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Hourly rate versus cpl - b@home?

Posted: Mar 01, 2011

Been at a cushy happy place clinic job for a few years, no audits, laid back, nice. Making 18 d/h. Type the same stuff, over and over. Boring, but no nail biting. I produce 300+/hr. Should I take a position from home? Will I be making a mistake? I need some opinions pleeease.

big mistake.... BIG mistake.... HUGE mistake - just my opinion, of course

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But, if you do go home, let me know where you work and I will GLADLY take your job.

home vs. office - b@home

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Ya think? I should mention I started doing this 20 years ago, but I am still young, young enough to have kids. So, there is summer break, spring break, winter break, sick days, etc. that I have pay for. It is 25 miles round trip too. Then there is gas. Still?

STILL. If I could land a job like yours (and I'm trying) - I"d be willing to commute 100 miles ea. way.

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INCLUDING the price of gas, and I drive an old gas-guzzler.

But then again, if I had a reliable job with a living wage, I could probably afford to buy a more fuel efficient car to commute in. Or could afford train fare.

The train'll be more expensive too when gas is - $5/gallon. NM

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x

...which I'll still have a better chance of affording if - I can find a real job,not this at-home joke.

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This has to be "Make myself feel good" post. Cant be for real. - nm

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x

Home vs.office - b@home?

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Noo, it is not. I have not worked in service in about five years. I don't know what is going on out there right now - besides a lot VR. I made more $$ at home, a significant amount more doing hospital work. That is why I ask. Although, I do appreciate your cynacism.

Then how bright are you, if you read this board, to think working - for MTSO is a good idea. nm

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x

hourly rate versus cpl - b@home?

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I am very good at what I do, but am looking for a change/challenge. Even though I was making 10 cpl working for a service, it was still 10$ more p/hr than this. So, fairly "bright".

Not bright is you think 10 cpl is a given, the usual rate that at home - MT makes. Most make less. nm

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Hr rate versus cpl - b@home?

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I did not mean to offend anyone if they are unhappy in their current situation. But...10 cpl is nice when you can do your work anytime during the day or night (no shift) for exclusively
non-ESL physicians, PTO and a nice ben.package with it. At an average of 250-300 lines per hour, that's, humm... nice bananas, no? So why all the complaining? Oh, no minimum either. You make you dough and log-off.

You make no sense. Go have another drink. - nm

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p/h versus cpl - B@home?

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I don't drink. It does make sense. No need to be rude.

You actually think you'll be making 10 cpl? - ROFL

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Why not? Another thread mentions being hired at - anon

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8.5 cents, hardly extravagant, and with 0.15 cents incentive (applied to all lines) easy enough for a skilled MT/ME to achieve, she'll be earning 10 cents a line.

Just because you read something someone posts, - doesnt mean its true. sm

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Still, it sounds like you are bound and determined to give at-home MT a try, so all i can say is, enjoy the ride!

Also, here is some advice:

DOCUMENT EVERYTHING! Never trust an MTSO.

Use your calculator - OFTEN - to double-check line counts, hours worked, pay rates, paycheck amounts. Don't let them cheat you.

Buy the most comfortable work chair you can find - you will be spending more than 2/3 of your life in it.

And finally, don't burn your bridges behind you when you quit your current job.

That hire-on pay is lower than mine was and is - entirely credible. NM

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x

There are still companies out there that will pay - 10 cpl and some even more

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I have a friend making 11 cpl on a true IC schedule for a small MTSO. I know people working for our local hospital that are making 12 cpl.

I definitely would not go with one of the larger companies, maybe a midsize.

11 cpl would be okay pay, IF she were an employee - with benefits. As an IC, thats too low!

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X

I really wish that you would share, even if by an email, what companies are paying - anon

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10 cpl or more. I have searched every company that I can find, small and large and the most that I have found is 8.5. As a mom with 2 small children, I would be forever grateful to you if you would share this information.

Are you talking about your current job? ("non-ESL - (see message)

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physicians, PTO and a nice ben. package")? Because none of those things exist anymore if you work at home. Instead, it's MOST or ALL-ESLs, no PTO (you'll need to cash in what little vacation time you do earn to pay your bills), and no "nice" benefit packages. They're all chintzy, now. No more $20 doctor or dentist visit co-pays - you'll have to cough up 50-75% of the bill yourself.

And "no minimum?" Not no how, not no way. And the minimums are usually ridiculously high.

Most MTSOs require you to work a shift, even if you're an independent contractor. (Illegal, but they don't care, they do it anyway). Some lock your out at the end of your shift. Others just give you a wink and a nod, knowing you'll have to put in 4-5 hours of overtime most days to make your minimum, and that you WON'T get paid overtime pay, either.

"Make your dough and log-off". No, I'm afraid it's the other way around: "Remain logged on for 14 hours a day, even when there's no work, because you're expected to keep looking for it even when it's not there, and make NO dough."

Almost everything you say happens but as a whole - it draws a picture that is not true.

