A community of 30,000 US Transcriptionist serving Medical Transcription Industry
To the Leads complaining about MTs - Fingers
Posted: Oct 29, 2009
Did you post here to stir up trouble? Are you bored? You certainly knew this criticism would stir up nasty posts. Seems to me you are displaying the very attitude that MTs complain about with QA. Quite a power trip you are on there. This also caused very low morale and worth ethics. MTs would rather send an error to the client than a blank to QA. How sad. Yes, there are slacker MTs. We all know that, just as there are people in QA positions who absolutely do not belong there.
Now, don't you wonder why these things you stated about MTs and their worth ethics are true. Could it be because more companies are hiring newbies who have had no real experience? Could it be because your company pays such a low rate that this is the quality of MT you will also get. Could it be because some MTs are available for their shift all week long with no work, and of course will object to working nights and weekends? Could it be because management is constantly changing their shift? Could it be that the MT never gets any cooperation from the company, IT, or QA?
Personally, I think the RIDICULOUSLY LOW PAY has something to do with the change in quality of MTs. We, "The Divas," of the MT world, who are still around, do not have problems with the quality of our work, only the conditions put forth by the companies. The rest of the Divas are gone. What's left? YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR!!! I fear this will happen more and more. You will go through MT after MT who is given a shot at crap for pay.
And furthermore, don't forget, the finger can be pointed both ways.
re: fingers - tita
[ In Reply To ..]I agree! The company that I work for, (the big "Q) has sacrificed the MT for the all mighty dollar. Their motto should be "quantity, not quality"!
Morale, or lack thereof, is a huge driving force in the quality (or lack thereof)of work you get back.
I personally do not heard from my supervisor, UNLESS it is to weedle more hours out of me. Nothing else.
What galled me about the post, is that this person actually had the audacity to complain that their MT's won't work more than 8 hours a day or weekends. The fact that an MT should have to work more than 8 hours a day and 7 days a week to make a living is absurd.
I sooo agree - MT55
[ In Reply To ..]This person sounds like a relatively "new MT/QA person" who has not been in this business for 25+ years like I have -- I have also done QA and had "newbies" question me, but have also tried to explain to them what exactly was wrong with their reports in the sense of "context" --- the QAs IMHO who nitpick over punctuation are trying to stir the pot -- when I spell check a document, I also have grammar check on as well, and I go with what Word tells me.
Playing devils advocate here but those of us who have been doing MT for years are pretty much working M-F -- I email the owner of the company that I work for and tell her basically what hours I will be available on the weekend -- if you can put 4-5 hours in on a Saturday and a Sunday, that helps keep the backlog down tremendously :)
My 2 cents on the topic - Oberver
[ In Reply To ..]Well the slackers of the MT field seem to be the ones referred to in the other user's post below.
Bingo! Bullseye! Nail on the head! -sm - Zircon
[ In Reply To ..]ESPECIALLY about most MTs' reluctanct send anything to QA. I prefer to just take my chances with it being right. It would be one thing if they only dinged us for errors. But when you DO AS YOU ARE ASKED, and flag something you aren't sure you heard right for a terrible ESL dictator, or you left a blank because the DICTATION SKIPPED, AND HAD A PARAGRAPH-LONG GAP IN IT, those things should not come back to us with points off, marked as "errors". They are NOT errors. They're unintelligible mumblers that QA can't decipher any better than we can, or they're blanks in the tape, where dictation SIMPLY DOES NOT EXIST.
I don't need to have my day ruined by reading all the QA garbage I find in my email every day. So, I DON'T. I delete it. Chances are, whatever they said was wrong today, will be correct tomorrow. And vice-versa.
So YES, I'd rather send a blank to client than let QA mess with it, and then send the report, with MY initials on it, to the client with God-knows-what filled in by them.
Just as an FYI, I don't ding people for sending stuff to QA - Lead
[ In Reply To ..]x
If you don't you're the exception to the rule, - cuz mine most certainly DO. nm
[ In Reply To ..].
I've heard that other companies do, - Lead
[ In Reply To ..]though, but I myself have not done that.
To MTs Complaining About Leads/QA - ..
