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QA killing me. - nn

Posted: Sep 12, 2011

Talk about demoralizing. We are told to speed up on editing, watch out for "over-editing", then get dinged for omitting an "a or an" or something which absolutely changes nothing. I can understand mistakes are mistakes, but grr.... feel like I need to jump ship here before I get terminated. For the most part QA is pretty good and fairly consistent here, but I feel some of these things are not worthy of being sent to your supervisor and put in your file. Of course, if I were typing the report the little "a" would have been in there, so I suppose I should have edited it in there too, if I had indeed heard it. We just tend to go on autopilot on these at the reduced rate trying to make a nickel. Will quit my griping now and get back to work and of course proof read everything I send VERY carefully now. Perhaps though I should be looking for another job just in case they are indeed trying to phase me out.

This sounds like a place I just recently quit... - anony

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although I was not editing, but transcribing, but QA was "all over" everything, and terribly inconsistent...being told one day that the account was verbatim and if he did not say "a", don't put it in, so the next time he did not say "a" it was not put in and I was dinged for that one too. Can't have it both ways...it is either verbatim or not...I was "threatened" every single day that I would lose my job if these issues were not cleared up. I was sent negative emails every day asking what steps I was going to take to change these "errors" and if I didn't, I would no longer have a "position with them." I am a good MT and have no QA difficulties with the other two companies I work for and have not had any problems for the past 10 years. I was told I made an error on the medication of levothyroxine and I accepted that error as one I had actually had made, but then I started thinking about it and realized that if I HAD made an error on the word, my medical spellchecker would have either corrected it or would have underlined it in red so that I would have caught it. Since quitting that place, I am back to feeling confident again and even though I again do not have enough work, I am happy to be rid of them. The demoralized me every chance they got and had me second guessing about things that I was not even doing wrong. I was being "screwed" and did not even know it. Then they got mad at me because I "quit without notice," although they would have fired me without notice, as well, had I given them the opportunity to. This is just my experience and you can compare what you are being told to your own experience, and then maybe make a better decision about whether to quit where you are uncomfortable. I would pesonally rather not have enough work on a daily basis than to be constantly told I am "no good" and doing things wrong. good luck to you!

Don't feel bad... - I now work on account

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that I think expects 100% accuracy, although the company requirement is only 98%. So I guess they expect the MT to proofread the reports (very often incomprehensible gibberish) 3 or 4 times to weed out every possible minor error, and of course to do this would mean getting paid about a buck an hour, which is not going to happen. Thus, I live in dread that I am going to get canned any day now, and you know what... I JUST DON'T CARE ANY MORE!

I barely even look at the QA at this point because I am sick of constantly being told how rotten I am. Of course you only hear about the one report with a typo, not the 20 you did before it that were completely error-free.

I finally just decided that if they want to get rid of me just go ahead and get rid of me and find someone better to do the work. Maybe with over 20 years of experience I am simply not qualified to be an MT any more!

Over-QA, inconsistent QA, the "U R not cutting it" - memos, is just another ploy to - sm

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keep us in doubt, make us second-guess ourselves, and start feeling like we're failures.. like we're darned lucky to be making that 4 cpl for editing. It's all BS. I follow the job specifications as best I can, I do the most accurate transcription I can, and after years of inconsistency as the OP described, now I pretty much just blow off QA. Some of our QA is done in India now, and those messages I don't even bother to open, they are deleted at first sight.

I do the best I can under the circumstances; i.e., impossibly short TAT, 99-100% QA "goals", and constant inconsistency about what is or is not "correct". Screw it. If my best ain't good enough, let them fire me, then. I'm so beyond caring anymore.

naw,, they'll just find another one to pick on. In other words, its not you - its QA on meds. NM

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x

QA - Bellamia

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Sounds like TransTech.... These companies are all bad these days... let them send their stuff to India and see how much better it is.... not

QA Killing - Yup

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What's the difference between "The patient is here today" and "Patient is here today"? I'm sure the doctor isn't going to care. That's like the time I heard "the patient will continue on THE medication...", but was dinged because what was said was "the patient will continue on HER medication...". They are unreal sometimes!

QA - Curious

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Wouldn't you love to see what QA does with the work of our overseas partners?? Perhaps they have a different set of standards to go by.

Re: QA - killing...

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Those examples do not affect meaning in any way. This is simply petty nit-picking. One day the ''higher-ups'' at these companies will realize just how much money they are wasting by paying these neurotic prima donnas to split hairs over trivialities that no MD would even notice, let alone care about.

If the doctor didn't dictate it, then you are overcharging the client. - That is dishonest

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Clients are aware these days. We would get found out if we allowed that by our clients. Adding extra words is not warranted and tampers with the dictator's style as well. We should not be tampering with content, intent, or style, thus the push for verbatim, flagging areas that need correction.

LOL. totally disagree, nothing to do with 'padding.' - NM

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x

That's not true in my experience. - sm

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Greed is the American way.

