A community of 30,000 US Transcriptionist serving Medical Transcription Industry
Don't give hospitals more of a reason to send to India - disappointed
Posted: Jul 10, 2011
I've been an MME for about a year. I have seen some doozies come to me, usually from our beloved ILPs. Recently that's starting to change.
First of all, there are a lot of really good MTs, but I'm talking about the bad apples. Unfortunately, over the past few months, this tree has been producing many more bad apples.
I've been getting a lot of US MTs that are awful. Granted they may be new, but they are taken off of 100% too quickly. The ones I do see only come to me to fill in a blank. I then incidentally catch an error next to the blank or I see the CP is not being followed. When this happens, I'm supposed to do 100% review at my fill-in-the-blank line rate. I don't like to, but I also don't want to take the chance and risk patient care because of an error. I end up seeing multiple formatting errors, BOS2 errors, and DQS Standard errors, like they have never even read any of these, and these are major errors, not inconsequential ones. There are also a lot of you-should-know-better errors. Once in awhile, I get one where it seems that the MT just pressed ignore for everything during spellcheck. I'm not picky either. Commas and dashes don't bother me unless they throw the sentence way off. It wouldn't be so bad if my feedback is read and they learn from their mistakes. Unfortunately, I can get the same MT a week or 2 later making the exact same mistakes that I left feedback for. When I leave feedback, I cite where the rule is so there is no question about the correction.
I think MQ is hiring those with less experience (the requirment has been dropped a few years since I was hired) and they are cutting them loose way to quickly. I also think that they are not training them on how to use their resources properly. I believe this is all to show the hospitals that they can either get expensive substandard work or cheap substandard work. MQ is setting up the American MT to fail (duh).
If you're not reading the CPs or your QA feed back, and if you have never read the DQS Standards, please start doing so, maybe it will help all of us keep our jobs just a little longer.
I think you're wrong - sm
[ In Reply To ..]American MTs have to maintain an income for the cost of living in this country. They do not get raises to go along with the increased cost of living. In addition, there are dozens of accounts thrown at them, pay cuts, difficult dictators while the easier ones stay on voice rec or go overseas. This puts MTs in a pickle. Do they risk quality to put food on the table. Hell yes. Do not blame the little guy for this, it is the greedy CEOs who can never seem to get enough money.
I agree. The less money we make, the more we - have to go full-speed & just hope its right. nm
[ In Reply To ..].
I don't agree with you........ - Kiki
[ In Reply To ..]I agree 100% with the other poster. Me thinks you are wanting the MTs to look at the CP etc so you don't have to do a 100% QA. I don't blame you, but I also don't blame the struggling MT trying to balance making a decent living and competing with the Indians who will do the work for next to nothing and are not subject to the less-than-5% to QA or pay docked rule.
Not only that, but if we slow down that much, we wont - make our quotas, & risk losing our health ins. or
[ In Reply To ..]It's a real catch-22. As the pay drops, we have to do more to try to keep our pay close to what it was before the cuts. So to do that, we've got to go faster. To go faster, we have to cut corners, since most of us are already working pretty close to capacity, as it is, and just typing faster usually isn't physically possible. We can work more hours, but then again, most of us are maxxed-out on available hours to work. Unless we give up sleep altogether. Most of us are also working unpaid, invisible overtime, too.
The only way this whole MT compensation fiasco could have worked out at all is if concurrently the cost of living in the United States had dropped right along with it. But of course, we all know the answer to that.
HUH.... - double standard
[ In Reply To ..]You said, "MQ is setting up the American MT to fail (duh)."
But then you said to start reading the client profile, feedback, and DQS standards.
What the flip difference does it make if we do all that, we are set up to fail.
We cannot possibly do 15+ accounts and do it efficiently, and the DQS standards contradict the client profiles, and its all a bunch of crap. This doctor wants this, this doctor wants that, didn't you get the 1500 e-mails as an update to the client profile?
It is a complete double standard!
I also wanted to say that most of the time, the MME changes cc to mL on an account that uses JCAHO and then changes mL to cc on an account that uses BOS2, so even the MMEs cant keep it all straight... and I never get QA feedback from anyone, ever.