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Many individual items are also really not true for the vast majority of situations. Such as requiring ICs to work during specific hours being illegal. There is a long list of factors used to determine whether a worker is a true IC or employee being cheated, no one item determining that status. ICs can be required to work a schedule, and it's entirely reasonable that they are.

MTSOs have been playing cat-and-mouse with - labor laws for a long time, now.

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I didn't state that every MTSO has every characteristic. Some probably only have one or two of them. But the small companies are going the way of the dodo, and the big mega-McTranscription companies are starting to call all the shots in the business. And if you work for any of them, you'll see that most, if not all, of what I mentioned above is the sad truth for the MTs that work for them.

But how long ago? And you DO know, don't you, that - they all want you to work for 7cpl or LESS?

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.

How long ago, though? If it was more than 4-5 years - ago, there have been HUGE changes - sm

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in the at-home MT industry, and none of them have been good ones. Each change has chipped away at our ability to provide for ourselves, our families, our futures. Unless something changes, and I can get out of this trap, I basically HAVE no future. So really, if you seriously "don't know what's going on out there right now", BY ALL MEANS, do NOT jump into it with your eyes closed. Read back through a couple years of archieves on MT Stars, for starters. That alone will likely be enough to give you nightmares.

I had it cushy like you. Good pay. Good bennies. - Kind of boring. But producing a lot - sm

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of work because clinic had a simple platform that didn't slow us down. Moved to a new town with no clinic. Took an at-home job. BIIIIGGGGG mistake. I produce far less than I ever did at past, in-house jobs. Pay scale (cpl), instead of going up, has continued to go down. My best year was in the early 2000's, where I made $48K one year. Now I'm clearing about $20K, BEFORE taxes.

So yes, you will be making a big mistake, because there likely will be no going back to the old, cushy job once you leave. The at-home MT world of pittance-per-line, MTSO's, snarky QA people, lousy software (when it's even working - all too often it's malfunctioning, or down altogether), lousy insurance (or no insurance at all), and microscopic paychecks is no picnic. I'm a 37-year veteran of MT, and have been trying to climb back out of the work-at-home hole for the last several years, with no luck as of yet. It's not easy to escape, once you've been sucked into the black hole of exploitation called "working for an MTSO".

DON'T DO IT! STAY WHERE YOU ARE, AND COUNT YOUR BLESSINGS EVERY DAY THAT YOU'RE BORED, BUT EARNING A LIVING WAGE.

Home versus office - anom

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1. Most at home jobs are VR (voice recognition) at 4 cent/line. It is hard to make money doing voice recognition.
2. Most at home jobs want acute care experience; i.e, the big 5 - H&P, OP, Discharges, Consults.
3. Most at home jobs required over 60% ESL.
4. Read what the comments are about the various at home jobs.
5. QA is 98% expected accuracy usually being done unannounced on a monthly basis with much nitpicking.

Stay where you are. You are the envy of most people on this web site.

Someone's trying to get a rise out of the board. - Yeah - go ahead. Quit and work at home!

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Let us know how it goes, ok?!

I agree. I think it's just someone jerking everyone around. - And if by some chance it IS for real - sm

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then I'm changing my suggestion from "don't do it", to "BY ALL MEANS, quit that cushy job, and hire on with an MTSO so you can be a member of the Pink Fuzzy Slipper Brigade", because it'll give you some sorely-needed real-life experience that you obviously haven't been getting up to now.

You asked for an opinion; here is mine - Good Luck

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On a kinder, gentler note, you can probably make a better decision by checking out some of the other Board on MTStars on your own and draw your own conclusions.

You asked for opinions. Unfortunately, opinions are biased. People who have had bad experiences will show their negativity. People who are generally unhappy with life will be unhappy at any job. Asking people’s opinions will only get you one side of “their” story. You need to look at the facts and decide for yourself. Everyone has to make their own decisions based on their own needs.

Here are some of my opinions.

You admitted in one of your posts “I don't know what is going on out there right now.” Things have changed dramatically in the past 3 years. The days you remember of making good money doing hospital work are long done. Most MTSOs will not hire someone who has not done Acute Care within the last year. Most of the offers you will get now will be for Clinic work only.

Employee status is not what it used to be either. You can now look forward to less and less PTO, higher-cost insurance, no or little incentives, no or little bonus pay, stricter work schedules, more picky QA, massive ESL, daily running out of work entirely, and lousy platforms (just to mention a few of the “perks” of working as an Employee for an MTSO in today’s market).

You may be able to produce 300 lines per hour now because you are familiar with your dictators. If you are lucky enough to find a position with an MTSO that still does strictly straight transcription that probably will drop significantly. When you move to an MTSO, you will have different dictators for every report, different account specifics, different QA, and harder ESL dictators. Eventually, you may be able to attain 300 lines per hour, but it is highly unlikely that you will attain 2400 lines per 8 hour day, every day, every pay period.

If you are hired by a company that starts out with straight transcription and then “suddenly” switches to Speech Recognition, you can expect to make less than half of the pay you were making before.

