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

Nuance taking over our hospital dictation - LadyWriter

Posted: Sep 19, 2013

We learned today that our transcription department is being eliminated and Nuance will be taking over. However, Nuance has kindly agreed to offer employment to us, promising that our first choice will be our hospital account. I think they are full of it and are just telling the hospital (and us) what they think we need to hear, and that one should run, and not walk, away from their job offer. Thoughts?

This happened to a lot of us - sm

[ In Reply To ..]
I would either transfer with them and look for other options or look for another job in the hospital. What hospital is it if you can say. They will keep their promise until they start transferring your work over to India or have you keep doing the difficult doctors and send easy stuff overseas. This is just the way our profession is going. You will probably get a cut in pay drastically, but we have all gone through this or are going through this or headed that way. Good luck

in central Wisconsin - LadyWriter

[ In Reply To ..]
Would rather not specifically name the hospital, but it's one of the few left in the state that are independently owned. I thought that factoid would perhaps keep our little corner of the world safe from being gobbled up by conglomerates like Nuance, but I was wrong. And the sick part is, from what I've read on these boards, it's not the transcription per se that Nuance wants, it's their push for their Voice Recognition to be used entirely, and then MTs are not needed at all, not even for editing.

why don't they send the difficult docs overseas? - curly

[ In Reply To ..]
i mean, doesn't it make more sense to have the transcriptionists overseas transcribe the english second language and have americans transcribe for english first language? this doesn't make sense at all to me!! OR, are they just planning on sending the whole account overseas and hoping as many people quit as possible in order to pay less unemployment benefits?

Can you find another position in the hospital? - MTRockyRoad

[ In Reply To ..]
That's what I would do, even if it means a pay cut or making some adjustments. It would be far better than the alternative (unless you have something else in mind in your local community).

Not many positions available - LadyWriter

[ In Reply To ..]
There really isn't anything available at the hospital, they've cut back so much already. Only nursing positions available, and I'm too old and disheartened at the thought of going back to school to train for that. I do have a few ideas though, time to say goodbye to MT. Thanks for the input.

Find another job in that hospital - Suggestion

[ In Reply To ..]
Hospitals which eliminate entire departments want to feel that the terminated employees went to equally green pastures. Hence, MTSOs offer to take the employees.

The hospital and employees think the MTs will be "needed" to do the work and that their salaries will remain stable. The reality is that they may be needed only temporarily and their incomes slashed to minimum wage or less. If you want to see what your life will be like, read the board for that company.

This MTSO is a major player in front-end speech recognition. That is what your hospital is preparing for--the conversion to completely automated, onsite transcription, no MTs, no "editors" at all. Your job with that company is a terminal position, one that is planned to be eliminated eventually. They will come up with reasons to get rid of you, or get you to quit, very soon.

I will tell you, too, that it s very difficult to find a new job with the stigma of having been an "at home" MT and having done "nothing but MT" for years. Employers just don't know what to do with you.

My advice to you is to open your eyes and see the handwriting on the wall. The best thing you can do is find another job in that hospital...anything, including housekeeping...and go back to school. See if your hospital will fund a nursing or health information administration, or PT or something, program. If they will not, fund it yourself. There have been a lot of suggestions on this board.

hospital dictation taken over by Nuance - LadyWriter

[ In Reply To ..]
Thank you very much. I spent quite a bit of time reading the messages and your thoughts sum up what I think of this whole mess. The hospital bosses made a big production of mentioning how they "searched" for a company that would on "take on" the displaced transcriptionists and "decided" on Nuance. I thank everyone kindly for their input.

Have they offered UE? - If so, take it

[ In Reply To ..]
Possibly you may be eligible for TAA to be retrained. I am not sure how hard it is to prove you have been displaced to be eligible for this, but all of us can tell you you have been displaced because we have previously earned good incomes, been valued employees, and have now been made into the equivalent of minimum wage unskilled workers thanks to Nuance. Maybe if there are a few of you you can apply for the TAA together and convince the hospital to back you so they will look better PR-wise.

No mention of TAA :( nm - LadyWriter

[ In Reply To ..]
nm

Yes to everything you said. - SM

[ In Reply To ..]
Been there, done that.

1. They are full of it- Yes.
2. They are promising that your first choice will be your hospital account- Yes, until the speech wreck is "trained." This could take a few months to a year. Then it will all go to India. Some transition will be slow, some will be overnight. There will never be an explanation for it either. Your account will just be gone. Then you will be told you have to go to another account, then another, then another, until you are juggling 3-4 or more accounts.

