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Incompetent Dictators - Morgan

Posted: Jun 24, 2012

Has anyone ever considered coordinating with MT coworkers to refuse doing jobs for horrid dictators? Does anyone think this might motivate the MTSOs to have the backbone to contact the doctor to try to resolve the problem? This could be as simple as having them adjust their mic so that everything they say isn't covered by breath sounds from a mic too close, or learning to use the "PAUSE" command while they review a chart. The only reason they get away with this is because we continue to provide service no matter how horrid the dictation is, how long it takes to transcribe, or what our hourly rate is reduced to. What about sending anonymous notes to the doctors about their problem, like "please back off the mic" or "please don't dictate while eating"? At least when doctors KNEW us, they usually knew when they blew it dictating by blanks left by a very good MT. Now they must assume the blanks are left by a newbie or someone in India. There needs to be SOME communication with the doctors!

Ban bad dictators - anon

[ In Reply To ..]
I'd love to see a ban list of doctors who are not worth trying to dictate and have all MTs refuse their jobs.

It would be nice to also take a stand against - CAMT

[ In Reply To ..]
Those atrocious audio files. If I cannot hear something, I can't hearing something. It really frustrates me to be told "just do the best you can and type what you CAN hear."

I feel when the sound quality is deteriorated to such a degree that it's completely inaudible, sitting her wasting precious production time listening to an inaudible 20-minute audio file is absurd and a total waste of time. Those jobs should be flagged, IMO, and sent back to the client with instructions that the dictator must redictate the job. Perhaps if that happened a few times, clinicians would be less inclined to dictate on speaker phone, cell phone, in the bathroom with the echoes, etc.

MTs aren't compensated at all for that dead air time spent desperately trying to hear 1 word out of every 25 words dictated. With a handful of inaudibles every night, we can lose up to a couple of hours of production time every night just because *someone* doesn't want to tell that holier-than-thou clinician (whose breaking the rules by dictating from a cell phone, speaker phone, etc.) that they need to redictate their report.

If we were paid hourly, I'd feel completely different about this. If an MTSO wants to pay me to listen to a 20-minute audio file of basically white noise, that's fine; however, when sitting for that 20 minutes is completely uncompensated and cuts into an MTs invaluable production time, yeah...I have a REAL problem with this issue.

Sorry if this is only half coherent. I just got up and sometimes what we MTs are expected to buck up and take without adequate compensation just infuriates me.

Sending the audio to their doctor friends... - Morgan

[ In Reply To ..]
It is profoundly important to doctors what other doctors think of them. For this reason I think a kind note to the doc to clean up his dictation might work, but if it doesn't, we can send the audio to the hospital or facility CEO, or just one of their doctor friends (pick one of their referrals). Of course we would have to edit to avoid any HIPAA violations, but this might work.

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