[ In Reply To ..]Stop making excuses for bad-quality work and unreliability. Personally, I would rather work a weekend to have food to eat than be "Miss Thang" and not be flexible. My issue is not with all MTs as you seem to imply, and you know it. You know darn well what I'm talking about, but defending sh** work is pathetic.
it is human nature to defend anything! - ya know?
[ In Reply To ..]It feels like crap to have someone pick you compeltely appart. It seems that most of the QA will do that. It is taken as a personal threat most of the time... now if it is a new MT and the QA person actually tells someone what they did wrong then that is great! On our system the QA will just mark something wrong and just not let you know. So you look at this mark and think why the heck did they mark this wrong! It seems most QA go on personal bias which is NOT right! They should go by the AAMT BOS or company policy ONLY! For example: "Third" should not be counted wrong if left as "third" or transcribed as 3rd.
Companies that pay poorly and want MT's to make - up the missing pay by working "faster,
[ In Reply To ..]faster, faster" have only themselves to blame if they perceive the work quality ain't what it oughtta be.
There is a breaking-point, you know, and we're all just about there. There's a limit to how much one MT can type in a day. And if the client wants print-ready copy, with 100% accuracy, written in the King's English, and punctuated to perfection, not to mention all the research on patient demographics we've been saddled with in recent years, thanks to shoddy input at the client's end, then YES, it's gonna take a bit longer to produce that kind of a document.
Do you really think the way to achieve that is to pay MTs LESS per line? To NOT pay for spaces? To NOT pay for overtime? Then HOW, exactly, are we expected to make a living wage other than to crank it out a little faster, which is what they keep telling us they want us to do?
The only way to crank it out is to cut some corners. Proofread less. Or not at all. Rely more heavily on macros, even if they're generic, and aren't "verbatim". Try to proof as we type. Ignore the BOS. Ignore all the nit-picky busywork they give us to do by making each account so complicated to learn and remember. Skip QA (a HUGE time-waster), and send more blanks. If the hospitals are going to hire more mush-mouthed ESLs, and pay less per line to have their gibberish transcribed, then YES, it's gonna come back with a few more holes that what they might have been getting back in the days of English-speaking doctors.
Oh, and another thing. Most of us working supposed "8-hour" shifts are ALREADY working a he11uva lot more hours than 8 per day already, simply because the work comes in slow, the software is slow, the demographic search eats up valuable time, and the line-count "minimum" keeps getting higher and higher, as the pay for those lines goes lower and lower. So you know, and all the rest of us know, that we're working a LOT more than 8-hour shifts. AND not getting paid overtime for those extra hours. It's one of the medical transcription industry's DIRTY LITTLE SECRETS.
I make less per line than I did a year ago (which was no great shakes then, either). Overtime, on the rare occasions it's even offered, isn't much more. So when I've already worked six 10-12 hour days that week, and then they're squawking about needing extra work done because the accounts are out of turnaround, (yet they're NOT paying overtime), I reckon the last thing I'm going to feel like doing on the only day off I get is to work another 8 hours. Like the other poster, my heart does NOT bleed for them if their precious TAT has fallen behind. Bad attitude? Perhaps. If so, it's been carefully created and cultivated by the cheapskates in the hospital executive offices, by the scam-artists who own most of the MTSOs, and by the goons they hire (aka "leads") to crack the whips and turn the thumbscrews.
If you truly treat your subordinates the way your posts imply, then your work, as well, is "sh** work", and is even MORE pathetic.
make up time by working faster post - Fingers
[ In Reply To ..]This post makes very excellent points and I believe all MTs can relate to it, though I doubt many QA people could.
Just last year I was in a situation with a big MTSO who bought the company I was working for. Work disappeared. There were 10-14 hour days at the computer every day. Could barely make the minimum line count required. We were told to "flex" also. And to clock out when there was no work (have to avoid that OT pay time, you know). Then come Christmas week (and I was off) they were begging for MTs to get on. Nope, no way. They treated us like crap for too long so it was there problem.
Yes, I am an MT Diva. I left that company and went to one who does not offshore. Plenty of work. QA is great!!
AGAIN QA, YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR AND WHAT GOES AROUND COMES AROUND!!!
