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

Remember back in the day.... - Ugh

Posted: Jan 23, 2014

when you could make a good living by being an MT? What's up with these companies over-hiring and having us sit for hours on end with no work? Why hire so many if you don't need them? I finally quit and will never do MT work again because after going to VR, I sat here for 11 hours on average each day either waiting for work or doing very little work and my last check for an entire month was $240. After 17 years of this work and working for a company that I loved until they sold out to Accentus, I think it's pathetic what they've done to us. Let them deal with lawsuits over the work that's now sent to India and typed by people who don't understand English well enough to do them properly. They're getting what they pay pennies for and there is karma.

Yes, companies have gotten out of hand with their abuse of MTs. nm - Sam

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I know exactly what you are talking about, but... - lindalou

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we have willingly participated in our own abuse. I have been in this field for over 35 years and along with AAMT, we the transcriptionists are being treated the way we have allowed ourselves to be treated. Until be band together and demand better pay and make these MTSOs understand that without our hard work, they have no business, nothing will change. Just my opinion, no hateful emails please. Good luck to all of us trying to make a living...

You are exactly right - They havent done anything

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to us that we haven't allowed. Maybe if we had all been in-house when the pay cuts started, it would have been different. Strength in numbers.
I can remember people wanting to organize against Medquist back in 2003 when they first cut bonuses. Didn't get off the ground. You can't get people to stand together when we are so isolated.

bad companies - anon

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How do you start a Union?

The demographics involved with MTs created - THE PERFECT STORM. (sm)

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It was all handed to the MTSOs on a silver platter: AHDI's skullduggery with "accreditation"; HMOs taking over clinics and hospitals, and slashing personnel and sometimes entire departments, in order to squeeze more money out of them; computerization of transcription and digitalization of records; the fact that there were 3rd-world countries out there with high percentages of English speakers in the population who would work for next to nothing; a government that rewarded them for offshoring and domestic layoffs; and a workforce that was primarily women.

Not only are women harder to organize (which effectively protected the MTSOs from unions), but then there are the usual personality traits of those of us who love the generally quiet and solitary job of a transcriptionist. Even in-house, it was a job that suited many of us who just weren't hard-wired to be a front-office "people person".

And finally, as mentioned above, there is the further isolation of MTs by moving them out of the hospital, and into their own homes. It was also a perfect job for anyone with health issues that made working an on-site job difficult or impossible. People in many of our situations really needed to be working at home, or at least in a quiet, focused, research-oriented job, instead of selling cars, cashiering, waiting tables, etc.

Yep, they had us all by the short hairs on this one, and they knew it. We were ripe for being taken advantage of, especially when you consider that many MTs are of a quiet, and often rather submissive or reserved personality. We didn't want to make waves, or stick our necks out. Then, as we started to realize what was happening to us, our opportunity to fight back and save our profession as a whole passed us by, because too many of us instead chose to just do the work, and try to be invisible, in hopes of avoiding the layoff axe.

Being in-house may have helped at one point in the past, but now it's too late. In the past I had escaped the greedy MTSO and lucked into a traditional, well-paid, in-house MT job. I worked hard, put in 310% effort, sucked it up and learned to tolerate a long commute to and from work. In the long run, even that didn't help, as our entire department ended up getting laid off, and our work offshored.

union - anon

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Wow, thanks for your input. I can remember the days when I was making 18.00 an hour. Unbelievable how it has become.

We can thank our government for allowing this SM - Sam

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and permitting this to happen, first their outsourcing, thumbing their noses at DOL vioilations, rewarding big businesses for all of their B.S., etc. I could go on & on & on ... if it did any good, but it's already too late for us MTs.

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