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

Axolotl - anyone else losing serious money here? - LosingMoneyDaily

Posted: Mar 03, 2010

Is it only me or is anyone else losing serious money here? for the past 6 months I have NOT been able to make more than 950 dollars a month take-home. now with the new program my pay is even less. Please, is this happening to anyone else or am I being singled out. no matter what I do I cannot make more than 220 to 250 dollars a week in may paycheck, and am onily getting paid twice a month. I am short about 6 hours with mmodal now. IS IT JUST ME they are doing this to?

M-Modal is bad, period. - SM

[ In Reply To ..]
I'm not at Axolotl, but at another company (PS) that recently switched to VR with M-Modal, and I'm working twice as hard and making half as much. It's carp.

I actually qualify now for some 'government' help which is embarrassing - LosingMoneyDaily

[ In Reply To ..]
but my pay is so low I am getting help with my utiliy bills (I guess government subsidized because I have to take all my paperwork and kind of 'grovel' to keep my electric and heat on), and I actually got taxes back this year, which is a first since I was working for minimum wage.

this is extremely disturbing and if anyone is making more than I am PLEASE let me know how, where, and let me in on it. and I don't mean 10 hours a day behind this desk with no breaks just to barely make what I made in 1990 which was 649 dollars every 2 weeks take home. (might I add that was with benefits included) I am now officially making very much less than that.

I've had to rely upon heating assistance, too. You're not alone in that. - nm

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nm

My son qualifies for free lunch at school due to crappy income. nm - Sims

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Assistance - kat

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Wow,now I don't feel so bad. I am getting heating assistance, food stamps, and medicaid!!! This is the first time in my life I have had to do this, and I just turned 60, so I don't feel bad about it. Gotta survive.

Don't you get paid by the hour? - Axolotl MT2

[ In Reply To ..]
I thought we were supposed to get paid by the hour to start with and then switch to a line rate again, though they never mentioned what that line rate would be.

paid only for keying actually. - LMD

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there appears to be no compensation for anything other than actual keying. straight keying for 7 to 8 hours a day with no breaks or meals, or anything but keying. I don't see any other option except working extra hours out of my own time a day to complete 7 hours of straight keying.

do other companies do this on VR, make you work like this with no pay for anything except keying?

Axolotl/M-Modal - Ax MT2

[ In Reply To ..]
They told us that they would average our pay for 6 months and then pay us that hourly rate for a while until we could learn the system and get up to speed. I don't remember if they gave a time frame or not.

I think overall things have been going downhill.

M-modal - Bear Lover

[ In Reply To ..]
This m-modal thing worries me. For every pause from dictation, while doctor is conversing with someone, even when a good dictation comes along with few correction to be made and no keying is going on, this will count against mt. The clock keeps on tick'n. Is this unfair or what?

Other VR systems - What in the world

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The company I work for has 2 different VR systems and both of them you get paid by the line. Getting paid for keying? That sounds absolutely absurd. You should be getting paid for all the info packed into your MT brain and editing the report with your knowledge. Even if you aren't KEYING, you are still taking your time to review the report and listen to the dictation. If my company goes to something like this, I'm outta this field for good. I would tell your company perhaps they need to hire some monkeys.

I think the system times out after 5 minutes - LMD

[ In Reply To ..]
so supposedly you are getting a bit paid for that during the report but nothing else. there is no compensation for anything once your hands are off the keyboard. I am sinking very quickly here and almost disgusted.

I just want to know if anyone else has this issue. do other companies do this? am I the only one this is happening to?

Axolotl - totally baffled

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I thought it was required by law that an employer allow one half hour break for an 8 hour shift or two 15 minute breaks if working a split 8 hour shift. It seems if we take a break during our shift (like we are supposed to) it is being deducted off our shift time. I wonder what the dept. of labor would say about this. Anytime the keys don't move, time is deducted off. There are going to be times that things need to be researched or there will be pauses in the dictation, they may be looking through the chart, etc. This all takes time away from us. This is all beyond our control but we get penalized for it anyway. If those keys don't move, we lose time. Are we supposed to choose between "slapping the keys" or making sure what we type/edit is correct and accurate? It seems like the whole meaning of transcription is literally going out the window. I sure hope this doesn't hamper quality which is something they so pride themselves on. Unfortunately though, I don't see how this couldn't have an impact on quality. I think this is also going to hurt many transcriptionists by impacting their wages as well.(I'm not saying it's fine for someone to be doing something else while they should be working but there will be times the keying will stop for work-related reasons too). I'd be willing to bet that if this is the trend they are going to take on, there is going to be a massive amount of good quality transcriptionists jumping ship. Not many are going to be willing to do the time only for it to be pulled back on them because they stop keying to look up a word, etc., especially when typing/editing the most challenging account we have (and we all know which one I speak of) and putting up with the ridiculous idiosyncracies that come with that account. I think the other poster had it right, maybe they should hire a bunch of monkeys to do the work. It just totally baffles me that they are doing this. Just my opinion.

Pay rate for "keying"? - curious

[ In Reply To ..]
Are you still being paid your initial hourly rate for this "keying" or have they come up with a pay plan per keystroke or what? Sounds very confusing.

Axolotl - totally baffled - Ax_MT3

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Some things have been posted here about Axolotl that are just not truthful. Axolotl is paying the MT/Editor by the hour (a very fair wage I might add). I am not making any less on hourly rate than I was on production. Management was correct when they said they would do a payroll analysis to come up with the hourly rate so that I would not lose money. If someone is only making $900.00 a month, they are not actually transcribing a full shift. If the MT stops to look up a word, they are compensated for that time. It is absurd to think that a transcription company would not pay an MT to research terminology in part of his/her job, thus sacrifice the high quality that Axolotl strives for. We are compensated from the time we start the report until we finish that report or send to QA for blanks. So, if we spend 5 minutes researching a drug or term, no clock is stopped - we are paid for that time. We were never told how long the time period would be that we are compensated at that hourly rate. We have also been told by management that even though we are scheduled for 8 hours, we really only work 7, because we take a lunch break and two 15-minute breaks. No one has ever been told they cannot take a break, at least not that I've heard. When I was being paid by the line, it still worked out to a minimum of 1200 lines/day, 172 lines/hr (for a 7-hour work day). So every 2 weeks, that would be 70 hours worked.

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