More info! - Pam Posted: Aug 16th, 2015 - 12:13 am In Reply to: Begin again - Mae
I saw where you were talking about dictation systems. They are extremely expensive (10,000 and higher) and then there's the annual support contract that's over 1,000 each year. I had one for years and they become outdated so fast that it starts sucking you dry just keeping up with having the digital equipment for doctors to use... oh yes, and let's not forgot the multiple phone lines that come into the system and that monthly bill! When I moved a few years ago, and had to take down the dictation system, my tech was worried that trying to move it and bring it back up successfully might present a problem. Given I was not about to purchase a new one and this one had stayed up and gave me no issue for all the years I used it, coupled with the fact that many of my clients had moved on to dictation online (dictation married to the reports in PACS, etc), I had only a few clients left using the dictation system, making it become less worth the multiple phone line charges, support contracts, etc. A colleague of mine who was doing her own thing at home as well gave me some helpful information that I looked into and have been using for years now. I "rent" lines from a company that does just that, rents out dictation lines. You get your own phone number for your dictators, get to set up a new ID for each dictator, as many or few as you need, adding and deleting as you need, and set up the keypad profiles for the dictators, choosing any of the 15 choices the company provided. I could not believe the luck.... all of that and for $99 a month! I paid more than that in just support and phone lines with owning my own system. So I signed up, moved my dictators to the new system, which to them, they didn't know the difference except that their dial in phone # changed. And gone was the headache of keeping a watchful eye on the system 24/7, making sure the lines were not hung up, a dictator forgot to disconnect, leaving the line 'busy' all day or night, and just overall watching and worrying that a dictator was not going to lose their patience trying to capture a line to dictate. The company does all the managing and the headache is theirs, not mine anymore. I honestly have to say I wish I knew about them long before I made that huge purchase of the digital dictation system, with all the hefty costs that go with it, in exchange for a mere $99 a month to have all the dictation lines I need. I got a username and password and go to a website and under my account the dictations are all listed with a job # and all info needed. I can play them from there, or download them to a folder on my PC and play in my won player, and they're kept on the system in case one needs to be referred to at a later time. It's fabulous, and I would highly recommend doing something like that Mae if you are thinking of starting up and wanting to have a digital dictation system for your dictators who are used to telephone dictation and save yourself a ton of money in equipment fees. There are several companies out there now that do that. Some charge a flat fee for the month, as does the company I use, and there are others that charge by the minute of dictation. That may work for some but for my sometimes long winded dictators, the one with the flat fee worked best for me. I wish you all the best if you are serious about starting your own company, and just wanted to pass that info along as I saw mention of dictation systems, etc in one of the posts. I highly recommend it!
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Complete Discussion Below: (  marks the location of current message within thread)
- Begin again - Mae (Views: 1129, 2015-08-14, 5:37 pm)
- Well - see msg (Views: 976, 2015-08-15, 7:58 am)
- Not to mention - xx (Views: 821, 2015-08-15, 10:59 am)
- ruffled? - Mae (Views: 775, 2015-08-15, 12:14 pm)
- C'mon people..... - most of us are going through rough times right now (Views: 691, 2015-08-15, 9:21 pm)
- More info! - Pam
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