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

Feeling targeted - Fedup

Posted: Feb 29, 2012

One day the company loves, you the next, they're exacting punishment to make you feel like you can't do your job. I am sure some of you have felt this way and have even been the victims of attempts to bring in other MTs to replace you. That's exactly how I felt today when I got an email today. I thought the manager was a bit harsh, rather than just giving a warning like the email said for the first time the error is made. How do you deal with this? I wish a lot of the times I could just get out of transcription, but it's not really that simple under my current circumstances, either.

I've been getting that recently, too. Instead of - s/m - Bullseye On My Forehead

[ In Reply To ..]
the usual 3 steps, or whatever it is, they're supposed to take when warning me about some *horrible* mistake I've made (like leaving out a comma, or typing the date the doctor dictated, rather than the one it really was), lately they've been skipping the middle steps and just jumping from the first warning to the final one.

The first time it happened, I was scared to death I was about to be fired. Never was. Over the last few years, it's happened repeatedly. First I'll get a warning letter that for all intents and purposes, states I'm an imbecile that has no business in the MT field. (Never mind that I've been doing acute care for 25 years). Often the alleged *mistake* the warning was for isn't even clear. So for the next few weeks I don't really do anything differently, since I'm not sure what it is they want me to do. And I'm careful, but then again, I'm always careful. Then I'll get a glowing report of what an *improvement* I've made.

It's happened enough times that I've come to believe it has less to do with my work, and more to do with whoever manages me, trying to make points with whoever is managing THEM. It's just one of many reasons why my opinion of the people in management at any level is so low. They have no scruples, and don't care if they hurt their subordinates, just as long as they get that next raise or year-end bonus.

I've pretty much gone beyond caring much anymore. If they're going to get all hot and bothered about a bunch of punctuation marks (the minor ones, that have no bearing on patient care, and are usually discretionary and style-related, not of any great importance,) then they can just go ahead and fire me, because they're NOT going to make me quit (and lose out on the UE I'd be entitled to). I'm not going to let them take the cheap way out, and just quit on my own. I'll take that 99-week vacation, thanks!

Try working for a company that you have no way to object to your QA - HORRIBLE

[ In Reply To ..]
I worked for one of the bigger companies and my QA would come back wrong. I would find verification in the account specifics, BOS, etc, and when I would try to get an error reversed, I was told that I am to do whatever the QA person says to do, and that there was no "challenge" process. The more I complained, the worse my QA scores got. I was dinged for commas, semi-colons, paragraphing (when the doctor said to paragraph and according to
BOS that's upon the judgment of the MT). I have been doing this for 20+ years, and we all know that if we listened to the doctors for punctuation or paragraphing, etc., our reports would be ridiculous.

The worst thing was being targeted because I questioned the errors on my reports. I feel for you!

I worked for a company - who treated me that way

[ In Reply To ..]
Thank GOD and I'm not speaking in vain either, I mean it because I am truly thankful to be out of that situation.

My circumstances were a bit different though. I was just trying this job out, trying to feel me way into the industry, as my current job was gonna be getting outsourced.

So I found that one and did it part-time for almost two months; it was a nightmare.

The manager was insulting, the QA person picked my work to shreds and they basically told me I was incompetent.

My last week of employment with them my stomach was in a ball of knots. I finally decided I couldn't take it anymore and sent my email quitting.

I had other options though and keep in mind I was still working my full-time job that had not been outsourced yet. So lucky me I got a taste of what they were like before my job ran out and I declined the offer for my current employer.

I wish you well. That is the one thing about working for these companies, there really doesn't seem to be any boundaries or protection for the workers, as most are privately owned or either owned by some big corporation who is more interested in the technology than they are the people who work for them.

sad.. - Fedup

[ In Reply To ..]
Thank you both for replying. At least I know some MTs out there are human. Team leads actually make their MTs worry more rather than ask themselves how they can keep them focused on their work in positive ways and after corrective actions are taken. Earlier in my experience, I once asked a former team lead her experience with helping MTs who were struggling and her reply was that I was the only one with the problem... wow, really? In the entire company? That's how much they are interested in helping you. Everyone is human, we are going to make errors. For that, we get a slap in the face (which is what it felt like today). Meanwhile, I've been really good with this company up until this one corrective action (and I've been here a little over a year). They have played psychological games before, not just with me, but with the other MTs. I have also suspected them of manipulating our progress, i.e., percentage of blanks to QA.