Doctors dictate in an abbreviated form to save - themselves time. (Remember? They - sm

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hate dictating as much as they hate typing into the EMR). Back in the day, that's why we MTs had to know so much, it was so we could decipher what they meant by "C-dif", "pulse ox", "I's and O's", etc.

Even back then we were told not to change meaning, style, etc. But we were EXPECTED to add things like "a, an, the, with", etc. to make sentences read properly. And to punctuate correctly, not the way THEY want it punctuated. Same with spelling of words, which they often do wrong.

The occasional "a, and, or the" we put in would barely be felt when it comes to billing. After all, look at all the things we type we aren't even paid for in many cases. Such as SPACES. Yet they seem to want THOSE, now don't they?

The clients who are nit-picking the cleaning-up of sloppy dictation by MTs are just raising the potential for medical mistakes. We're not doctors or nurses, but we're still a vital link in the chain of healthcare, whether the moneygrubbing MTSOs and healthcare CEOs want to acknowledge it, or not.

The problem here is MTs thinking they know but they don't. - Clients therefore opt for verbatim

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MTs that assume they know what the doctor is abbreviating are very bad at interpretation. I know 1st hand since I do QA. Clients nowadays have learned their lessons and want verbatim rather than have someone guess at what the doctor is talking about. As a risk management issue, it is best to do that.

That's a huge generalization - and leap in logic.

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Sweeping statements about ''clients learning their lesson'' and what YOU deem best for risk management are just blanket generalizations and are grossly inaccurate. JCAHO and most accredited hospitals prohibit dangerous abbreviations and prefer the use of commonly accepted/recognized standard abbreviations in report body but avoided in diagnoses and per individual account specs. Account instructions, along with JCAHO list of dangerous abbreviations should be the MT's guidelines--not what some QA proclaims is best for ''risk management''. Just as MTs use restraint and common sense in editing, QAs need to use common sense in their work, and knee-jerk adherence to ''verbatim'' can be carried to ridiculous extremes that obscure meaning and that physicians and clients do NOT appreciate or find helpful.

We do what the client says--period. - No one can assume

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I think it is a good policy. I don't want someone coming across with an interpretation that reflects their lack of knowledge. Some have been transcribing a long time, but their assumptions are horrible. This goes on in transcription all the time. I believe this is an MT issue since the problem is across account borders, and I am glad the clients are waking up to it and establishing guidelines for the MTSO to adhere to.

not only are those the things the docs don't care about - sm ANON

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they don't even remember how they said it in the first place...not on those type of errors.

it's a QA glitch. a widdle nitty-pitty-picky. Give 'em a little leaway, it goes right to their head.

One of my accounts wants us to add "The", - and another wants just "Patient". -sm

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It's annoying - given my druthers, I would make them into clear, intelligent-sounding sentences (like we were supposed to do back in the olden days of transcription, before it all became MTSOs, and all about money.) I have one account with one particular doctor who is so anal about "verbatim", that he gets it exactly verbatim. Even if I know for a fact what he just dictated was wrong.

I'm of the opinion that QA does this for job security - MT

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on their part. If they didn't find fault with the work of MTs, they would be out of a job.

Like someone else said, I do the best I can. I don't worry about QA dinging me here and there for something not important. After all, they have to earn their keep.

''....for job security'' - Your post...

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really hit the nail on the head! At some companies, the management that oversees QA is comprised of people with limited MT knowledge and experience, so QA can sell them a ''bill of goods'' about what affects meaning and has importance, as opposed to what is simply personal preference and/or trivial nit-picking.

Why do MTs always imagine the worst? - paranoid ideation

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That's a sign of going over the edge. Maybe some QA's do that, but we certainly don't do it at my company. Our manager is an MT, and a great one at that, so we go by client, company, and industry standards, not our own way. Perhaps put away the wide brush and fine-tune your perceptions.

they are our experiences, same as you describe yours. - anon (NM)

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.

Another sign... - sm

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of ''going over the edge'' is the inability to differentiate between that which affects meaning and that which is trivial nonsense. Any QA that wastes everyone's time with petty nit-picking and personal preferences under the guise of making corrections, as in the example above, has her ''perceptions'' far too ''finely tuned'' and does not belong in QA in the first place.

Then, why do we have standards? - We should just slop anything down we like

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We should comma our dictations to death, hyphenate inappropriately, spell words the way we want, and just generally break every rule in the book. Forget proper grammar, forget how it really should be, and just do it WRONG BECAUSE WE WANT TO!!! YAY!!!

Wrong is wrong. If you aren't willing to study, research, and make yourself a good MT who does the right thing as a habit, don't come crying to me that QA is cruel. We know the rules, and we are there to see that it is done properly.

I'm certain of that where I work. The American - QA jobs are in jeopardy now, too -sm

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now that more and more of our QA is being done in India.

I am getting dinged on corrections the docs are - making that are wrong.

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They are making changes after editing and putting in words or changing sentences and I am getting dinged for mistakes such as taking out the word days for day and the docs putting days back in for 1 day. Or they add to a sentence and then the sentence is all over the place. They also do not say "period". So on top of everything else, I have be a mind reader.

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