Go with your gut. Boycott their informational meeting and urge your fellow coworkers/friends to do the same. Don't even consider going over to Nuance, who so KINDLY (haha) agree to offer you employment (slave status/slave wages). I wish I had been told when this happened to me, and so do all of my other coworkers (who, by the way, did not last very long and all but 1 are gone from Nuance now). The better choice is not Nuance.

thank you, few more questions, including line count - LadyWRiter

[ In Reply To ..]
Thank you for your honesty. I am urging my homies to at least be informed. We were promised we could stay at our current wages for the first 2 months, then must follow their pay scale. We were also told that they would import our templates/boiler plates and such for our local account. Seems to me I read somewhere that for line counting purposes, Nuance only allows actual typed text, therefore the line count generated by the template would be deducted, yes? And in the same line of thought, if one is using Instant Text (we were told we'd be allowed to use that), if one stored massive amounts of text in Instant Text (i.e., op template), could Nuance's system detect that and therefore exclude large amounts of text via Instant Text from the line count? Again, thank you so much for the information. I am passing it along.

Trying to help - SM

[ In Reply To ..]
As to the first part, wages, I would not know about that. I was not given that option; however, I was not an "employee" when we were taken over. I was an IC and I was making an amount per line, not hourly. That may be true, but make sure you get it in writing. Nuance is famous for not providing things in writing and then reneging or stating they never said that...

As to the templates, they do import those. However, it does take some time. The way they work, and where my account was concerned, only some of the templates were available. If you had your own special template, you wouldn't need it after speech recognition takes over. If it's a physician-requested template, that's different, of course.

Any text is counted, and I checked many times to make sure that was the case. It doesn't matter if you typed it or not, it's counted. As far as Instant Text, I didn't use it with Nuance; I used their Auto Correct. Again, get that in writing that you can use Instant Text. If it is in fact compatible, any text will be counted.

I assume you know, but I'll tell you anyway. The pay scale is 8/4. That is 8 cents per line that you can type manually and 4 cents per line once the automatic speech recognition kicks in. After a few months to a year, when the speech recognition kicks in, that will be 100% of your work. They profess that you can edit twice as fast as you can type, a total fallacy. I can straight type 300 and edit 400. The 300 is without any templates. Yes, I'm pretty fast. However, you will notice that their speech recognition has serious issues. It could be a very good program, but for some reason they have it tweaked so that it doesn't hear numbers correctly, etc. I am a fast editor, as well, and I can only edit 400 on a good day, average. If it's a perfect speech draft (and those come along once in a blue moon), I can edit 600/hour... But it is never a perfect speech draft with Nuance.

Now, all that said, you have the issues with QA. You should research that on this board. Needless to say, even the most confident, great MT will feel bad about themselves because of Nuance's QA policies.

Once again, I would try very hard to find something else. I could never in good conscience steer anyone toward Nuance. There is good information to be found on this board. For the most part, what is here is the truth.

Nuance - LadyWriter

[ In Reply To ..]
Thank you so much. And yes, we were informed that our hospital's doctors will be given 2 weeks to train on voice recognition and then after that, all we will be doing is editing. That makes sense, no worries on using a text-expander program because one isn't needed with editing voice recognition text. We do a very limited amount of it with radiology and I actually enjoy it, but to edit all the time would become mind-numbing to me. Thanks again!

Oh but a text expander is needed - the voice text is so bad

[ In Reply To ..]
Sometimes you basically have to type it over. It is exhausting. You will need to be able to type AND not all your doctors will "qualify" although the benchmark for qualification is a complete mystery.

Nuance takeover - Vic

[ In Reply To ..]
I work with Lady Writer, and I appreciate all your input to her questions. My question is: We were given 5 days to accept the "kind" offer by Nuance or it was off the table. If I don't accept it, can I get unemployment? I feel like I'm being forced into this job, and MY gut is telling me this is the wrong step for me.

Follow your gut, and everything on this board. - Find something else, anything. SM

[ In Reply To ..]
Do not take that offer if you can at all possibly find something else. Or, take it, do the best you can and get fired, then go for unemployment.

Your choice depends on your own situation, but if you can, please do not take that job for your own sanity and health.

Call your state UE office - SM

[ In Reply To ..]
When this happened to us, my coworkers that were hourly were offered UE. I personally was an IC at the time, so I was not eligible. Plus, we are in a different state. I am almost 100% sure you would be eligible for UE benefits. Your gut is correct. Five days? Wow, I think we were given like 30 days... They are getting worse with their intimidation. GO WITH YOUR GUT.

Nuance is offering our current pay for 2 months - LadyWriter

[ In Reply To ..]
Nuance offering our current pay for the first 2 months of employment during the "transition" is what's making us wonder if we would be eligible for UE if we refuse. From the research I've done, it sounds like if we refuse similar job for similar pay, that would make us ineligible for UE. However, to complicate it further, during a Q&A session, Nuance admitted that we really wouldn't be doing much transcribing, would instead be training to be editors, and if we don't meet their standards at the 2-month mark, we'll be fired but now as employees in the state of MA. Ughhh...we will be checking with our state UE office Monday and hopefully clear this up.

Oh, ugh, LadyWriter.... - (see message)

[ In Reply To ..]
...I think you might be on the right track to think that offering you the same pay for a while MIGHT make you ineligible for unemployment. Of course, don't take any of our words for it...each state has their own rules, apparently, so cover all your bases.

