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

What's wrong with TTS? - Seriously, why...

Posted: Oct 06, 2014

All the complaints and dislikes for TTS? I honestly want to know as I am considering applying with them. For those of you who like it there can you tell me what it is you like about it? What's the pay like, workload etc. Are they flexible with scheduling? What are the benefits like? Are benefits affordable?

Thanks!

The 7.5 cpl is a turn off first of all. - anon

[ In Reply To ..]
Second is the VR is also only 3.5 cpl and the minimum requirements are 250 lph, which is only if you have all easy work and no corrections in the VR. Do not look anything up either because you will not get your 600 lines to make minimum wage. Plus after 90 days, the account will change and go back to Nuance, who will in turn offshore for cheaper and profits for themselves. Benefits? You get to say you have a job.

TTS - TTS Employee

[ In Reply To ..]
I am right in the middle of a job as I transcribe VR for TTS. This poster is ABSOLUTELY wrong in everything he/she wrote about TTS - with the exception of the line rate - which I have no idea what that would be. It is very frustrating to see the inaccurate/totally incorrect statements pertaining to TTS on this board. Benefits are EXCELLENT and very affordable. For example, I pay a little over $28.00 per month for dental and vision, and about $65.00 per month for $50,000 worth of life insurance and $100,000 accidental death/dismemberment insurance. There is no micromanagement. TTS DOES NOT SEND ACCOUNTS BACK TO NUANCE FOR NUANCE TO off-shore after training the speech engine. THIS IS A PURE LIE and should be stopped. You would start this account and it WOULD NOT just disappear - again, please read TTS ad very carefully. ALL of their work stays in the US. I am working on an account that the hospital facility got back from Nuance (overseas) because the facility did not like the quality of transcription. This post is simply written as truth.

Is VR really 3.5 cpl?? - nm

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TTS VR Line Rate - TTS Employee

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I am a full-time employee, not an IC. My rate is 0.0342/line. Yes, this is low. HOWEVER, each job pays you for any headers or footers - THIS does add up. PLUS 2 spaces in between sentences, not just payed for 1. The 250 edited lines per hour, once you learn your account, are very reasonable and attainable. The VR is, for the most part, very clean with minimal editing. It does have it's difficult times and there are the ESL who take longer. The poster who wrote that after 90 days the account goes back to Nuance IS ABSOLUTELY WRONG, this is a pure lie. Also, this poster knows nothing of benefits, obviously. The workflow is very steady. Yes, the VR pay is low - and there are no bonuses. However, the steady reliable workflow - in my experience, more than makes up for the negatives in line rate. They are very understanding of needed schedule changes - I have asked for 2 thus far. The PTO - if I understand correctly, is very good and accumulates fast. Spreading outright inaccurate lies on this board adds to much stress and anxiety to an already suffering workforce of MTs who are trying their best in this difficult field.

3.42 cpl for an experienced MT? That's low. - (nm)

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x

Agree with TTS Employee. sm - Anon

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Been there 3 years, do my work, work my shift, and maintain high QA scores and have no problems; pretty much left alone. I make more than my state's minimum wage consistently, rarely run out of work, and SR is amazingly good. I am not management. I'm not sure why TTS is the company people love to hate!

They aren't the only ones - nm

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n

And what about - AnonMT

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And what about the cost for health insurance? Pay is lower than most places. HR is not kind. They offer more IF you work the hours they want, has nothing to do with the degree of difficulty of the accounts, which is NOT right IMO. Should be going by our experience for more pay, not the danged shift we work!!!!!! Just because they pay for something we should be getting to begin with doesn't give credit! Not everything the poster said is a lie! IMO, this sounds like HR has time on their hands.

Right in the middle of a job and while posting on the internet? - anon

[ In Reply To ..]
Lies? Poster then retracts by stating the line rate is as stated, but also states she does not even know the line rate. (?) There is no raise, and there is no shift differential either. Yet the happy TTSer indicates she is in the middle of a report and also on the internet composing a company defense posting. I never had time to be on the internet when typing for 7.5 cpl nor even at 8 cpl, or 4 cpl. Yet she is on the clock and considered to be on "productive time." They require your hours to reflect that of a full-time employee and to be maintained if you even want benefits.

The original poster asked whatever about this company. There were no lies. The question was of benefits--no lie in stating you having a job was a benefit. Sugar-coating benefits that are unrealistic and of really no benefit, is not worth even considering. Benefits are supposed to be a job incentive given as a reward for choosing that company...yet a thing of the past.

