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Nuance QC restructuring - ami

Posted: Aug 12, 2012

So, I am not a QC and not a newbie. Over the past year with the new money-hungry Nuance "acquisitions" there have been other changes inside Nuance. QCs no longer report to team leads, so complaining to them does no good. This explains why reversals are so infrequent. It also explains the lack of consistency of QC between accounts or even within accounts. I strongly suspect Nuance is telling the QCs not to dock MTs for more errors because it pays the QCs more money, no...it gives Nuance more profits if they don't have to pay any incentives. The new incentive program is ridiculous. There is no way I can reach it anymore after 2 years of hitting incentive nearly every pay period. Guess who's lining their pockets now? Can it get any more infuriating, but at the same time make you feel more helpless?? You'd have to start your own huge company to compete anymore.

qcs - oldone

[ In Reply To ..]
QCs do report to team leads. QCs are told that we are not to discourage or decimate anyone's work. We are to say when a job is well done and instruct otherwise. Where did you get this that QC gets paid more money if they do not dock MTs for more errors. Nuance has told the QCs nothing about not docking MTs. Amazing. You are not a QC but you know the job better than the team leads? Where did this QC vs. MT feud originate?

qcs - ami

[ In Reply To ..]
"I strongly suspect Nuance is telling the QCs, not to dock MTs for more errors because it pays the QCs more money, no...it gives Nuance more profits if they don't have to pay any incentives. "

aah, the case of the missing comma. I've added it above. You misunderstood my sentence. I am actually refuting the argument that the QCs do dock the MTs for more money. I don't believe that to be true. Rather, I think Nuance has encouraged the QCs to be rough on MTs with very detailed corrections in the name of "increased accuracy." This, in turns, leads to less people making incentive.

I do know that the QCs are under a super-QC or QC supervisor now and the team lead has to go through that person to have a correction reversed. The old system before the acquisitions this year had a super-QC but also regular QCs that held team meetings with the team lead in charge. This I know to be true.

I have been w/Nuance for years - sm

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And I have never been told a job has been well done. I do complicated surgery and very bad ESLs with awful audio. It would really be nice to get an "atta girl" now and then.

same here - cassie

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I'm not saying that I need praise and a pat on the back all day long, but I have to say that my dictations most days are a nightmare. I will never understand how when I blank when the tape cuts out and the speaker is saying something its just cut off, how QA/QC can understand what is being said and then mark you off for it on the blank with the snide comment "clearly understood". I am so fed up with it all. I havn't checked my Fiesa in a while and don't intend to either. No matter what I do either way I am marked points off. Its a verbat account, I type it verbat and get points marked off that says well this part isn't verbat, this isn't either...well then what is??? Funny how I ask that question, my QA is pulled and i'm left looking like I make all these mistakes. I am not new at this, far from it and this is the only company I have ever worked for that has nothing but nasty comments to say back. This is the most stressful company I have ever worked for and I can't wait to get another job. I know I am not the only MT out there that is feeling this way, it is rediculous. We are expected to be perfect, including commas and periods when QA puts in punctuation that doesn't make sense. I have come to the conclusion that it is a wash and now have the whatever attitude. Half the VR doesn't match the majority of the time and how could it when a speaker gets an entire paragraph out of 5 seconds of tape. I wonder, are these doctors penalized b/c the MT has to pend their work for incorrect medication dosages or giving a brand name to a Rx and then saying "this is generic for..." and what they are saying are 2 different medications. Or how about the speaker that gives the wrong patient name, dictates the entire report and at the end LAUGHS b/c he/she has had a long day, requests the dictation to be cancled b/c they dictated on the wrong patient. Afterall I am penalized for having to send this nonsense to QA, so why aren't they penalized for their sloppy mistakes?? or requesting a cc to be made, you make the cc and you are marked off b/c it was the incorrect CC, well I don't have a chart infront of me and can only do what is told to do. Again, I have never been so stressed out working as an MT before and I am far from new. Things need to change, but I don't see that happening with Nuance and the bs with QA will continue. The changes will come when we are paid what we are worth and QA/QC/team leads and operations managers are all on the same page with what is wanted. All the nonsnese changes w/ the VR is part of the problem that the VR rarely matches. I'm just saying...had to vent off.

I should have reported it - sm

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I have an awful ESL who evidently does not have the ability to modulate the volume of his voice. He just BLARES into the phone and everything is distorted and his reports are standard and really long, 15+ min. I always have to send it back to QC for blanks and once I got a snippy response, QC didn't understand why I couldn't transcribe the speaker.

Do you do Alt+S before you start reports? - anon

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That turns off that stupid tool that randomly cuts portions of the dictation off. I cannot fathom why that is automatically turned on for each report. It does not do what it is intended to do, as I get 30 minute dictations with 20 minutes of silence and it just lets it run, yet it cuts off docs in mid sentence all the time.

Of course, that is not the main problem with QA/QC at Nuance, obviously. The picky things they mark off for have me at the end of my rope. At the moment my QA is just barely over 99% (and I mean JUST BARELY) but I am sure it will be under 99% by the end of the next quarter. Funny how I can do well on reports right up until the final few weeks of the quarter. Sure, uh huh.

i complained about - unfair QA and...

