VR is only good with so many doctors, not all of them. So at times you can find yourself making a lot of corrections and in those cases of course its faster to type it.

I believe its possible to average 300 lph, I can do over 200 with editing, but I only been doing it for like 3mos.

But then again, I can type 200 lph - when I can reach 300 lph editing

[ In Reply To ..]
then maybe I can say it helps a little, but again still new at it.

Stick with straight typing if you can - tulip

[ In Reply To ..]
I average about $60-80 a day depending on the dictators AND if I am pounding out one report right after another all day long. It gets exasperating, as a lot of the times I feel I could be faster if I could just type the job out from scratch. But who wants to do that for 4 cents a line? Oh, and this is an 8-hour shift I'm speaking of. This just doesn't cut it financially for me, so I've found a part-time job doing straight typing and cut my hours back at the voice rec job, and I make at least $20-30 more a day that way.

Agreed. Half. sm - Caroline

[ In Reply To ..]
I agree with the above poster, expect half. Some days you might average more, depending on the type of studies and how quickly you can get through them. Made much more as a line rate than I do now. I have nothing else, so I'm stuck like a hamster in a cage. I suppose I should be grateful for the crumbs but my pay sure isn't what it used to be. Boy, I miss them days.

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