All I can tell you is my own experience. When a similar thing happened at my hospital (only it wasn't Nuance--it was a smaller MTSO), we went from hourly at our hospital to being paid per line with the MTSO. Since I'd never been paid that way before, I had no idea if the pay might even out to about the same or not. The rule in my state is that if you're offered a job with "equitable" pay, you're not eligible for UE. So, not having any idea how INequitable it would turn out to be, I figured I didn't have any chance of collecting UE, and I accepted the MTSO's job.

Had I known what a dramatic drop in pay it was going to end up being, I would have been far better off collecting UE based on the pay I had been making at the hospital, while I searched for a different job. I'm not sure how I'd have been able to
show that the pay was going to be much lower; but the hospital may have gotten around that problem because the MTSO didn't switch us over to VR editing until we had been there for about 8 weeks, and THAT's when the pay dropped to about minimum wage or lower.

Good luck to you and your coworkers. This is a really bad spot to be in...so many of us can attest to that. I didn't find this website soon enough to be forewarned. We had a very short time to decide whether or not to accept the jobs, too....I think we had 5 days (from Wednesday until Monday). That made it VERY tough to know what to do because I HAD TO keep my health insurance in place, and we were able to transfer over to the MTSO's health insurance with no waiting period. It was ironic that I had to accept the job to keep health insurance, and then the job ended up being responsible for almost ruining my health.

I'm not a drama queen or an alarmist or a bad employee or a "loser," and I would advise you to find something else if you can.

Oh, I should clarify.... - (see message)

[ In Reply To ..]
...that one of the reasons I couldn't accurately compare the pay was that all those years with my hospital (over 15 years), our production was always measured in minutes of dictation, not lines; therefore, I had no idea about how many lines of dictation I could transcribe in an hour. I had never, ever worked at an MT job where my lines had been measured....it was always minutes of dictation where I worked. Also complicating the comparison was that we had a base hourly pay plus an incentive bonus if we went over our standard minutes, so we earned much more than our base pay, and I imagined (possibly incorrectly?) that the UE office would only take into account our base pay, and the employer could've argued that we had the "potential" to earn equitable pay if we did enough lines. (Funny how that doesn't work if the MTSO doesn't SEND YOU enough lines to fill an 8-hour day, though!)

Not that this makes any difference for you, LadyWriter, because apparently your hourly pay is going to stay the same for 2 months. Man-oh-man....that really stinks if that's the reason they're starting you out at the same pay (to avoid UE options)!

Unemployment and Nuance - LadyWriter

[ In Reply To ..]
Thank you so much for writing. Some of the girls are going to check with UE in the morning. Yes, we were told on Sept 19 our department was being eliminated and on Sept 25 is signing papers with Nuance and their official start day is Oct 22.

My experience in MT is just the opposite. Until working for the hospital, all I knew was counting lines, did that for nearly 15 years as an SE contractor and I did earn bonuses and such. But at the hospital, they count minutes. We never got any bonuses, but I far better enjoyed the hourly pay and benefits that went with it, plus being able to work locally, it felt great. I knew a decade ago that MT as we know it is becoming a dinosaur, at least with the larger hospitals but, as ours was independently owned, I hoped it would escape outsourcing.

Thanks you for the informative output from everyone. I won't be going with Nuance, not sure what my coworkers are going to do, but at least they have better information and know the questions to ask while they get it figured out.

unemployment and Nuance - reader

[ In Reply To ..]
I worked for Nuance (previously Transcend) and went through the "transition" in January and it was a nightmare cause everything changed. I started getting migraines because of it, I had new TSM's and they were nasty. I got fired in March. So I got UE but it is very small, way less than 200 a week. (due to never having work and being labeled part time when I was with Transcend). Now with the sequester it will be 16.36 percent less than that. I cannot survive on that. But the point is that you need to NOT go with Nuance and collect unemployment if you can. That is a sketchy situation what's going on, they are very sneaky.

Nuance taking over hospital dictation - StayingAfloat

[ In Reply To ..]
If it helps any, the account I work on which includes several hospitals from a particular healthcare company just had their transcription department taken over by Nuance. They did offer the transcriptionists employment and they actually start today. Transition took place over the weekend. There help is definitely still needed just like it was before they came on board. We do not have the staff, at least in my opinion, to cover the worktypes they were doing while hospital employees. So, my thinking it is it could offer additional coverage and the other Nuance transcriptionists could find themselves out of work from time to time as I am sure the new Nuance transcripionists will be added to more work pools as well. Honestly, right now these accounts I am on have a significant amount of work and their help would be appreciated and needed. I don't think there are transcriptionists lining up around the block to work for Nuance, so they will be needed.

TAA approved petition. - curiousMT

[ In Reply To ..]
Go to this site and search petition 81246. Same situation as yours and approved for TAA. Good luck.

http://www.doleta.gov/tradeact/taa/taa_search_form.cfm

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