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

Anyone had success leaving MT for a clerical/ - sm

Posted: Nov 18, 2011

secretarial job in a doctor's office and/or hospital? The ads always seem to want customer service experience and you don't get that working at home as an MT. Thanks in advance for any help.

Well... - Weary MT

[ In Reply To ..]
I applied for a couple of those types of jobs, and actually, my problem is, I have never worked in any kind of office that even had computers. (I go pretty far back.) I think medical offices would be more complicated in terms of the amount of software you would have to be trained on. I'm thinking more in terms of non-medical office work, might be easier, at least for me.

Don't sell yourself short! - sm

[ In Reply To ..]
You are self-motivated and self-reliant, correct? Keeping yourself on schedule and working at home can be more difficult than in an office environment. You have to solve your own problems with computers, software, phones, making your coffee ;)

When you are transcribing, you are listening, interpreting, typing all at the same time. The medical office staff are listening to patients, other staff, and typing. You are used to dealing with difficult dictators, looking up MR numbers and account numbers and understand the problems/diagnoses (and spellings) that are dealt with.

Can you emphasize that you deal with your family, school, church, etc. Basically, interpersonal skills and problem solving?

If you can learn MT, you can learn any office skill. Confidence.

I chose to go back to MT - sm

[ In Reply To ..]
I've been a transcriptionist for 14 years. For five of them I worked in an office and was a floater in addition to transcription. I loved that job but had to go back home for family reasons. Almost three months ago I decided to go back into the office environment doing front desk work and landed a "dream" job. The pay was great and the hours weren't bad.

Monday I start with a transcription company back at home. My front desk job consists of preparing charts for the next day, verifying insurance benefits, checking patients in and out, entering charges, posting payments, scheduling tests and referrals, getting them precerted, making all appointments (we have 8 different kinds), triaging phone calls, screening drug reps, all filing, distributing faxes appropriately, and balancing the charges/payments at the end of the day making sure to keep an eye on my time so I don't get overtime. We see about 25 patients a day. This is why those ads ask for experience.

Having said all that, I probably would continue with that job except for the fact that any little mistake gets me screamed at if the doctor or nurse is in a bad mood. With these types of jobs, you're often expected to hit the ground running and there is little, if any, leeway given for a learning curve.

I also forgot to mention that I will be off for 5 days within the next three weeks without pay because the doctor is out. The girls in the office next to me are off the entire week after Thanksgiving without pay for the same reason.

I'm sure (hope) somebody else has had a better experience but at least in my area, this is the norm as everybody is looking to cut corners. They are hiring less people to do more work and cutting hours/pay when they can. It's really not much different than the situation with transcription.

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