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

Charge per line or per word?? - aimee

Posted: Oct 01, 2012

Just wondering if you think charging by line or by word is more lucrative in the long run for the transcriptionist? What is a good and fair line charge and word charge?

Current Status of MT Vocation (sm) - Annie

[ In Reply To ..]
Aimee, are you a recent graduate from an MT school? The school should be honest about the status of the MT profession today before taking your money. In the olden days we used to work directly for doctors and we set our rate. My last rate was .14 cents per line and the average rate was about .12 CPL. That was nearly 2 decades ago. Since then almost all medical facilities have moved to EMR with many going to VR which completely changes the way we do our jobs. MTSOs have taken over where individual MTs did not have the capital to hire IT techs, subcontract MTs, and purchase the expensive software to receive dictation sound files and transfer data back to the medical facilities through EMR.

The MTSOs pay half what I made nearly 2 decades ago, and thanks to the good old AAMT, use the character count where we used to charge by gross line, cut our salaries 30% before the additional 50% cut by the MTSOs. I'm not sure if you are a recent graduate from an MT school, but all I can say is shame on these schools for misleading people who just want to learn a skill and work. With the use of VR, a huge amount of MT jobs have been eliminated, and there are up to 800 applicants for a single MT opening posted on this board! Someone just out of school doesn't stand a chance unless they want to work for way below minimum wage, as we experienced MTs are currently having to do.

The company I work for just reduced all MT wages by another 1 cent per line due to financial problems; HOWEVER, they have been financially well enough off to start their own MT school. Those actions pretty much sum up what we are having to deal with at the present time, and it will not get any better.

I'd highly recommend you learn another profession, as this one really has no future.

Schools for jobs that don't exist sm - sm

[ In Reply To ..]
That's really awful! I have been doing this for 15 years and it has been downhill the entire time with less and less pay.

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