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LPH, Work types, ESLs - NW

Posted: Mar 10, 2012

I'd like to ask a favor please. When people post what their LPH is, like one poster below saying 500 LPH, would you also post what work types you are working on and the percentage of ESLs. Acute care or clinic, radiology, ER. It is not that I am doubting, but just comparing it to my work. The numbers I have seen people post are unimaginable to me if they are doing acute care with 80% ESLs and all work types and exceeding 99% accuracy. A lot of normal templates in your work types will also boost your LPH, but not make it the norm for everyone. I'd have to believe 500 is very unusual for acute care, all work types, mostly ESLs. Operations, Consults, H and P's, and Discharge Summaries, and multiple accounts. Thanks in advance.

I posted over 500 the other day, but other work - later on pulled it down below 400. SM

[ In Reply To ..]
To answer your questions, I've been doing nothing but acute care with very heavy ESL since I entered this field over a decade ago. I've done editing almost from its introduction, so I'm not new at it. I use an expander extensively, having adopted one as soon as I heard of such things, and have over 60,000 words, phrases, and report sections. With my skills, my highest editing speeds have been around 700 lph (but not with this employer on these accounts) and lowest barely over 200. Same person, but something else obviously going on, right?

BTW, I've said many times on other posts, and this has been my experience all along, that editing fast has little to do with percentage of ESL and nothing to do with acute care versus clinic. SR doesn't recognize or care about difference in accents. It learns dictators well or poorly based on other factors. In fact, I LOVE what it does with my most unintelligible dictators regardless of where they come from--a good SR program adequately trained in that person GETS them.

So, to the point: Those high speeds you doubt DO require
** Great familiarity with the work, seldom stopping for anything. That includes being coming skilled to the work and such things as knowing who the doctors mentioned are.
** Working smart and efficient by making your own shortcuts to lessen the keystrokes for the corrections you run into. Storing short forms for the rest of the language used. (I haven't typed out "no rebound or guarding" in a decade, meaning when I need to drop it into a PE "nrog" does the job. I put ALL physicians and ALL health facilities mentioned in any account in my expander, including specialities.) You also don't keeping going over reports after you're gone over them--do it once very well, go back and fill in any blanks you can, then send.
** Very good facility with language; you virtually never even slow down to figure out how to spell or punctuate. Certainly you never stop to use spellcheck or a punctuation program. Being able to read very fast and comprehend very well as you do.
** Being able to stay focused on what you're reading means.
** Speed in keystroking still matters, of course. (Sadly for me, I'm only average, but I try to offset it as much as possible.)

Those factors are all about what WE bring to the work.

Other giant factors in speed come from the companies. They include

** How clean or sloppy the text being edited is. If you cannot read and understand the text with only occasional questions, it requires transcribing and is not ready for editing at editing rates. Period. If you are given this stuff to edit, you cannot produce higher line counts no matter how good you are. All of us who are transcribing for half pay are rewarding our employers for exploiting us.
** Reports that are loaded with extra data entry and other such functions. Since pay for these is folded into line counts, it's obvious that the more time spent inserting patient and dictator names, choosing worktypes, looking up dates, sending notes to QA, etc., the lower your line counts and the less you make. BTW, when you're trying to maintain 500 lph, the impact will cost you twice as much as when you're just struggling to do 250.
** Whether you are ALLOWED to become very familiar with one account, or two, and spend most of your time on that work.

Now, please, a favor in return to make all this effort worth it? The next time you see someone claim to produce more lines than you do, maybe try saying, "Hmmm, if she can do it so can I. What issues should I address first?"

I just hope 1, 2 and 3 wouldn't be "ask for a new account or raise," "give employer an ultimatum," and "look for another job." Way too many positions these days are untenable no matter how we improve our skills.

heres my take - on lph

[ In Reply To ..]
you can only turn the speed up so high and you would have to be blessed to get really good dictators that VR picks up on really well with minimal changes to the report, all the reports would have to be a certain length, and you would only be able to get up *maybe* twice during an 8hr shift to average 500 lph.

When taking into consideration that dictators change, level of difficulty varies throughout shift, you may come across a few things that need to be researched etc. All those things impact speed. These are things that are pretty much inevitable from day to day for the average MT.

Unless your working on an account for which you have tons of templates or the physicians are saying the same thing over and over again and these cases are rare - Maintaining 500 lph for an 8hr shift seems pretty far-fetched, but Im not saying there aren't folks out there doing it, just seems questionable.

Sigh... Presumably that means you're not going to be setting - that kind of goal for yourselfl. Tell me,

[ In Reply To ..]
if you're doing, what, 300 lph for say 0.0475 per line, you're making $14.75 per hour GROSS. So, you're making less than a high school grad in any city in this country who's been doing low-level clerical work for a year.

So, what IS your goal?

not sure what you mean by what my goal is? - or if your being sarcastic or what?

[ In Reply To ..]
but definitly sounds insulting. I wont argue and go back and forth you about it though, I'll let you have this one.

a person doing 500 lph is producing 4000 lines per day - which is 20,000 lines per week which

[ In Reply To ..]
which is 40,000 lines a pay-period. Thats ALOT of lines.

Yes, it is, and these days a lot are being paid 3 cpl, - or $15/hr, losing money every hour. Simple fact is

[ In Reply To ..]
anybody who can put out 20,000 lines per week at this could be making significantly more at other skilled clerical work. This is not work for people who had trouble understanding what their teachers were talking about in high school.

LPH x hours worked do not work out that way sm - Hanginginthere

[ In Reply To ..]
LPH are figured by the editing software only while you are actually in a document editing. We are not paid at all for anything we may do while we are not actively in a document editing, like looking up a medication, a dosage, a doctor's name, online etc. In my case, I routinely get a score of 650 lph editing, but the most lines I have ever edited in a shift was a little over 2000. Thankfully, I also happened to type 1000 lines during that same shift, so I actually made good money that day, though I used to make the same every day before the advent of voice wreck.

Well your blessed to get 1000 lines worth of straight - typing because

[ In Reply To ..]
Because for some, they are luckly to even get one report; however, I dont work for Nuance, but I am lucky to have even 1000 lines of straight typing for the whole pay-period let alone one day.

On a good day I may see about 240 lines worth of straight typing and those days are far and few between.

My primary acct has lots of ESLs...sm - Hanginginthere

[ In Reply To ..]
...whose dictation the VR just can't crack. For the most part I have been doing these same ESL docs for several years, since before our hospital got bought out by a big hospital corporation and its MT got outsourced to TS. I would much prefer just straight MT work. With ShortHand I average 300 to 350 lph on straight transcription. I generally only get about 25% to 35% straight transcription though. Never dreamed I'd miss the days of straight transcription back when I was pulling in $150 to $200 a day pretty easily. VR has been a tragedy for MT in almost every way, in my opinion.

yes the hospital I worked for many years was - outsourced recently too.

[ In Reply To ..]
and when I say recently I mean 3 months ago. So I can relate with you there.

HangingInThere, hopefully you're accounts will go to - eScription before too long. It made all the differ

[ In Reply To ..]
on my really bad ESL. BTW, I'm in your boat now, VR was just great for me before the line rates plummeted to below parity with transcribed line rates. Sounds like you'd be doing pretty decent with VR too if you were paid enough to do it.

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