Draw your own conclusions by looking at the following Boards:

JOB SEEKER’S BOARD

1. Of the few MTSOs who actually tell you what they pay, the average is 8 cents per line (for ACUTE CARE). You will be lucky to find any MTSO offering more than 6 or 7 cents per line if your recent experience is all Clinic.

2. The majority of positions are now 80-90% Speech Recognition Editor, for which the pay is averaging 4 cents per line (some as low as 3 cpl).

3. Look at the number of VIEWS for each position – some in high hundreds or in the low thousands. No, that is not the actual number of MTs looking for work, but every job opening has several hundred applicants sending in their resumes or taking the transcription tests.

To reinforce this, look at the JOB WANTED BOARD. Hundreds of MTs (on this site alone) with resumes; all looking for a job (any job). Many of them with years and years of experience.

Still can’t decide? Look at the RESUME BANK. There are currently 7356 resumes listed. Asking salary as low as 6 cents per line.

If the above has not convinced you that today’s Medical Transcription profession is nothing like the one you remember, then you probably have already made up your mind, and nothing anyone on this Board says will probably change it now.

Good luck in whatever you decide to do.

BEST description of the MT field I've ever read. - Kudos - that was brilliant!

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nm

But@Home, why not take a part-time position - (Wow, disagreeing with everyone?)

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and make up your own mind? Jobs don't last forever, anyway; checking out alternatives is only smart.

Generally speaking, I don't think someone transcribing 300 LPH considering a move to production pay is a bad idea at all. I suspect that at my company, WMX, once you were familiar with your accounts you'd be making a LOT more money, plus, of course, saving big time on gas and other costs (and spending your commute times reading, gardening, shopping, sewing, watching TV, coffee with neighbor, etc.).

That IS assuming you'd be as fast at your main accounts there are you are now. WMX does mainly regional medical centers across the country, not top-line research facilities, so you're not always trying to find new terms, but there is heavy ESL and working several accounts is desirable to avoid down time. (Oh, DOES your life allow flexing of hours now and then?)

Unknown factors, though, are apparently production pay and SR? To make good money on production pay these days, you have to type much, much faster than you ever tested in typing class (unless you're one of the phenoms, of course) by having your expander do much of the typing for you.

So, if you're not using one much (and I mean MUCH, 15,000+ constantly-used entries and always growing), you'll need to start building that skill as fast as possible. It would probably be smart to work at that while you're still paid by the hour, maybe investing at least half an hour or more a day at it. You'd get faster at your current work in the process, ultimately making up all and then surpassing previous production. I do wonder how many years more we'll be typing instead of talking to screens, say, but for now expanders are the game.

Regarding SR, I strongly suspect many not doing well at it can trace most of their slowness to inadequate development of transcription speed (expanders again), although a few sound as if they may also have problems with slowish reading speed and/or slow editing (do I need a comma here...?). Plus, of course a lot of companies ARE underpaying SR too (just not as dramatically as most believe). So developing expander use should help any transition to SR very well too. You wouldn't want to make a lot of navigation (moving around the page) and gram/punc correction macros until you were on a new platform, but it'd be good to know how so you could hit the ground running, maybe making some to work with what you're doing now.

This is all assuming you're not already heavy into expander use already, of course. Apologies if you are.

Self discipline? Hard worker? Motivated by pride in work AND money? All good stuff to bring home.

Oh, if you're one of the report-polishers, proud of neeever accepting less than perfection (half those 300 lines coming from templates, not speed): Forget the whole thing! Stay with hourly pay as long as you can. (Don't really suspect this is you, though.) Companies typically require 98%+ accuracy and appreciate 100%, but they don't appreciate low production at all. Speed AND accuracy are required to do well.

In any case, part-time to get your feet wet and maybe brush up on acute care? Maybe weekends, or even early morning pre-commute or evening? Just for a while? It'd be a big move, so a test leap could be extremely worthwhile. :)

Good luck, Pragmatist

hourly vs cpl - icomeinpeace

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b@home--have you considered approaching your employer about trying to work at home during the summer or family sick days? Maybe you could put some time in on site and then have the ability to work from home when the need arises. Good luck---there's a lot to be said family-wise when working from home but sounds like you have a really good thing going on site. Good luck! It is getting more and more difficult to make a buck transcribing from home, that's for sure.

I believe you! - girl4givn

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I believe you're making $18 per hour. It's not common, but it does happen. I guess, if you're wanting to go home, I would advise you to make the transition now.

I was making a good hourly wage working in-house too. I have worked for a local hospital for 15 years, on a tier of 8, 8.5, and 9 cpl. I average around 20-23$ per hour. Just keep in mind, you will have weeks that aren't up to par ESPECIALLY if you're thinking about having kids. You have to take into account the company's policy on downtime, vacation, overtime, etc. If you go to another company with an at-home job, you will probably find your lph decrease due to ESLs.

And I would really advise you to try to find a "local" at home job rather than an on-line job. I just personally feel it is better to have a face-to-face relationship with your supervisor.

Have you ever talked to your supervisor about sending you home?

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