Nearly every MTSO engages in this fraudulent practice, - and the revenue is staggering.

Most of us are not even aware of this, but the MTSOs have been doing it to all of us for years, and what they are stealing from us is huge.  Check this out.

I will use just one report I did today to illustrate.  Template loaded for DS.  Report was half a minute long.  I am required to delete any unused headings.  All of the preloaded headings came to 200 characters.  Based on a 65-character line, that's 3.07 lines.  I had to delete all of those characters with the exception of the "hospital course" heading.  The report was 4 lines long.  Line counter gave me credit for just over 1 line because I deleted nearly 3 lines to start with, which put the line count at a -3 lines starting point.  Therefore, the first 3 lines I typed were free.  4 lines typed minus 3 lines deleted in template headings, and I get paid for 1 line.  So, the company on this one report just stole 3 lines from me.  They will bill the client for the 4 lines I typed, but they will only pay me for 1 of them, and that doesn't count the time and effort they stole from me that it took to delete the unnecessary headings.

Now, lets do the math.  Let's say each transcriptionist loses an average of 10 lines a day this way.  Insignificant to their paycheck, but what does it mean to the company?  Well, if a company has say 500 transcriptionists, and the company steals 10 lines from each of them a day, that comes to 5000 lines a day they are billing for but not paying the transcriptionists for.  5000 lines a day, even at just 10 cents a line, comes to $500 a day times 30 days equals $15,000 a month. 

For all you who are prone to defend this practice as miniscule to each MT, would you also agree that if I could find a way to steal 25 cents a day from every bank it would be okay?  Of course not!  This is a fraudulent practice and something to be considered by all those who are taking these companies to task through litigation.  A company the size of M*Modal or Nuance with thousands of employees, even if it just came to 1 line a day for each of those employees, that could be as much as 10,000 lines a day they are billing for that they are not compensating the transcriptionists for.  10,000 lines a day at 10 cents a line (and we all know they charge more than that) comes to $30,000 a month they are taking in with this fraudulent practice.