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

What Are YOUR Full-Time Quotas? - MikeInABQ

Posted: Mar 04, 2012

Hey! Fellow MT/MEs, I am wondering if any of you could drop a post into this thread telling me what your company/employer is imposing on you as far as transcribing and editing quotas, daily, weekly, either way.

Where I work, we just switched 5 months ago to Nuance's eScription VR platform, so now we do both transcribing and editing. We actually have a union "representing" us and when this new technology was implemented, we went to the table (I had the pleasure of being a part of the union's illustrious negotiations committee) with the hospital and after months of back and forth and as much research as we could do, we got the hospital to agree to a 2:1 TEMPORARY editing-to-transcription ratio. This meant that we would be required to edit twice our transcription quota, and of course, be paid half the per-line rate.

So a daily transcription quota, for a full-timer (FTE 1.0) is 1200 lines, and our editing quota is 2400 lines a day.

Alot of us are having major problems reaching this goal. Some of us found this a problem. So, using Nuance's own software called Metrics, we have determined that, on average, our staff is nowhere near the 2:1 ratio in terms of editing speed.

Apparently, the union isn't sure this is important (the union likes to focus 95% of its attention on the 5% of the staff that works in-house and let us at-homers kinda stew, to say that as kindly as I can), but some of us disagree.

So, with that said, I thought I would attack this from another route, and just see what my fellows across America are being asked to do, both transcribing and editing. Your answers to this would greatly help me in any arguments I bring to the union hall as I try my best to get them to repserent us fairly and get us some relief as we all make appointments with chiropractors and trigger point clinics.

Thanks!

Just as long as you make minimum wage - they stick with stanard quota

[ In Reply To ..]
Which is 1200 lines per 8hr shift. You have to at least avg. 150 lines per pay period and make minimum wage.

I haven't heard anything about a VR quota, but obviously it akes more than 150 an hour to make more than minimum wage depending on VR cpl rate that is.

My experience with this platform... - Old Anon

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We are required to do 125 lph straight and 250 lph SR. They only look at the lph, no daily quota. What I have found on the straight jobs, I can achieve close to 200 lph BUT with speech jobs, if they are poor quality documents, meaning more than 3-4 corrections per document/page, relistens, cut and paste text into appropriate section of report, etc., etc., that I am barely able to achieve the 250 quota. Of course all the above is due to poor dictation such as lightening speed talking, changing their mind, addending such as "oh go back up to the HPI and put...", poor grammar/no punctuation and on and on. We actually trained the escription from scratch doing straight transcription for 2-3 weeks, then they transitioned to all speech at that point.

Now the speech platform can only do so much with speed-talking, poor dictators. It is my understanding that the platform can be set for a certain percentage of errors for the dictator to be able to use it, and I do believe that (at my company) the error percentage is set too low, and the dictators have no clue they are using a speech engine and continue to dictate in their usual too fast, sloppy way. This all impacts the quality of the document that needs to be edited. I think a major mistake that MTSOs and the companies who sell these platforms make is they do not emphasize enough that the dictators need to be informed of the need to somewhat change their dictating habits and to slow down. I firmly believe that they do not even know they are using a speech platform. If they had to edit their own documents, I'm very, very sure they would change, but since we "typing-monkeys" are doing the work for them, they do not care and neither does the MTSO because they get to pay us half or less than half for doing the editing.

I agree... Not only do they not know they are - using speech rec...

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Most of them do not even know they are using a service outsourced to who knows where. I have one who tells me to enclose a little personal note after his procedure dictations to the referring MD like I am his secretary sitting out in the front office.

