A community of 30,000 US Transcriptionist serving Medical Transcription Industry
honest question seeks honest answers - Snow Bunny
Posted: Aug 25, 2011
I've read so many messages from people who are working in jobs which they have said they are working long hours and barely making minimum wage.
If that's the case, then why do you continue working from home? Why not get an office job where you'll make more and actually have benefits?
Where? - Cheesey
[ In Reply To ..]First, where are these jobs?
Second, I'm working from home and will receive benefits after I put in 90 days of work.
25 million under and unemployed people in the USA - Your answer
[ In Reply To ..]You don't really know what kind of account it is until you begin working on it. Asking what the average MT makes on the account does not always get answered truthfully because a good MT on a difficult account that generates mediocre income is hard to find.
Lying and evasiveness are to be found in our industry, even in the owners who have been MTs before. Getting the team in place and the TAT met is their goal.
Profits for the MTSO is also an issue. Cost of living is going up and rather than cut back in lifestyle choices, MTSOs are taking more from their MTs and putting it in their pockets.
I know many MTs who are working 2 jobs. Being at home makes sense for many and there was a time it was compensated fairly. Outsourcing and MTSOs who think they should live like rock stars (and support their extended family at the same time in the same fashion) are making it difficult to make over 30,000 a year.
In the raving posters who come on here, describing their huge incomes and over-the-top line counts with certain companies are plants - provided by the company or the company owner themselves - to get applicants. One even answers her own comments in the posts - as if there are other MTs agreeing with her - that the company is sound and the money is good. You get hired only to find yourself making 20,000 less than your last job, faced with having to find a new employer all over again.
So, that is why.
Let's not fool ourselves, some people came to this - for "extra" money, others to
[ In Reply To ..]avoid the demands of a "real" job in exchange for just enough to keep themselves from sliding into total destitution.
That said, also a whole lot of earnest, hard-working people have built their lives around the conditions of this work. Some planned to be at home with their children and will sacrifice to make that still possible. I used this work to move to the country, a pretty common reason. And there are plenty of others. Like taking care of a demented mom so she can live out her last years in familiar surroundings with someone who loves her.
For all of us, this is a very narrow line of work. Just a handful of years in this and you no longer have the skills for a modest job in an office; even while you feel that work and its pay are "below" your level, you're just not qualified. A whole lot of us are in this position; the average age of an MT is in the 50s. You COULD take a quick class to bring yourself "UP" to that low-pay level, but that's just not a sensible goal. Bigger thinking and serious student loans, or serious additional sacrifices, required for a proper goal, big debt incurred long before hard confirmation of need to justify it. For everyone who worries about being able are many who know they are if they have to but worry about taking a giant step that might not be necessary.
In my case, I know I can get a decent job with a half hour commute, a good one with a 50-60 minute commute. How much do I sacrifice before I move on to that? Not sure, not there yet, though I'm close enough to that break point to be scanning jobs in the city. Not because I'm close to broke, by the way, but because, like many of us, I don't work for peanuts. The women in my family are planning another "girls'" trip, this time to Greece, and I plan to go.
similar question - Alice
[ In Reply To ..]I was thinking about this all day.
I'm not sure what it is that keeps some of us from leaving the MT jobs that seem to be causing us such distress.
As a lesson in sociology or psychology, I find it fascinating that, according to what I've read here, it seems that some MTs actually develop compassion for their "captors" and a sense of loyalty towards them, similar to what I've read about "Stockholm syndrome"
Granted, there are some who are ecstatically with their current MT situation, so these observations do not apply to you.
Very early this morning, I watched a TV infomercial where an individual was promoting his book and program that supposedly helps people get into another type of work-at-home business. He said it could be done with as little as $20 and that a certain amount of interest profit is guaranteed by law. He offers somewhat of a money-back guarantee. He even said that he would pay $1000 to anyone who could show him a better or easier way to make money. I thought, if this is all true, then why are so many people sticking with jobs that are exhausting and pay so little, requiring so much?
Well, "comfort zone" comes to mind. The fear of change often keeps us from making changes. Maybe this guy's program really works. However, if that's the case, then why don't more people try his way very part-time and keep their other jobs while checking it out? Well, maybe that's due to pure exhaustion or some other factor.
At any rate, I'm considering moving past my individual comfort zone, spending the $19.95 to get this guy's book, and maybe spending the extra shipping and handling required to get some of his "free gifts" and see for myself if I can make as much money with his program as I can with what I'm currently doing.
As I see it, my current methods of dealing with the pain of my MT predicament are not effective at all, which are mostly complaining and seeking out different MT employment opportunities that have all ended up being worse than the last one, so I really have nothing much to lose.
As always, I'm just thinking out loud, or "with my fingers." Thanks for "listening."
What we can do - Robin
[ In Reply To ..]I applaud your thinking. I think there is a similarity to domestic violence. We love the job and hate the abuse, and going from one job to another effectively resets the cycle of abuse. We keep hoping to find a place where that initial romance existed and then become disheartened when we find that the cycle is repeating itself, again, despite yet another MTSO telling us that THEY are different.
I feel that complaining serves a useful purpose. However, complaining is insufficient to making the changes many of us would like to see. Making some of those changes would require a certain level of commitment and organization. For example, requiring anyone who deals with PHI to be certified, registered, or licensed by the state would bring value to our work that would increase our wages. We need to make the American public aware of how vulnerable their PHI is to exploitation when being done outside of hospitals. We need to take back or work from the MTSOs and instead report directly to the hospitals, which would enable us to increase our waves and also facilitate savings for the hospitals--more than they do currently using the MTSOs as an intermediary.