Hope you don't mean me! - Brain cloud
[ In Reply To ..]The other day I sent something to QA and when I got it back, here they had noticed I used "incision" instead of "insertion". In the name of the procedure, for Pete's sake! I was so ashamed. I don't know how it happened, but believe me, I've been paying closer attention since then.
So if I'm one of the ones you're talking about, all I can chalk it up to is a brain cloud.
Disagree with me all you want - disappointed
[ In Reply To ..]Hey, I'm on your side. My pay also has been dwindling. When I became MME, I got a 5% raise. I still don't make what I used to when I was an MT a year ago. All those reports that are 75% blanks and make you want to cry, I get them and have to decipher that same oral diarrhea at 3 cpl. I do this because I want MTs to be the best they can be, to help them learn, as I'm still learning myself. I'm just frustrated when they don't care.
Anyway, my point was that even though we are set up to fail, we should still try to be better than the ILP to convince the hospitals that we are better and hopefully win those small victories, even if it is all for naught.
Like I said in the subject, disagree with me all you want, the fact is that those mistakes are going to get those MTs fired.
I'm not talking about brain clouds as another poster said. An MT is lying if they have never had that happen. Those are pretty obvious to see. I'm referring to repeat offenders, those that make conscious mistakes from laziness or lack of research, not typos. An example just to get my point across: All the CPs I have want abbreviations spelled out in the diagnosis/assessment/impression, and that is pretty much a common MT rule anyway, and its rare that I've seen a CP that states otherwise. When, I see the whole Impression list filled with abbreviations, I correct it and leave feedback. Once, twice, even three times is okay in a short period, but when I see them still doing it and they have been taken off 100% after a few weeks, there's something wrong. This is not uncommon. These are errors where it doesn't take much effort to adjust to. Like I said, I don't believe our new MTs are being trained and given the resources that are already out there, it's not their fault. I think schools are getting sloppier as well as MQ...or they just don't care about the US MT anymore.
There are plenty, more than there should be, of bad apple MMEs out there. Uber-picky, powertrips, holier-than-thou. Instead of being constructive and leaving feedback about major errors, they're too busy putting in or taking out commas and hyphens, adding THE or A/AN in places where the sentence is fine without. They ruin it for everybody. MTs get angry with MMEs in general and quit reading feedback.
A mistake is an opportunity to better yourself. We are all in this same sinking ship together, I just want to keep afloat as long as I can.
Here is another problem with ASR and it's ability to trick the eye - to seeing another word
[ In Reply To ..]I am a very conscientious MT and...sorry to brag..but I have a GREAT account that I do 99% of the time..this is the one BIG reason I have not left MedQuist..I love my account and feel fortunate to do it...but..I have noticed on ASR reports..when a word is populated by ASR..or a drug..it can "trick" the eye that you seeing the correct word. I.e. hypoxemia/hypoxia, Tobrex/Tobradex.. few things that came back to me on a QA review.. I still passed 99%, but I know my mind saw the word one way as populated by ASR..that worries me, for the synonyms, homomyms, etc.
Why should anyone further break their backs - sm
[ In Reply To ..]You've got two different competing, relatively mutually exclusive interests tugging at the MT, and satisfying both of them is humanly impossible, even with the help of the wondrous ASR.
Both the hospital and the MTSO essentially want the same thing, instant work with no mistakes, although I suspect if actually questioned, they would differ on the verbatim. I believe hospitals actually want accurate, almost intuitive work that is cleaned up with all the direct and indirect articles, verbs, and punctuation put in. The MTSO doesn't so much care about the making sense part. It's locked into verbatim- unless they convince the hospitals to take that, they can't use their magical ASR system because it doesn't know that it's THE patient or A retractor.
Yet they both want to pay peanuts. The MTSOs have done their best to dumb the job down to where a machine can do it, and now they want to pay the equivalent of a quart of oil to their machines. The hospitals cluelessly go along, having no concept or care about the MT life, as long as the money saved can go into getting K-Cups in the break room.
You can only push people so far, and to expect them to chew off a leg to escape from a trap borders on cruel, especially since the other three paws are also stuck in more of the same traps.
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