GOT A BETTER OFFER FROM WAL-MART - ANON

Well after being in this business for almost 20 years, I have decided it's time to hang up the keyboard,  as a single person I can no longer support myself as a medical transcriptionist.  This is not even a good part-time job anymore.  I have worked for more companies than I cared to admit, suffered through intolerable divas as team leads, gestapo QA, constant nip picking on where a comma goes, or a verb, and had my cpl reduced from what started out at 13 cpl to 0.0350 cpl.  So ladies and gentlemen there is another life out there.  Many companies are looking for marketing representatives to demonstrate products in your local Wal-Mart, and pay you anywhere from $10 to 17 an hour, and you can move up into the company, since my company is iinternational, and get benefits, pay every other week, DD, and employee status.  No putting up with the divas that are CMT's that can't type or edit their way out of paper bags, and all think they took a test they are better than  I am flashing their credentials, Woo-Hoo you passed a test, but can you type?  NOT!  Do you have people skills?  Ah, no.

This job is only for the stay at home moms who are not self supporting, and have gotten into this industry as a replacement for daycare, and just wanted something to keep them busy, and not a real profession.  This labor pool has lowered our industry pay and standards.  I've QA'd this work, no comment.  I asked one if she had the BOS, and her reply was, "What's that?"  She'd never heard of the AHDI much less the AAMT.

Well, things have changed thanks to HIPAA, MTS now can be PERSONALLY held liable and sued if you make costly patient care error, which now requires us to carry liability insurance, because God knows the MTSO will not back us up. Ah, no thanks, not for $40 a day.

I do not want to forget to thank all those sales and marketing people that market the VR platforms to the clients, leading them down the garden path telling them they can save so much on transcription by buying their software, but forget to tell them that the software is like the Leapster, you buy one part but you have to buy the others to make it work.  So that reduced our wages 2/3.  It takes just as long to edit a document as it does to type it.  For those people that say they do 400 lph, I say BS!  If you do, you're blowing and going, because I have worked on 4 VR platforms, and I have to do FULL LISTEN ON EVERY SINGLE JOB, and it is not humanly possible to do 4000 lines in 8 hours and still have the patient survive!  Besides to the math, that's a little over 10 bucks an hour.  These companies DO NOT educate the people they sell their bill of goods to on exactly how the platform functions, if they did, they'd have no takers.  Editscript 9 is about the best out there, but it's not that great, I can still type it faster than I can edit it, with all the changes I have to make, forget it.  And the pay is so low that in order to make what I made transcribing, I have to Edit 4000 lines a day!  I made the same amount of money typing, so we're doing almost 4x the work!  We're still pulling up those charts, and reviewing them, and we're still seeing over 200o+ lines of transcription a day, before we only had to see 12 to 1600 lines.

I will no longer sell my services for $35 - 40 a day to stay home!  I have had to get food stamps while these fat cats for the MTSO's ride around in their BMW's, live in gated communities, and go on exotic vacations every year, and without us they would have no BMW or gated community and because we are the invisible work force, no one pays attention to us or values what we do.  I'm tired of it.  Oh, and the so called "team leads" exactly what do they do?  They are never available, I know they are working another job while collecting the team lead pay!  They do not give feedback, and when you ask for it, they get highly put out, "you want what" and then start  nip picking your work because you asked a question!  I personally have the misfortunate of working for one now where I terminated her at another company, her and her buddy go from company to company, how they get jobs, I have no clue.  They are 2 nasty witches, and both dumb as dirt, oh did I forget one's a CMT!

I am officially resigning from this business, and opening the door to all of the people who want to sit at your computer for 8-10 hours a day to make less than minimum wage, be my guest you can have it!  I would NEVER encourage ANYONE to be a medical transcriptionist.  

The one thing I do see happening is people are refusing to work on VR for $0.0350 cpl, and that's like the VBC, we don't see that much anymore at all, enough MTs refuse to work on VR for that low pay, what's the alternative, they have to pay more!  We s hould be paid the same, it's the knowledge they are paying for and i will no longer sell that knowledge for that, I can go to work and say, "Do you want fries with that?" and make more money!  That's what it's come down to.  All of you out there in transcription land who want to sit there and be abused by not being paid overtime or minimum wage, be my guest, but you are only hurting yourself and the industry.

Signed:  A former MT, who has moved on to greener pastures I'll be at the local Wal-Mart, asking, "Would you like a sample?  Can I offer you a coupon?"