My experience - MT2

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I have never had a quota for this software, but I can type 250-300 lines/hour and with eScription would get 350-400 lines/hour. Very occasionally could do 500 lines/hour on very good dictators who needed practically no correction. Overall my production increased by about 33%, so a 3/2 ratio would be more reaslistic, I think. So if 1200 lines is full-time typing, then 1800 lines editing. From what I've heard others say as well, I think this is more the way it is. Only very slow typists could double their production.

exactly what I found... - MikeInABQ

[ In Reply To ..]
...when I asked my coworkers to share with me their ratio, which they got when they divided their average lines per hour for transcribing into that of their editing, right off the Metrics. 1.58 was the average of the eleven of us who shared our numbers. Exactly 1.5:1 (3:2 as you put it. And my speeds match what you said to a tee.

As an aside, you'll love this. Our manager is only crediting us our benefit accruals based on the time given on the Metrics, which means that any time we don't have a job open, we aren't having our time "counted" towards accruing our sick leave or vacation. Nice, huh?

I think I know who you work for - Happy MT Robin

[ In Reply To ..]
I'm in ABQ, too, and I recently saw a job posted on jobing.com for transcriptionists using Nuance's platform. You're with a major teaching hospital, right?

What everyone and you have said is absolutely correct. Your management has been sold a bill of goods for a best case scenario with the VR software. I also find your comments on the union interesting, especially after all the hullabaloo last summer about people thinking MTs should start a union. But I digress...

The other part of this that I don't think has been mentioned yet is that since this work is essentially new to VR, the engine is still being "trained" and so the percentage of errors is much higher, making the total amount able to be edited lower. Also not mentioned is the error percentage that is allowed for the drafts in the very first place - meaning, is the speech engine allowed to spit out a draft that is only 75% accurate and you edit the rest or is it a higher standard of 85 or 90%?

Another thing not mentioned is what kind of training you all were given when you started VR, or did they just say go forth my children and edit 2400 lines a day? The actual editing process is just as important as the rest. Everyone who is doing the editing needs to be absolutely consistent with everyone else in how they make corrections, otherwise the software is just an expensive piece of junk and it never gets better.

I've never talked to anyone in person who could edit twice as much as they typed. I think a slow typist could improve their speed, but anyone who was any good at straight transcription rarely doubles their speed at VR and then it's only when the planets are in alignment and you get a run of that one dictator who recognizes that there human ears on the other end of the microphone and acually enunciates AND it's a well managed VR system.

2400 lines a day for an 8 hour work day is 300 LPH without stopping to look anything up. Theoretically that's not that bad for VR, but again, it depends on a whole host of other factors that are totally out of your control, the major one being how well the speech engine is maintained. I worked on a VR system that was pretty good and managed to get to 300 lph but only one one account and never for very long. As soon as I switched to my backup account that went right down the tubes and I was back to 200 lph because of the corrections involved.

Do you sign in and out of a time keeping system and do you have a set schedule that you have to work? I'm thiking that if that is the case, then for you to only get credit for "time served" so to speak when you only have jobs open might be a little hinky. For employees working at home it's hard to determine how to manage that, but employers these days are getting away with all kinds of garbage in regards to stuff like this. That might be worth a call to the labor department just to verify the rules involved for people in your situation.

Lots of questions to answer here hope I get them all - MikeInABQ

[ In Reply To ..]
I'll go in order of your questions and comments. First, UNMH. And if you saw job postings, I know 55 MTs who will be very upset, as we keep waking up to no work to do lately. Secondly, our management and Nuance got together and sold US that bill of goods. Do you know that they actually tried to get us started at a 4:1 ratio? Yes you read that right. 1200 daily transcribed lines and 4800 edited. This is what UNMH calls "bargaining". Looking back at this union of ours and the other complete BS it has chosen to accept from our management, I'm shocked we got them down to 2:1.

The fact that nobody is actually HITTING 2:1 isn't impressing either of them, unfortunately, the union OR the hospital. Management says "Hey look, their Metrics show they type at over 250 lines an hour so we should raise their daily quotas to 2000 lines transcribed!" Then they pull the other cards out and say, "Hey look theyre editing at just over 300 lines an hour, which is twice their STANDARD 150/hour that we have been using to determine FTE status, so they ARE at 2:1, see???"

