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

MTSOs: Breaking News! - Rose

Posted: Jun 25, 2013

It takes longer to edit a report than to transcribe it! I have been keeping track of the time it takes using the process below. So, paying half the line count is just an excuse used. There is no truth to the statement that we can edit twice as fast, and your time clock production data shows this. In the past two days I have doubled my production with straight transcription over editing.

EDITING PROCESS:

Delete extraneous text that was not dictated.
Correct font, point size, bold print for headers.
Adjust font, point size, bold prints for subheaders.
Listen to dictation.
For each word you need to hear again listen to the whole sentence over and over and over because the developers think the shortest auto backspace we need is several seconds.
Reformat numbering systems.
Proof report.
Correct punctuation which is wrong more often than not.

TRANSCRIPTION PROCESS:

Transcribe in time audio is played with correct formatting.
Quick proof.

MTSOs Breaking News - GH

[ In Reply To ..]
Wow, that does sound like a ton of work. Our system isn't that complicated. We do have a playback highlighter that moves the cursor along quickly but you have to perform a bunch of cumbersome functions to back up and make corrections, and do other stuff etc. I don't use that function. It's easy to put in headers in our system and otherwise I just go thru and edit manually without the automatic playback highlighter thingie because it looks like too much trouble to me. Our ASR "learns" and over time, the system learns the corrections and eventually most of the reports come in with much fewer errors. Maybe your ASR system doesn't "learn."

Too many hands - For it to ever learn

[ In Reply To ..]
LOL. Been trying to teach our ASR at the big MTSO for, like, since 2006?

The ASR learns over time if the corrections - are exactly the same

[ In Reply To ..]
each and every time. When too many people are correcting a certain way of saying it, or how "they" hear it, THEIR way, the ASR just keeps flipping back and forth and it NEVER learns. I've noticed on a lot of my accounts that were going along really smoothly, we get a bunch of new MTs on the account and the entire report goes to h*ll. Just my opinion.

Developers not ready for prime time (sm) - Rose

[ In Reply To ..]

There are different grammar styles, so the software can receive corrections two different ways that are both correct. MTSOs need to have account specs that specify what style is to be used.

What about this SR draft:
DATE OF SERVICE: "The patient in
GENERAL: is having fewer
CARDIOVASCULAR: symptoms but her
CHIEF COMPLAINT: remains the back pain"

I do not blame - ASR

[ In Reply To ..]
ASR was developed for one person to use it, get used to the voice. So, the MTSOs decide to put every doctor in a 300-bed hospital on it and have hundreds of MTs "teaching" the engine.

It can't possibly learn anything. Where I work, it's been around for probably 7 years.

I seriously don't think the software is flawed. It's what the MTSOs expect of it. It was never meant to be the be-all-end-all for medical transcription.

SR is an excellent tool for the right people - NOT doctors (sm) - Rose

[ In Reply To ..]
And this is something we have always known. MTs are the perfect users for SR because we have to have minds for detail, and we work in environments more conducive to having the privacy to do the training and perfecting the software. I've been using it since it first came out about 20 years ago. They were trying to sell it to doctors at that time, not knowing that you will never get a doctor to dictate "blood pressure one-two-zero slash eight zero period." No, they wouldn't listen to us then and they won't listen now.

I don't blame the software - I blame the greed that is pushing it on people who do not have the time and patience to make it work correctly.

The one I'm using has learned some things, like ... - Rose

[ In Reply To ..]
Every word that can also be a heading or subheading is dropped down one line, bolded, all caps with a colon. It has also recently learned to follow each colons with a comma.

I'm sure the IT people could easily fix some of these things but they are probably paid 10 times what we are, so I guess it's more cost-effective to just have the minimum wagers continue to make all these corrections.

MTSOs: Breaking News--it's absolutely true! - oldtimer MT

[ In Reply To ..]
I completely agree. The only winner in SR is Nuance (or the technology company who built the SR engine). At the end of the day, it costs the hospital the same amount. But with SR, they pay Nuance more in technology and less in transcription rates. The hospital is tricked into thinking they're saving money as the labor costs are less (but it's "hidden" in technology fees). So the hospital/clinic pays the same. The MTSO and its MTs are forced into lower rates just to survive, as the hospital can't keep paying the same rate if they're paying more to Nuance for technology. So it's all a game--created by Nuance to make more money! And then Nuance goes around and charges even less for labor (more for technology), so the MT's pay continues to shrink. But they're paying for their bargain-basement line rates with the technology, so at the end of the day they're still making money. IMHO, Nuance has done more to kill this industry than any other entity. Their evil greed will catch up with them at some point--and it might be sooner than you think. We can only hope!

You're absolute right! (sm) - Rose

[ In Reply To ..]
Not only are the hospitals paying more for the software and IT, but they are likely paying more now for transcription and editing as the MTSOs are charging from .10 to .24 cents per line! So what we used to do on our own, is now supporting the developers, IT techs, software sales and the MTSOs.

true that the hospital pays hidden costs - CINDY

[ In Reply To ..]
I found this out years ago, when I worked in a hospital and the director was switching to sending everything out to a service. It was said that the hospital pays for it out of a different money not just the alotment for transcription, but overall it makes it look like it is costing the hospital less for transcription when actually they are paying for the transcription out of different funding so they call it something else and it looks like transcription is cheaper.

Could you elaborate? Thanks. (sm) - Rose

[ In Reply To ..]
Are there department managers who are trying to CYA for making the the wrong decision and costing the hospital more, or?

I can see a hospital thinking if they outsource they can save overhead, supervision and management, but how can facilities think they are saving money by paying 18 CPL to a service rather than using an IC? Is it the price they pay for the consistently fast TAT?

By outsourcing - the hospital does not have

[ In Reply To ..]
the cost of salaries and benefits for employees who were doing the outsourced work. If the employees were working in-house, they can use the space they occupied (and the cost of heating, cooling, etc. the space) for other activities, possibly postponing the cost of expanding to accommodate something else. They save on other personnel costs because they do not have to hire someone to hire, manage, evaluate, train, or maintain personnel records for the outsourced employees.

That's all I can think of at the moment, but there are probably more employee costs that are saved by outsourcing.

Last 4 platforms worked do all the formatting. I set my - auto backspace. I am not saying we are not

[ In Reply To ..]
still gravely underpaid, but some of the things you describe suggest you work on an unusually primitive platform. The punctuation in my reports is correct much more often than not.

I also have over 70,000 entries in my main expander dictionary, including scripts designed to eliminate as many correction keystrokes as possible.

Nevertheless, good as my platform AND I are, I can't double my transcription speed while editing. Strangely, I once could, but even while I have consistently gotten faster over the years, my line counts (not just pay rate , but LPM!) in both transcription and editing have gone DOWN...

oh but then they'd have to - pay us

[ In Reply To ..]
and everyone knows they don't want to do that.

Time versus Quantity - NoCigar4U

[ In Reply To ..]
As an MT myself, I appreciate your point.

But listing the steps involved with both activities does NOT prove your point, which was about TIME. ;)

I think the backspace and delete keystrokes should be - FBL

[ In Reply To ..]
counted on edited reports.

Triple Like!!! - AgingMT

[ In Reply To ..]
I also find that I am getting hand, arm and shoulder pains a lot more than I did when straight transcribing, which them slows down my ability to edit.

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