I agree - EXCELLENT POST and to sum it up, - sm
[ In Reply To ..]I do not have a problem with QA either presently, but I have in the past. As far as MTs working extra, PAY FOR IT!! They insist that we be reliable. I certainly am. Will sit at the computer 10-12 hours a day and only type half that time. You want more - PAY FOR IT!!
I do not defend shabby work by MTs at all. You want better - PAY FOR IT!!
The "goes around comes around" is true for EVERYONE - QA
[ In Reply To ..]You might be a lead someday and have the same issues.
REPLY TO: GOES AROUND/COMES AROUND - HeidiHo
[ In Reply To ..]Well, if I did happen to be foolish enough to stay in the MT field, and if I ever did become a "lead", I would certainly not treat MTs as a subhuman species, as is so often done today, I would treat them with respect they deserve, like I would want to be treated, knowing thatI would not have my "LEAD" job without the MT's contribution.
Companies that pay poorly - Susan
[ In Reply To ..]It's a one-way street for these companies. Lower pay, lack of enough work yet they continue hiring. There is no loyalty to the worker and we're treated like second-class citizens. Time to get away from companies like Sphere and Webmedx. Maybe in time they'll learn that quality MT's aren't easy to come by and realize our real worth. I highly suggest going independent if at all possible.
Agree 100% - being replaced by VR garbage - flexing for nothing
[ In Reply To ..]My company is pushing SR software to its clients, hoping to replace me entirely. I've seen the result of it - garbage! If the quality of those reports is acceptable to both my MTSO and the client, then QA can cram it next time they want to whine at me about a comma! But quality is a small price to pay for a machine that will be on costant standby, unlike these lazy MTs, right? Y'all are a bunch of hypocrites - quality only matters if there's an MT to hassle! The same report typed on VR with 10x the errors is "good enough" for both you and client.
Excuses for bad work, we hear them all day - Obvious
[ In Reply To ..]nm
I just wanted to insert this here... - Sally Forth
[ In Reply To ..]Have you ever thought about this??? When we MTs go to the grocery store, our groceries cost as much as doctors and lawyers. We don't get an MT discount just because our wages have been cut in half. Kinda hard to digest if you know what I mean.
i hate police discounts! not really realted to OP post... - :)
[ In Reply To ..]I use to work as a cashier for a grocery store and then a couple of gas stations and they always would give food and drink away for free to cops... although we as employees got nothing free. So more cops would come to our store because they got free stuff... yet the gas station I worked for still got robbed. Why should they get free stuff? Why don't troops get free stuff or even firemen?
Your post is ridiculous and ignorant. Firemen and our troops get free stuff as well. - Good grief
[ In Reply To ..]My husband, 2 SIL and daughter are in law enforcement and my other SIL is a fireman. All 3 SIL are in the military, Navy, National Guard and Marines. Not all businesses do this for our men/women in any type of uniform but on the occasion you will find someone who is extremely kind, understanding that these people are putting their lives at risk to protect their property and the people working there, whether it is a fire, a robbery or protecting our country. Some business owners also do this for law enforcement thinking that if they are there more often the chances of them being robbed are slim; however, as you know from experience, this is not the case. Law enforcement cannot be every place all of the time, just like with any other profession there are bad amongst the good but thankfully the good outweigh the bad. To give them free coffee, a free coke or some fast food places here will give them a 20% discount when they eat, is just a courtesy, again, a way of saying thanks for what they do. As the wife, mother and MIL of those who protect our community and our country, I am extremely appreciative, as is my entire family.
Police discounts - Vikingfan
[ In Reply To ..]Way back when I was just a kid, I worked at McDonald's and they got free food. Gee, now I have a concealed carry license and the ability to defend myself and others in dangerous situations - do I get free food now too? LOL.
Seriously, I thought very little of cops as I was growing up. I grew up in a nice town where the cops had nothing better to do than bust people going 26 in a 25 zone. Since the show "Cops" came out, I've gained a whole new respect for them. They put up with a lot of crap. If I see one in uniform, I thank him/her for their service. They risk their lives every day. Do they deserve free food? I don't know. It's not up to me to judge. And my concealed carry is for my protection.
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