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

Can the company do this? - rimtva

Posted: Oct 19, 2010

The company I work for hired me as full time 1000 lines with benefits. 3 months later they changed their policies to 1200 lines anything under no benefits. Also we can not work over 40 hours. How can they pay me by line but then tell me how many hours I can work? I don't work hourly.

I love transcription but I've been with 2 companies in the last year and can't meet all their requirements to get benefits. Is this normal? I used to work for a hospital in house but they laid me off now I can't find a good company. Are they really that few of them out there or should I continue looking before I give up and starting looking for another type of work? I have a double degree but went into transcription because it is what I love. I've been doing it for 6 years but always in house up until now.

Yes, as a full-time employee they can restrict - sm

[ In Reply To ..]
you to 40 hours per week--over that is overtime. Where I work you CANNOT work over 40 unless approved in advance because they do not want to pay overtime. Yes, they can change their benefit requirement, pay rate, whatever. May not be totally ethical, but they can do it. We are all facing that with more and more accounts going to VR and actually we are getting a reduction in pay. Neve rmind there are no raises anymore, now they just reduce your pay instead.

I never heard of 'raises' given in production. sm - anon2

[ In Reply To ..]
They just set our line rate and never held us back from making as much as you can with that in any given shift.

In fact, I haven't heard of raises since working in-house hourly, and even in the old days, the merit raises were phased out by the cost of living raises which, well, disappeared along with the American way....

As IC, they can just block you from access to jobs. But you - mention hours, so of course you are not IC. nm

[ In Reply To ..]
df

Because anything over 40 hours is OT pay, and it sounds like they are trying to play by the rules. - No message

[ In Reply To ..]
x

Rimtva, sure. What you describe is the norm. SM - Fellow Traveller

[ In Reply To ..]
Before you make any big decisions, maybe you should look at WHY you are not able to meet all requirements to get benefits. The 1200 minimum requirement is pretty standard and normally pretty easy for an experienced MT to meet and exceed. (Yes, no work at all would certainly explain, but most can find 1200 lines in a week.)

The fact is, in spite of all the negative changes in our industry, there are still many, many companies for whom MTs are working full time and making a living. However, working hourly is very different from production-pay work. If a person could produce 6 reports an hour working hard but was producing 4 on hourly pay and continued that way on production pay, that would be a 1/3 less income. Like $400/week instead of $600, or $600 instead of $900. That's a LOT, LOT, LOT of money over a year.

So, some factors to analyze as to why you are not meeting minimums:

Time spent working per day/week:
Are you working a genuine full-time shift consistently?
If you have work shortages, are you flexing your schedule to find work?
Are you working steadily and reasonably fast all the time you're on the clock?

Skill level:
Typing speed?
Grammar and punctuation speed? (Some people have to stop a lot and figure out what to put.)
Skill adequate for work assigned?

Speed:
What are you doing to be fast?
Do you have at least 10K entries in your expander that you use all day long?
Do you use all the standard keyboard macros, such as SH+End, etc.?
Have you made/obtained personal macros to replace strings of keystrokes you do all the time?
Are you doing anything that slows you down unnecessarily? Like replaying entire dictation as you proof your report?
Are your personal standards significantly higher than those of most MTs?

Technology level:
Have you kept up with changes in our field requiring self-training in use of expanders, etc.?

Employer: Are you working for one of the very few that might genuinely make it impossible for most to get full-time benefits (happens, but bottom of the differential diagnosis).

Rimtva, I'm pretty sure you should find some negatives in here that will explain why you are not doing well. They can all be converted to positives if you really do want to continue with this work. Including finding a new employer, but I strongly recommend casting a clear eye at your own work habits first. Good luck.

rimtva - anon

[ In Reply To ..]
They can do it because they do not want you to work overtime, which they must pay if you go over 40 hours per week. What they are doing is perfectly legal.

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