Stating 90 dollars taken out a month for dental, visual and life insurance is pretty shallow when not mentioning the deductible and the coverage for single or family plans either. Not to mention it does not even include the much-needed health coverage. Then to state that the benefits are excellent is pretty brave. The law requires if there are 6 employees, they have to 'offer' something/anything. No mention of any retirement plan...just death...wonder how many MTs have collected on that benefit.

Nuance you say is a lie...Nuance has taken over. They own the Dragon. Nuance sends out their overflow and gets a cut. That is no lie, just maybe a secret. There are 2 large hospital accounts that were lost. These hospitals went to Nuance, and TTS acquired these. TTS had the ad for needing MTs and stated in the ad that it would be straight typing for only 90 days, which is what it usually takes for VR to learn. The bottom line with VR is that once the speech engine has learned, the MT is no longer needed. TTS does not outsource, but everyone knows Nuance does, so if the account is Nuance's to begin with and another MTSO is just helping out, they can keep their image and reputation as keeping 'their' work in the US. Whatever. You think it is a lie, then find out for yourself...be happy and consider that your own self benefit.

You are telling a whopper of a story - hard to believe

[ In Reply To ..]
First I am an IC. I also have no clue about how many lines I am required to do an hour, a day or whatever. The reason is I work straight thru and apparently make the lines I should because no one has ever told me otherwise. You are a bare faced .... when you said once VR learns the account the MT is gone. Where in the world are you coming from to come up with just 1 lie after another? I have been on the same hospital account for 5 years and it CAME THERE as VR to start with and I am still on the same account. With Escription I hardly think it takes VR 90 days to learn anyone anyhow. I thought when starting on VR myself hey got plenty of time before the machine learns, thinking I would still be (this was inhouse) making the same $$$$ as before. I was shocked because after a week doctors were already on VR. 90 days? Where do you get that from?? You are telling big fat .......

I was a trainer for TTS, and yes, - It takes the VR a while to learn.

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I use Dragon for my personal use, the same program used by TTS via Nuance - and it took me a good 3 months to get it going well enough that it flowed and wasn't making mistakes. I had to stop and train every word or phrase it didn't understand, I had to run the accuracy programs every night so that it implemented all the new things I had added every day... I had to work very hard and put in a lot of time to get my Dragon perfected.

Take that information and then imagine what VR tries to do with ESLs or doctors that just dictate poorly. These doctors aren't going into Dragon and training the system themselves via their microphones -- we are doing it via the keyboard. All they do is dictate, and they never correct how they dictate or correct a wrong word in the moment in order to make Dragon learn from them, and how could they? They aren't able to view the words they are dictating. There is no document in front of them to follow along as they dictate. Therefore, Dragon is learning based on the manually keystrokes we make, not on a voice command.

When I was on the training team at TTS, we spent weeks doing straight typing to train the VR on each new account. We didn't release the accounts to the MTs until it had been trained well enough, and it did take a lot of time to train those accounts accurately. The companies that have horrible VR where the MTs basically have to re-type the entire report?... those companies have not taken the time to allow a set group of people to train it before they released it to their MTs. And those companies will never EVER have a VR account that will ever learn, because once you release 100 MTs to train the VR, you're going to end up with crap. It has to be trained by people who are doing the exact same thing, following the account specifics to a tee.

NOT FLEXIBLE AT ALL - nm

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x

and another naive post wanting only the positives - nm

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smh

ANOTHER TTS EMPLOYEE - fiverfingers

[ In Reply To ..]
I have been with TTS for about 6 months. I find TTS to be a very nice company to work for. Yes, true, line pay is low; however, they do pay for headers and footers and spaces, etc. It equals out to what Nuance pays, 4.6 cents a line. I have a fried who works for Nuance and we frequently compare our lines and our final pay. It is equal. The VR drafts, at least on my accounts, for the most part, are very very good. Of course, you will get an occasional horrible ESL or perhaps the transmission is not great. The benefits for health insurance... There are 3 tiers. Bottom tier is about 110 a payperiod; second tier is 145 a pay period, then the top tier is 195 a pay period. The dental and vision is very affordable. You get 15 days off a year.

My experience is that they are flexible with schedules if you have something come up suddently and cannot work. Otherwise, you put in for your time off and it is granted.

I have had good experiences will all management from my team shift leaders to the director of transcription operations.

I average between 300-400 lines an hour.

I come from MDI/Transcend/Nuance and I KNOW TTS is far superior to all of them in every aspect.

So, yes, I would give them a try. As another poster said, if you do your work, work your hours, you are left alone.

And, for the negative posters, a slacker is a slacker and a complainer will always complain.

