Wage Theft -- At Federal level says this only - Tired
Posted: Mar 13, 2015
This is all you get at the Federal level:
"No deduction may be made from an employee's wages which would reduce the employee's earnings below the required minimum wage or overtime compensation."
You have to look to see what your state says about it to see if docking pay for mistakes comes under wage theft.
As we know, they will give you MUP if you fall below minimum wage, so they have covered themselves on that, unless your state says differently.
Believe me, they have covered their bases - sm
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The thing is... your "base pay" is 7/3.5 -- period. Making any more than that is considered a "bonus" if you accomplish the goals set by the grid. If you fail a weekly audit or send to many reports to QC, your "bonus" is held and you remain at the base rate.
This is precisely how they get away with it. Fed can't do a thing about it.
Wage theft happens when the error you made was purposefully - read into a bogus training report
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...and before you tell me it is not possible, etc., there are previous posts on this board giving the supe's initials and listing the two accounts on which this is happening and why. This special arrangement allows the facility to save a little bit on their contract costs with Nuance, and Nuance saves by "catching errors." Fiesa being used as a method for wage theft is alive and very, very real, at least on the two accounts discussed in that post. Scripts read by one doctor or another, switching up right and left, or dictating what would be a lethal dose of some medication, or an outlandish lab value, a limb listed as broken in a preop diagnosis but then not fixed or discussed in the narrative of the procedure.
For instance, if your account permits two errors (anything more it has to go to QC), pay close attention for the odd things. This is not to say there won't be more, if the doctor stumbles or something...but if your facility allows only one blank and it so stands out as stupid and you know this MD would not (has not) ever said something like this, that might be a clue that the facility has a training arrangement with Nuance. Nuance cuts their rate in exchange for a few doctors reading scripts that look and sound like real patient reports. With supervisors in control of everyone's pools, it would be no problem to simply code these differently for a different pool than a standard pool.
It is especially cold hearted and sneaky; I am aware of only one sociopathic supervisor sick enough to employ these methods in order to Fiesa someone right off the payroll, you know, someone who sticks around long enough to develop expectations and perhaps begin to assert themselves or uncover certain things, or maybe just truly is falling short but won't leave on their own fast enough and needs a little nudge toward the door.
Takes a special kind of pathological creep to do things like this while coming across as polly professional. HR knows what they do, and they do nothing about it, as it sort of takes the heat off them, too, not having to fire anyone...they'd rather see these "undesirables" leave so they can send more of the work to India or give it to one of the various TL or QC people who were recently downsized.
Some of the doctors actually giggle or stumble around right before the actual bogus information, some just blaze through; others, you can almost make out a tone in their voice and visualize the shoulder shrugging and eye rolling they are doing on their end, like, are you kidding me?, but then goes on to read hematocrit values exchanged with the hemoglobin.
Nuance would likely say this is a "training tool" to ensure the client gets only top-notch MTs, and feel perfectly justified in setting you up to fail (they get to pay you less for two weeks), or you become so paranoid and slow, that again means they do not pay you much, or they actually get you on one or two of these bogus boo-boos and again they do not have to pay you as much, and can maybe even set you up to be fired soon (but this might be reserved for the people they hate, like me).
As soon as I finsh this, I'll look up the post about this and be back with the date and title of the post. From all I read, this really might be a cause for a wage theft suit. I shudder to think this is being done on real patient reports, I go to bed at night praying that it really is only a script being read and not some real patient's information becoming purposefully distorted.
But I always go to bed knowing I've passed these bogus tests for over three years now, so if it is not happening to any of you, yet, then maybe that makes me a fairly token example of "undesirable." I am talking about three years of evidence with this trickery!
Sorry this is so long. Just needed to let let you know might happen and encourage everyone to read through each post on this board at least one day per week. Just scroll down, then copy the format of dates utilized here to find other dates and pages referred to.
Not the OP, but what I got out of that post - was that he/she thinks
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that Nuance has "bogus reports" with false information set up to "catch" errors and thereby be able to easily dock our pay.
At least that's what I took from it. I'd take it with a grain of salt, though. I'm not buying it, and I'm no big Nuance fan.
I actually think using the words training report was giving the company - the benefit of the doubt.
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There are alot of other words I might use to describe this. I have seen inexplicable inconsistencies and labeled them as such when submitting them. It is as if the perfectly sane doctors whose reports you have typed over and over again have suddenly become idiots.
I, for one, choose NOT to take it personally and would like to believe these are "training reports." But, my true feeling about it?,? What.a.crock. Nuance is nuts for condoning this "method." Defies every ethical consideration they might ever have to answer for.
Conspiracy theory - MT
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I am not a fan of Nuance either but this is a conspiracy theory and to me any conspiracy theory immediately tells me there is a break from reality. Just IMHO.
I completely agree with you... no conspiracy going on... - nm
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