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

Taking the plunge to editing voice rec. - anilom007

Posted: Apr 29, 2013

After 30 years of "traditional" transcription now moving on to editing work done by physicians on work recognition. I'd love if some of you can share your experience. Also I know about the learning curve, but wonder how financially this works out for you all. After your learning curve, working the same amount of hours are you seeing more or less or about the same in your paycheck? Thanks!

It is a salesman's myth that you can do ++ lines doing - VR vs ST. It is a lie that MTSO used Sm

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to cut our pay.

Yes, it is - sm

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VR pays 1/2 as much as MT and I make half as much money! I don't know why MTSOs continue to allow this. They should tell the clients that NO, VR isn't easier and the pay has to be more.

Do the MTSOs get half of the pay for VR as opposed to typing or is that just what they pay us?

Puleeze. The MTSO continues to allow this because otherwise - MTSO will have no clients. And MTSO Sm

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continues to *allow* it because it means MTSO gets more of the pie while giving us crumbs. You seem to think the MTSO is looking out for our well-being but nothing could be further from the truth.

that's what they pay us. If they did take a cut, I'm sure it was not as much - they are making more money, sm

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now off of VR. If the ratio used to be a transcriptionist got 10 cents or 9 cents a line and the MTSO got 15 or 16. They were making 5 to 6 cents a line off of us. If now they take a cut in pay to 13 or 14 cents a line, they are now the ones making (if paying 3 or 4 cents a line) the majority of the money instead of it being the MT with the MTSO making a cut.

By the way, if the MTSO only offers 1 cent cut, its a huge difference - for the client as its a big savings for them, sm

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even at the 1 cent less in the long run. Over time that 1 cent less is thousands and thousands of dollars in savings in a year.

Cuts not only in salary, but ... - Angie

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MTs who were making .12 CPL, reduced to .04 CPL to edit have suffered a 66% reduction in pay. This is after not having a cost of living increase in about 20 years. We also need to consider the further reduction in production/speed/income with the reduction in use of word expanders. They cannot be used nearly as much in editing as they were in transcription. Expanders gave me about a 30% increase in productivity, so we have lost a lot more than just the 66% reduction in wages.

I love it! - BUT.......

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The pay isn't there, for me. I, also, have never done anything but straight typing and just recently decided that I better go with the times and try editing. I actually love it. I think it is fun and I feel so much less stressed than when I am straight typing, for some reason. I make 1/2 to 3/4 of the money I made when typing and maybe it will get better, I don't know. I would love to hear success stories from MTs who can make close to the same, but I'm not one of them.

Less on paycheck, much less. - anon

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It is pure myth that you can do twice as much editing as you can type.

I actually type about as fast as I can edit. I have been an MT for 15 years and doing editing for about 7 or so.

If you are extremely disciplined you can probably make $12-13 an hour doing editing. If you are antsy, like me, you will be lucky to get $10 an hour. When I was typing I made $18-20 an hour.

The nature of editing for me is so mind numbingly boring that I just cannot do it for hours on end.

oh no - anilom007

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Thanks for your reply! Sounds like me. Is it less involved from the transcription side we are used to, if that makes sense and more involved from the technical side? Im just wondering, obviously havent started yet!

It is not less involved. You are still going to be re-typing some reports - that the VR could not understand and just, sm

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threw out some words it thought it might be. Seriously, I have to concentrate on the ESLs and the people who talk like they have marbles in their mouths, so VR isn't going to make a whole lot of sense out of those messes, which means you have to and get paid at the VR rate for cleaning up the junk.

I agree...sm - LoveMT

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I agree totally. I have about 16 years of experience (only about years editing). I found that I only had to work about 6 hours a day to get to my personal goal and earned around $15/hr. It now takes me at least 8-9 hours of editing to meet that goal, and I'm only making somewhere around $10-12 bucks an hour, if I'm lucky. :)

It is, however, a lot easier on my hands to edit than it is to straight type. I just HATE sitting in front of a computer screen for 8 to 9 hours to achieve something that would normally take only 6 hours of my time. It's mentally draining and sometimes just plain frustrating what needs to be corrected in a report after voice recognition slaughters it into word salad.

I bought the old "you can make twice as much" crap when I first started editing, but I KNOW that will NEVER happen.

my paycheck went down, too much to edit, - sm

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You now only have to make sure the right word are there, but you have to format the whole document because most physicians do not say new paragraph and the VR does not know when to stop and start a sentence if your physician does not dictate the punctuation. Not to mention just the mumbled mess it makes out of some of the easiest things. Read the VR/Speech Rec board. You will get a better idea of what people think of it. I was doing 450 lph of VR but I typed anywhere from 350-400 lph straight transcription, so with a cut in pay for VR, there was a significant decrease in the paycheck. I am no longer doing VR, going broke trying to do it.

No choices left - anilom007

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It's not like I (WE) have many choices left. My work has been diminishing monthly as TWO seperate companies that I work for send more and more overseas.
Most work days I sit here like an idiot trying to pull from a pool of work thats not even there. If i work an 8 hour day, half of it is spent checking to see if work is in! This hospital I'm going with now has too much work, ast least the time sitting there looking for work I can be typing. Its just sad what greed on the business part of it has done for our profession.

It Depends... - Angie

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Depends on if the platform used is MT-friendly, and how much non-editing work is a part of your job (which is not compensated). If all I did was edit documents I'd make about 3/4 what I did transcribing them. Platforms can be ridiculously slow, for example no way to set the auto backspace for less than an entire sentence, requiring we use 10 year old computers with XP and old Word programs that can't do all the formatting needed. Doctors are never corrected when they don't know to enter a patient's name, MRMs etc. You constantly have to Google search "Dr. Peterson" to get the first name and spelling for the CC list when it should be common sense to these untrained dictators. 99$ of them do not know how to use a pause button, require you sit there forever while they review a chart. MTSOs will blame every dictator mistake on the MT, never bringing it up with the clients.

It is a complete lie that we can edit twice as fast as we transcribed! MTSOs know this.

It's been a financial disaster. Paycut was - close to 50 percent. I hate editing. n/m

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*

It depends on the dictator and the editing program - Maggie May

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If you have decent dictators, and a decent editing program, it's not too bad. But if the work you have to edit is a total mess and you have to do a ton of editing, since you only get paid half as much per line you will lose a lot of money.

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