I, personally, would love to interact with others who are interested in making changes as well as complaining. Knowledge is power, and few people outside of our business know how the medical information industry works. I am even thinking of making a documentary about it, perhaps for the Discovery Health channel.
Documentary - Alice
[ In Reply To ..]I think you are absolutely on point with the thought of a documentary. At the very least, a report by a major investigative journalist would help.
We would need to find someone famous, who would be dedicated to the cause and not be afraid to step out of their comfort zone and share the truth. This obviously, I think, would need to be someone who has credibility with the public. Otherwise, it seems to me that we would be spending a lot of time, effort, money, whatever, on a mission that would barely be noticed.
well, I don't know about you, but - small message
[ In Reply To ..]who can wear clothes in 110 PLUS degrees for 13 days in a row? I mean - a bra? Really? Smoke-free environment? Bathroom AND kitchen 3 blocks away?
Nuh-uh. Comfy right here. That, and still making more at home than MT-ing at some hospital for a fixed rate and a 45 minute to 1 hour commute in a pressure cooker on wheeles.
My Opinion On This - Poor MT
[ In Reply To ..]I'm a single 50-yr-old woman that has a roommate now so I'm not struggling like I was just 6 months ago. I like working from home and have no desire whatsoever to go to an office and have to deal with drama. I did the hospital and medical office scene for 25 years. I'm just over that part and would rather be poor and halfway happy than working out of my home and dealing with office crap. My dog and cat are much better company than any human I know!
Welcome to the Pink American Ghetto - Robin
[ In Reply To ..]That is an excellent question. Many younger women have decided to do medical transcription from home because it is compatible with raising children, which is their first priority. Many middle-aged women decided to do medical transcription from home because it is compatible with caring for parents and teens, which is the first priority. Many older women decided to do medical transcription from home because they are close to retirement and can't see themselves doing anything else. Many people doing transcription from home because they live in rural areas with few jobs.
And then there are people like me who are already working as professionals somewhere, with benefits, earning extra money. But I am getting out of it because MTSOs have destroyed the business. First, they took away paid holidays. Then they took away PTSO. Then they replaced hourly wages with being paid piecemeal. Before we knew it, within the past 7-8 years, we found ourselves working in the New American Sweatshop. The greatest disparity is being cheated by ASR (advanced speech recognition). The MTSOs are competing and sell ASR as less expensive. The problem is that it is usually just as hard and time-consuming to produce as straight transcription. The net effect is that it has cut our wages on the unfulfilled (false) promise that it would dramatically boost our productivity. That change has occurred only fairly recently. Many of us are moving from job to job, trying to stay ahead of the wave of ASR, rising like a tsunami behind us.
Finally, most of us love medical transcription. It takes a level of knowledge, skills, and abilities equivalent to an RN, at least. Few of us can focus on one area. We have to know surgical instruments, medications, dosages, routes of administration, intervals of administration, side effects, and have the linguistic skills to parse at least a dozen different dialects being spoken by ESL providers. We have to know anatomy and physiology extremely well, and we have to be able to understand what the surgeon or provider is doing. Unfortunately, in the past 5-10 years, people have come to believe an MT is a step down from being a nursing assistant--and that simply is not the case.
Unfortunately, there are extremely few comparable office jobs anymore. Anything that can be replaced by a computer--is. Many of us have gone back to school to learn how to manage the computers that are replacing the work we do. We will do that in offices for a while, but even much of that is being outsourced and/or done at home. The problem is that when everyone is working from home, isolated, it is very difficult to get a cohesive group of people to lead a movement to change things. The MTSOs know this--and it is precisely why they actively prevent us from communicating with each other.
So, in essence, this is a case of the Old Pink Ghetto meets the New American Sweatshop. In a book I am writing by that title, The New American Sweatshop, I point out how much much of the medical information industry is no longer controlled by the hospitals. It has become layer upon layer upon layer of "Business Associate" agreements, and at the bottom are uncertified, unlicensed, and unregulated workers who perform the actual work just by signing a "confidentiality" agreement, often doing the work on computers that the whole family and their kids' friends have access to. Under this system, there is absolutely no recourse if someone decides to, for example, copy the report of a man with HIV and send it to a hundred people in the area in which he lives or post it on the Internet. Sure, the person would lose his or her job, perhaps, but it is not like losing a license or having state prison sanctions for violating the law.
I have a small library of medical reports with which to make my case with state legislators. You should see their faces when I show them a copy of an operative report or a spouse's psychiatric hospital stay. Anyone who knows how the Internet works can get it, and there are cases in which countries (e.g., China) have redirected all Internet traffic to its own websites, meaning they received literally everything being sent over the Internet. The problem with that is that once information crosses the Internet into another country's sovereign territory, there is nothing the US can do about it. HIPAA no longer applies because they are not required to comply with US HIPAA laws. Any reasonably experienced systems analyst who controls a node can decipher everything that goes through that node, and everything sent via the Internet is transmitted through those nodes.
Do you think this would be permitted if the American public were aware of just how many people (and in what countries) have direct access to their private health information, addresses, social security numbers, etc. I doubt it.
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