[ In Reply To ..]
HAVE BEEN GETTING NAILED ON EVERYTHING EVER SINCE. I tell you what. I know for certain that I am not leaving all these words out that I am allegedly leaving out and being marked for omission of words and major errors behind it. Funny how I only complained about their inconsistency in what they want and now I am all the sudden unable to properly edit or type a report w/out missing all these words. I will believe until somebody proves to me otherwise that they do this on purpose. I'm lucky if my QA even reaches a 99 even more and if it does, somebody has to P on my parade and drop it by "finding" all these errors. As soon as I get close to a 99 or am maintaining a 99, I am all the sudden missing things. I guess that is their way of saying don't complain about our work. Ugh!!

The quacking duck gets shot. - same here

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It didn't used to be this way when I submitted disputes, but I've got some new QA on a new account who seem to have taken umbrage at my doing so, and now I'm obviously on their shite list.

I'm about on my way to looking for an IC position again, with no baloney bonus structure that leaves me pissed off for 3 months at a time about losing out on it, whereas I'd been above 99% constantly for 2 years prior to this. There IS something going on with QA audits now, either someone is getting on their backs about not being picky enough or something else (I was thinking maybe some of my new QA are former Transcend, hmm), but it HAS changed recently.

Gawd, yes, that stupid "Play Silent Parts Rapidly" should be - default OFF. nm

[ In Reply To ..]
nm

You know their quality of audio is better too, right? - so sick of it

[ In Reply To ..]
On clear dictations, the differences may not be as noticeable, but I've had some dictations with major static/background noise that I've listened to in the Escription Customer Center, and they have about half the level of extraneous noise there. And THAT'S the audio quality that QA gets to listen to while auditing. Which seems totally bass-ackwards to me, that we editors should be getting the lower quality audio, but we're always lowest priority, of course.

Why in the world would MTs be getting inferior sound quality - be design? Where does the sound file SM

[ In Reply To ..]
come from that the editors listen to that is supposedly so much better. Why in the world would not MTs and editors have the same voice file? What benefit does the MTSO get fom giving MTs inferior files? If they want to keep MTs from getting a bonus, they dont need bad sound quality to do that. They just nit-pick every little thing in qa. Voice file plays no part in that. This is paranoia at its most ridiculous.

Next time you have a really bad, staticky dictation... - so sick of it

[ In Reply To ..]
or one dictated on a cell phone in a moving car, e.g., listen to it in the Customer Service Center too (Search Dictations function) and tell me there's not a difference. I have no idea *why* there's a difference (I don't believe it's by intentional "design"), but there definitely IS a difference. Whether that better file or a similar one is what QC/QA listens to or not may well be a matter of debate, but the fact that there ARE definitely different levels of quality of the same sound files available is not.

How could anything clean up the dictation from a cellphone? - I think nothing can help that. nm

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x

You have that backwards. There's no "cleaned up" version. - so sick of it

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Rather the quality of the downloaded version you listen to (found when you're in a report via C:/Documents and Settings/"user name"/Application Data/eScription/EditScriptMTV9/Downloads, e.g. -- substitute backslashes for forward slashes) is *degraded* compared to the quality of the online version (via Search Dictations or eScription Customer Center).

Like I said, very easy to check and compare yourself on audio with noticeable extraneous noise, regardless of what that noise is, static, wind, etc.

Correction: Actually, it must be the player. - so sick of it

[ In Reply To ..]
I just compared the 2 file versions I mentioned above on a bad dictation, and the audio files are identical when played through Windows Sound Recorder, but the quality is degraded when listened to in EditScript, so the issue is apparently the platform's audio player, not a loss of quality in the process of downloading.

Different MTSO but we use Escription. I do editing and VR. The sound - quality is the same for both. nm

[ In Reply To ..]
x

Do you mean you do editing and QC/QA? - so sick of it

[ In Reply To ..]
Because I do editing and VR too (same thing). There is a clear and distinct difference with bad dictations between the sound quality in EditScript and the quality of audio for the same dictation on the Customer Service Center, and I have been told that the latter is the same quality as what QA/QC listens to.

I am not saying it is "intentional" in order to decrease bonus (as per another poster). Rather it is apparently just the nature of the beast in terms of the way the platform works, but there is seemingly no effort to increase audio quality for us, the primary end users.

I do editing of ppl on 100% or to fill in blanks and I also do the VR work - itself. I hear no difference at all. nm

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x

Different platform but when I complained about sound - quality, I was told that problems SM

[ In Reply To ..]
such as that are usually on the facility side. And proprietor of platform can do nothing about the sound quality coming from the facility. If the doctors are dictating into an old/faulty phone system, platform cannot improve that.

QC or QA? - anon

[ In Reply To ..]
QA is the only one that matters as far as bonus is concerend.

QA and QC seem to work completely independently of one another to include having different rules and criteria. Is it to deliberately confuse the MT? Who knows but it seems pretty bizarre to have different rules that do indeed serve only to confuse the MT.

I have decided all I care about is post audit QA feedback. QC means nothing to me as it does not have any impact on my bonus.

I too had been getting my incentive bonus until this last quarter. My current QA score heading into next quarter is just below 99% and I have not had a post audit in 4 weeks. Now that leaves me wondering. No more audits ensures I will not qualify for my bonus again at the end of this quarter.

The QA and QC people come on here and get extremely vocal and upset when we say a word about them, but something clearly seems to be wrong with this "system."

qcs - ami

[ In Reply To ..]
couldn't agree more...

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