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

It's so demoralizing to get another pay cut! - Daisy

Posted: Jul 16, 2011

I love transcribing medical reports, but everytime I get "SR" my enthusiasm takes a hit and I wonder why MQ thinks that SR reports are "easier" or faster when in reality one really has to stay alert and be well educated in medical terminology and human anatomy in order not to miss something that was "recognized" incorrectly and sometimes downright ridiculously! If only the docs knew how often we save their dictations from going on record incorrectly and in some cases from being nonsense. How often have you gotten a report that "recognized" something as being "negative" when it should have actually been "positive" or the other way around? It's a shame that medical transcriptionists will one day be no more. What will our medical records look like then? How many patients will get the wrong medication or have a diagnosis on their chart that is incorrect? Sad, sad, sad...bad, bad, bad...

It doesn't matter - to us, or the docs

[ In Reply To ..]
because the people who get to make decisions to keep ASR get rich, rich, rich.

Daisy - Nick

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How often have alert MTs saved some doc from a malpractice suit? More often than you would like to think, I betcha. I am ex-MQ, happy to put the emphasis on the EX.

daisy - peewee

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DITTO!! I am also an EX MQ MT. If MQ didn't have MTs, the cheeses would be out of a career being paid off the sweat of the MT. You can smell the cash flow at the top. For those that don't know, our wages were cut 40% on Dec 1, 2008 and now another wage cut?!! which is tantamount to a 50% wage cut since Dec 1, 2008. People just don't believe me when I tell them this stuff. The only way I think MQ is getting away with this (and probably all the other MT companies), is that they need to stay competitive with the overseas transcription where the work is leaving this country where the cost of living overseas is significantly lower than that in the USA.

about the docs - FLMT

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I am really fortunate to now get to see this industry from both sides of the microphone, as I have graduated with my MD and am working both as a doctor and a transcriptionist (yes, still transcribing until I get a residency).

I did one year of internship at a hospital where MQ was the providing transcription company, and I can tell you the quality of reports that I saw was really poor. I don't know if this particular hospital was using ILP's or not. I also know that the docs who were using speech recognition software really hated it, because they had to edit so much of it. It was really slowing them down. They ALL wanted real live transcriptionists typing their reports because the QUALITY was vastly superior with transcriptionists than speech recognition.

I also thought it really ironic that in the ER they were using "scribes", real-live people who followed the doctors around to write their reports, get the lab values, etc. etc. This has come full circle to where the hospitals are hiring people to do reports in the hospital and having to pay benefits, etc.

I can only believe ASR is being forced down the throats of everybody involved by the computer "experts" who think that computers are faster than the human brain.

I can also promise that, when I finally get into private practice, I will NEVER use speech recognition, and I will hire, if need be, the last transcriptionist in the United States to do my transcription (if I don't have to do it myself to make extra $$$!)

To the Doctor - MT

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I think you need to be realistic. Technology is changing and that is why transcription is changing. Speech Recognition is the new thing and it will in time possibly eliminate the need for transcriptionists period. I went to my own physician and he knows what field I am in. He told me that last year he had spent $45,000 on transcription for his office. This year so far $500 due to the software that he is using in his office and it is not voice recognition. It automatically takes information from the patient's history that the nurse or he himself enters and then merges it into an H&P, consult, progress note or whatever else he needs. He does not have to dictate a word.

So I think people need to realize technology is never going to slow down.

No need for transcriptionist - bentfingers

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I watch my husbands doctor use this type of program. It does a sort of cut and paste of previous progress reports. The computer monitor and keyboard is sitting in each examination room. Assistant directs us to a room, calls up husband's records and leaves it with a previous progress report and when doc comes in he just adds a few sentences at the bottom, maybe edits a new test result, from another window to the left of progress note template, and then cc's to primary and alas, there goes the progress note into the record. No paper. No transcription company or IC to pay. This guy is a perfectionist and just types while talking to us. In, out, our salaries to him. No fighting progress.

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