And, no, I am not management.

TTS employee - not impressed

[ In Reply To ..]
I've been there for 6 months. The positives as I see it are...Yes, they leave you alone and let you work. Yes, the VR drafts are quite good. Ummmm....can't think of any more positives.

Negatives include low pay. I just recently changed my schedule to include both weekend days (this was voluntary, not forced), so I got a RAISE and am now paid the fabulous shift differential rate of 3.45/6.80. Yep! Can you even believe it?

The other huge negative is the high cost of premiums for health insurance. I am paying ~ $1250 per month for myself/spouse/family. UGHHHHHHHHHHHH. Now that I have recently started training on a secondary account, I have had to slow down to learn the new account, so my net pay is down to $25-50 per pay period (2 wks) after paying out my insurance premiums and taxes. So pathetic. So not worth the time and effort.

I am TIRED. So tired of constantly having to workasfastaspossible to earn any kind of decent money. That isn't a complaint about TTS, that is just a complaint about MT and production pay in general. I want out. Yesterday.

Clarify, please..... :) - Mary

[ In Reply To ..]
Please pardon me, but I just wanted to ask if you might clarify for me one of your statements. You indicated that after insurance premiums and taxes, your take-home pay is only $25-50 for 2 weeks? If that is the case, that just shocks me to no end.

Fivefingers and 6 months makes you a psychologist? - anon

[ In Reply To ..]
Your statement shows you just might be sucking your thumb also. A negative poster is a slacker? Very immature if you say you come with MT history. Do not think I ever met one MT who was a slacker in my 30+ years as being an MT. Those choosing easy work was always a problem and still is, but never a 'slacker.' We are a group that work hard and get abused. Now for other MTs, such as yourself, to sling accusations because they cannot handle the truth is surely your world of non-acceptance. There are still those who take a stand for injustices, so sit in your own world of make believe, just don't ask what happened. It is because of those negative people who spoke up and risked being labeled who made changes for people like yourself who are the reapers.

I am not 5fingers but disagreeing with you and agreeing - with her and here is why

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There have to be slackers on MTstars and this is the reason I know. I have gotten SOS in email before stating no one was on working. I thought what? I also had a team leader to tell me sometimes the people do not show up. What do you call that besides being slackers? Oh, BTW, I have more than 30 years experience and there are slackers. Another BTW, I am not abused in my job and if you are, then it is by your choice because you let yourself be.

ANOTHER TTS EMPLOYEE reply to anon - fivefingers

[ In Reply To ..]
I did not mean to imply that everyone who posts negative info on this site is a slacker. I did my share of complaining while I was at Nuance, but I went and luckily found a decent job that I am happy with instead of staying at a job that I was unhappy with and just complain about it. I was just trying to tell the OP that TTS may be a good option. I have read several of your posts and you are pretty much negative or insulting in all of your posts. You sound like you are a very angry person.

I was a team leader and manager with Trandscend before Nuance took over and worked with many "slackers", I had my own business years ago and worked with slackers. There are slackers in every industry. And, by the way, someone who cherry picks (choosing easy jobs, etc) is a slacker in my opinion.

Yes, this is a horrible industry right now and I have been more than frustrated with it. Unfortunately, I feel I am too old to train for something else. I have been in this industry for 30+ years and I have seen the downfall and I am not happy about it. But, I have no choice but to continue to work in transcription. Maybe I am wrong, but so far TTS has been good to me and I enjoy it.

Stop being such a "mean girl" on this site.

Too old to do something else too... - ....depressing me to no end.

[ In Reply To ..]
I have been doing this work for 25 years. It all started going to the dogs about 15 years ago, but at that time, I had 3 small children, newly divorced, and there was no way I could afford daycare so that I could find a new career out of the home. Now, I'm in my 50s and have developed many physical and medical problems - a great deal of them stemming from being at my desk 24/7 either pounding away at the keys, or waiting on work, or coming back after my shift to grab the work to make my quotas.

This is not the way I imagined my life when I started in this business so long ago. I actually made a fantastic living the first 10 years until everyone in the world decided working at home was a free ride and that they were educated enough to do this kind of work (insert massive sarcasm here). The only other job I could possibly get at this point with the physical disabilities I have acquired while being an MT for this long... is typing. I can't stand for long because my back is shot. I can't lift anything because my shoulders and neck are shot. I guess I could file for disability or something, but who in the hell can live on disability? Not me, not with two more kids to put through college. It's a lose-lose situation for people like myself. I imagine they will find me dead at my desk in my 80s or 90s with QWERTY stamped across my forehead.

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