And the transcriptionists, nation-wide DO need their own union. We are currently stuck in with the maintenance, food service, and housekeeping folks and getting treated worse than any of them. What we need is for MTs nationally to start demanding the respect of a professional medical language specialist (MLS) and to be represented alongside the other licenced and technical employees, or we'll never get anywhere. But that's another story.

We got 8 hours of training on eScription. That's it. And only the first class got trained by an actual Nuance employee. Most of us got department "superusers", and right now, nobody is doing ANYTHING according to any standard, as we still lack a proper manual to work from. And the system seems to be getting "trained" from someone not even employed at UNMH right now, as we are seeing anomalies that none of us would ever have created.

As far as the time clock sitch, you'll love this. Our manager, using the same eScription Metrics device in each of our systems, says that because many people are transcribing and editing at faster than the standard 150/300 lines per hour, that we won't get credit for working 40 hours a week until we type whatever 40 X 250 or 40 X 325 (examples) equals!!! This affects how we get our vacation and sick leave accrued. Essentially, we're getting shafted from every direction.

I don't expect sympathy from anyone here, mind you, as I realize that our 10.5 cents a line (5.25 for editing) is far above what your employers out there are paying. But soon, this is what management is going to attack. And the offshoring that Nuance does ain't gonna help our case much when that happens.

Welcome us all to your race to the bottm, folks! This is why we need a national union. Anyone know anyone in the AMA? It's time we got talking to doctors about this.

Rock and a hard place - Happy MT Robin

[ In Reply To ..]
Yep, it was UNMH that I saw the listings for and it wasn't that long ago. They're not there now, but I'm pretty sure it was as recent as December or so. There were two listings on Jobing.com.

You all are in a bad spot, no way around it. Quite frankly, I think it sounds like you all are going to be outsourced completely to Nuance at some point in the not too distant future.

As for your line rate, yes, it's great, but 10.5 cpl doesn't mean diddly if you dont' have any actual work to do.

The problem is that the doctor's don't seem to care what goes into the report. We've all seen the comments about horrific mistakes being put into the reports and nothing being done. I know someone who is fairly high up in the Presbyterian Health Plan ranks and he would just shrug his head when he talked about the mistakes that would come back on his notes. I got the impression that, even in his position, there was not much that he could do about it.

It's all about the bottom line and the doctors have nothing to do with that. That's all up to the hospital adminsitrators and they are rarely medical professionals.

Good luck to you.

Hmmm, pessimistic much? - MikeInABQ

[ In Reply To ..]
Man, what a bummer that was to read! I don't think we'll be outsourced to Nuance outright, not with all the public funds we get, but you might be right, I suppose. Lots of variables involved.

about quotas - Kerri

[ In Reply To ..]
I worked for 3 companies, stayed 1 year with each. They each went to speech recognition within 6 months of my hiring date. Daily quota went from 1000 to 1200 lines per day straight transcribing to 2000 to 2400 lines per day editing with voice recognition, with my line rate cut in half. I found it absolutely impossible to make the quotas. Since I work from home, I had no idea if other workers for the companies were having the same difficulties and frustrations. Two of the companies basically told me to "get used to it, this is the wave of the future for transcription." I went 3 months not working in the MT field, thinking I may have to find another line of work if that was the truth. Thankfully I found a company who has a "no voice recognition" philosophy, and I know of one other company out there who has the same. I've been with my current company for almost 2 years and love them. They do not use VR and state they have absolutely no plans to. I believe VR is sound in theory, but until doctors themselves are educated about and agree to alter dictating styles to accommodate it, VR is basically useless in terms of being "twice as efficient," as it is touted.

agree its only beneficial with good dictators - expectation to double lines

[ In Reply To ..]
is ridiculous, when you are "training" it and making multiple corrections.

In my opinion its only the wave of the future because it allows the employer to pay the employee less and justify it by saying we are only editing.

Can you share your company or the - Just Sayin

[ In Reply To ..]
other company name you know of that does only straight typing? Would love to have a straight typing job again.