happened here too - Norrie

[ In Reply To ..]
Our new team leader emailed me about my production being too low and that it should be higher since I've been here for 6 years. I type 3 very difficult accounts and have always done well accuracy-wise to the point that a couple of the docs requested me for their reports. My friend got a similar email, and her team leader told my friend that *her* supervisor was making her contact everyone because they are trying to save the company (good luck with that) by cutting out the "dead wood" meaning I suppose everyone who isn't churning out the work as fast as they can. I presume that the editors aren't "dead wood" because they're going to need a lot of them if the new focus is on production rather than accuracy.

You took them right from my mouth... - FormerHospitalMT

[ In Reply To ..]
That's funny, I was just about to mention the "dead wood!" (not verbatim but something similar)

The MT manager of the hospital I used to work for told me after some new MTs were absorbed from another department (rad) that there were too many MTs were on the payroll and that some "gardening" would have to be done. She targeted 2 MTs in particular whom she determined were expendable. Once targeted, they could do nothing right! I remember one "targeted" lady almost crying in the office, fretting about what she was going to do as a single mother with a couple of kids.

That's how I ended up leaving a good hospital job - and working for a lousy MTSO. (SM)

[ In Reply To ..]
The hospital was downsizing its transcription dept., as it was already easing itself into VR and Epic. The MTs they targeted were the ones who had been with them the longest, and were at the top of their pay scale. (Managers wanted to get some Brownie points by saving the hospital money by culling the highest wage earners in the group.)

Of course, they didn't want to pay UE for fired workers, so their "targets" were constantly under fire and getting written up for one "infraction" or another. The problem was, if you were a target, I was impossible to comply with whatever they supposedly wanted you to change, because what they claimed they wanted changed almost daily. Whether it was daily style changes, spelling changes, or bouncing you off a specialty you could type in your sleep and giving you the worst doctors, that almost guaranteed you would make a mistake.

They started coming down hard on tardiness, too. I started wondering a little about it when the office clocks seemed to be fast some days, slow on others. So I started checking my watch for dead-on accuracy every morning, against what their clocks said, and making note of it each day. Note that we were not only not allowed to come in even 30 seconds late, we were ALSO not allowed to come in early, either!

On the days I was "late", their clocks had been moved forward. On the days I was "too early", their clocks had been moved back. The pettiness of the assistant manager doing all this, (she was hired SPECIFICALLY to "cull the herd", so to speak), was just beyond belief.

She would call me into her office to rake me over the coals for one thing or another, and if I was able to justify what I did or didn't do, or WORSE, prove to them I was right, then she just made it even harder for me. I was a nervous wreck. And if I stood up for myself, or got upset, she acted like she was going to do her best to have me committed or something.

Still, I kept documenting everything, and standing up for myself. Finally, it became clear it was a no-win situation when she started assigning me to work that was already out of turnaround. So I'd do the work, and THEN get called into her office and read the riot act because "the work was out of TAT". Never mind that it was out of TAT when it was ASSIGNED to me.

I knew an MT wasn't likely to win that fight, because the same treatment had been given to any other employees they wanted out, and this included even a few DOCTORS. That hospital never, ever fired anyone in the 20 years that I worked there. No, instead they made their lives utterly miserable.

I should have stayed and let them fire me, but was worried it would affect future employability. It was also before medical transcription went into its death throes, as it's in now. So I made the mistake of leaving an almost $30/hour hospital job and signing on with an MTSO. THAT WAS DUMBEST MISTAKE I'VE EVER MADE IN MY LIFE.

Now I've been at the MTSO for almost 8 years. It was okay to begin with, but then was gobbled up by one of the unscrupulous large MTSOs, and you all know how THAT story goes! Now I feel completely trapped. I refuse to quit unless I have another job offer. But after several years of looking, it's becoming more and more likely that another job offer may never come about. In that case, they're just going to have to fire me, then, because I refuse to quit with no UE to back me up.

Feeling targeted - Grandy

[ In Reply To ..]
I also love the companies where the QA workers keep contradicting each othr as to which way things should be handled.

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