Outsourced again - second time too

The hospital where I worked decided to outsource us. They did it in the worst way possible, they call us in for a meeting but it is not on the usual date of our dept meetings. The CFO, HR, and the new transcription company are at the head of the table. The CFO says, "the hospital has decided to award our transcription to ______ (starts with a W)." That's all he said! No gratitude (some have worked there for 40, 24, 11, 8 years), no severance package. By state or federal law, when they lay off someone, they have to give 60 days notice, so we were expected to continue to work at a job we knew we were losing. They towards the end, they expected us to get it caught up for the changeover!

I did not go with the "W" company, they could not give an answer about the line count, could not tell us when they would be training us, could not tell us a lot of things, or didn't want to. I am now unemployed and I guess should be grateful because being laid off I was able to get unemployment. I have worked for 3 MTSOs over the years and see it as a dead-end job now. So sad. I used to take pride in my job!

Now am signed up for coding with AAPC, a self-paced course that will allow me to then test for the certificate. An MT can easily transition to coding, in fact, an MT knows more than a coder, but someone might argue that.

Either get out of being an MT or MLS and look into quality assurance, editing the MTs' work, or choose a new career. The pay will never be the same and has been cut in half with VR. The most interesting thing to me? VR was touted to replace us, it did not. We were supposed to produce twice as much with VR, we did not. Do they realize this and say "let's modify your pay?" No. They charge the same to the client and the MT gets paid half of what they were with straight transcription!

Now I'm hoping that with a coding certificate, I can find a job where the coders will not be outsourced. Isn't that less likely?