Which Places Have What Quotas? - MikeInABQ

[ In Reply To ..]
I probably should have asked the question better. I'm hoping to get a decent sized list of specific employers and the lines they are demanding.

For my company - 1100 for straight, and 1650 for VR (nm) - CB

[ In Reply To ..]
x

MikeinABQ - Q&A

[ In Reply To ..]
Question to you: Would you care to share the name of the union? I worked in a hospital setting many yrs ago and some of their ofc workers were in a union, but I have no clue of the name as I was only per diem for when they would get backlogged.

My answer to your question: I work for a fairly large MTSO (would rather not specify which one). To retain my benefits and employment, I must make $900 in a 2-week pay period (before taxes, etc.) I'm paid roughly 9 cpl for transcription and 4.5 cpl for VR. My transcription/VR jobs ratio varies greatly day by day. Sometimes 30% VR, sometimes 100% VR.

When I first started appx 10 yrs ago, I also worked for a huge teaching hospital. Within a month or two of being hired, I was straight typing usually 2400-2900 lines per 8-hr day. Bear in mind that I was hired by a diff MTSO from a very rural hospital where the only specialties I had experience with were gen surg, podiatry, & urology. As I learned more, took on more specialties, and tiered up, and then VR came into the picture, my line count on avg is slightly just more than 50% of that.

Good luck, Mike.

Wow that's amazing! - MikeInABQ

[ In Reply To ..]
2900 65-character lines a day??? I bow to you. I'm lucky if my shoulders and neck don't feel like knives are cutting thru them by the time I hit 1400 lines transcribed. But then again, this is a hospital where 80 of the work is coming from ESL docs and we basically have to type from every specialty under the sun. Oh and the name of the union is the Union of Hospital and healthcare Workers, local 1199NM. Support Staff designation. The REAL 1199 is for the nurses and other technical staff. We mere "scribes" and "typists" are lobbed in with the cooks and janitors. You know, where we belong. (sarcasm off)

Mike, this is pretty simple at bottom line. These days, - even though editing is a HIGHER skill

[ In Reply To ..]
than transcribing, it seems realistic to require earnings to be the same for editing as transcribing. If not higher, at least not lower. Right?

Now, the largest variable in all this is HOW MUCH editing is required. That can vary according to what percentage of errors the system is set to allow. When you agreed to a set rate, you goofed because the percentage could be adjusted as suited management's bottom line. Thus, the appropriate editing rate will vary as needed to keep remuneration at equity for the two lines of work.

There are also other variables, such as the various support tasks for each report and average lengths of reports. and these can potentially have a very large impact. I almost went broke on an account for which half the physicians didn't bother to enter the patient names. Again, the goal is adjusting to match earnings.

Thanks for asking Mike - wheres_my_job

[ In Reply To ..]
I'm filing a complaint, and these responses to your question have been quite useful, in coming up with the right verbiage, as to why wage theft is taking place, and baby I want my back pay!

My company's full-time quota is 1200 lines per day. - We do 95% to 99% editing.

[ In Reply To ..]
Glad my company realizes that 2:1 ratio is complete BS. The most I have edited on any of my accounts working a full 8-hour day is 1900. If I am working my straight transcription account, I usually get between 1500-1800 in 8 hours, so editing really doesn't seem to give the MT any advantage in my opinion.

Exactly it actually can slow you down at times. - Not all its cracked up to be.

[ In Reply To ..]
nm

Line Quotas with VR - MN

[ In Reply To ..]
VR is a joke for the most part. Many many times I could have transcribed the report faster than editing what the VR program picked up. So it's an insult to us to earn half of our pay to work harder. I would say for the most part it improves productivity 20% possibly a little more but definitely not 50%. A 1600-2000 line count per day should be a maximum...I don't think more than this is possible. Could it be the VR program is not "learning" because too much work is being outsourced....garbage in - garbage out..
and so we in the US suffer.

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