Dear Skilled Editor and VR Trainer - ??

Skilled: I've read everything you posted and thanks for the response.

Okay, I'm not a genius but I'm not totally stupid either, and I feel like if there are MT's out there that are editing and have increased their line counts and are able to earn more money, then I can too. I am a high producer transcribing. As I said before, I am now editing at just about the same lines per hour that I typed.

Here's my system, so far, that I've developed: I reprogrammed my keyboard to allow my fingers to stay on home row keys for navigating through the document, which has helped me tremendously. I have Shorthand as my expander and I also use Autohotkeys (I do NOT have a handle on that program yet!). I have macros set up for some docs, mostly things for the exam. I do have things set up for short phrases or a few words like sd for she does, hi for he is, tps for the patient states, etc. I have recorded keystrokes that delete periods and inserts commas, I have it set up so that if I type dsr it will delete 6 words to the right of my cursor, etc. All of that has helped me get to where I can edit about 300 lph. Not good enough. At all.

The places where I find I am struggling is, for one, most of my editing seems to be in the HPI and plan. The places where there are long paragraphs of text and in a majority of sentences there will be small errors like she instead of he, or the patient's name is wrong, a left out and or the or it.  These are taking me forever and the errors I find most, that are most time consuming, don't seem to be anything I can really make a quick fix for because in one report for Dr. A it could wrong and the next report for Dr. A it could be right but then a different error of sorts. Do you know what I mean?

Second, formatting is a big issue and I know there has to be a way to fix this (probably through Autohotkeys, which I will NEVER be smart enough to figure out). I work on M-Modal. So for current medications, when I get the draft all the meds are jumbled together, some capitalized/some not, some wrong/some right and in paragraph form. I have to press control L which inserts a bullet for numbering right before the first medication of the paragraph. I then have to go to the end of that first medication, possibly delete a comma/insert period if needed whichi it usually is, hit enter and the next medication drops down with a bullet in front of it. And then on and on and on. So, if there are 10 meds, all with commas that should be periods, this takes FOREVER! And wait.....we now get to PMH, PSH. Those also have to be in list form by pressing control L......and the whole process explained above for meds. Then we get to the PE and  subheadings (VS, General, Neck, Heart). When I get the draft, the PE is all smashed together w/o any subheadings. I do have recorded keystrokes set up to insert all my subheadings, however, I can only insert them one at a time because I have to find where each new subheading should be inserted. So, I sit and listen and follow along, come to the place where he starts with the neck exam. Stop, type shortcut to insert neck heading. It is inserted, then I MIGHT have to hit delete because there could be an extra line but not always. Then I have to delete "neck" because that was supposed to be the subheading and I used my shortcut. Then I have to capitalize the first letter of that sentence. And on and on I do this through the whole PE, all the while fixing all the little random errors.

These are the issues that make me slow and that I need to figure out. Unfortunately, I will never be able to control the system and its editing accuracy percentage. But, others are successful at this and I refuse to believe that I cannot be also.  VR Trainer - You could very well have a successful side job giving tutorials to us new MT's switching to VR. It is hard to "read" the tips/instructions versus actually getting to see them in action, at least for me! 

Oh! Here's a big issue impacting my production - While I don't know the percentage, many of the docs on my account don't get to do drafts but still have to be typed because I guess the system doesn't allow them? So, I spend A LOT of my day typing still. Why does this affect my production? Oh, I can still get good lines in that way, but I am no longer paid to transcribe but to edit. So the new pay scale for editing of 4 to 5 cpl now also applies to transcribing. YEP. So I sit here, hoping for editing jobs but get ones needing transcribed, sit here doing the SAME job I've done for 11 years now only I get paid 50% less to do it.  I have to vent a second here - CAN YOU BELIEVE I AM MAKING LESS PER LINE THAN WHEN I HAD NOT ONE SHRED OF EXPERIENCE?????  Thanks to my company!  Way to look out for your workers!

If you've gotten to this point in my post, I thank you!