We got permission to hang a big bulletin board in the hallway of our department. We got the biggest we could possibly afford, 4 by 8 feet, the size of a sheet of drywall. It was installed this week. I decorated it with a border of printed out medical terms and a big banner that reads THIS IS WHY WE ARE CALLED MEDICAL LANGUAGE SPECIALISTS.
Then today one of the staff was complaining that she had a disease that hadn't been identified yet, so I thought, "Smith syndrome." (Her name isn't Smith, but it starts with an S.) And then I thought, Stahl solution. And we have a Murphy, but Murphy sign is already taken, so she got Murphy maneuver. Pretty soon we were all thinking up crazy medical terms for the board. It was fun and pretty silly. And now we all have a medical term, a disease, procedure, or instrument named after us. :)
Showing posts with label work. Show all posts
Showing posts with label work. Show all posts
Friday, December 30, 2011
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Things are changing so fast around here...
... that I'm behind on processing it all mentally, never mind blogging about it.
I worked my last day with Webmedx/Nuance on Tuesday. It was bittersweet, logging out for the last time; I have enjoyed the work, and especially enjoyed the people with whom I worked. I was pleased to work with one of the finest supervisors of my working lifetime, Dina Joseph. She's a fair minded, highly intelligent and hilarious person who is amazingly adaptable and rolls with punches that would leave most of us sniveling in a corner. I'll miss working with her. The Webmedx platform, when combined with M*Modal, was excellent for transcriptionists and I will be hard pressed to be convinced that anything else can beat it. Anyway, I leave on good terms, and have no beef with that company at all.
It's just that... *insert sound of trumpet fanfare here* I got a really GREAT JOB with Mayo Healthcare in La Crosse! I'll be one of two transcription supervisors. Yep. Back to middle management. I said I'd never do this. So here I am. It's the right time. I'm at the point in my career where I need to make a change. This particular opportunity came along at the most perfect moment that it had to have been God-sent. They created this job just when I was reeling at the thought of adjusting to a new management style with Nuance, plus my pay had dropped significantly over the past year for a combination of reasons and we really needed for me to be earning more. I applied for this job, got an interview, fussed and fidgeted for three weeks after that interview, nearly gave up, then got called in for a second interview - and then was offered the position.
I finished out my 2-week notice period on Tuesday. Mayo only starts people on Mondays, so that gives me a few days to catch my breath and get organized for a new adventure. Barry and I are planning on commuting together at least some of the time: Viterbo University is literally across the street from Mayo, and whenever we can coordinate our schedules, we plan to drive together. And maybe even have lunch together. Britta and I are already planning to meet for coffee after my first day of work. No more home office, no more working barefoot (I'm taking a lot of teasing around town because I'll actually have to wear SHOES to work from now on). Excellent insurance. AWESOME insurance. That alone was worth making the change.
I can't wait to meet the transcriptionists with whom I'll be working! Most of them work from their homes, so it may be awhile before I find out what they actually look like. I hope that, having been a transcriptionist for so many years, I can empathize with them and help them problem-solve in a way that increases their productivity and their job satisfaction, and serves everybody: Patients, physicians, the hospital's bottom line, and the transcriptionist team. It's exciting. My thoughts are just racing, my head full of ideas.
Okay, so, three days off, one and a half down already and I'm barely scratching the surface of my to-do list (which I admit was really unreasonable). But one thing that I did get done was to make a messenger bag for Lil Miss A. She needed/wanted something to carry her music to her piano lessons in. She helped me pick out a beautiful batik fabric of black on white in a piano keys print. I was going to just make a simple tote, but you know how these things go: I had a neat pattern for a messenger bag, and one thing led to another and I basically spent most of yesterday making her a messenger bag to carry all her music stuff in, for piano AND percussion. I figure since I made it non-kiddish-looking, and strong, she can probably use it all through high school.
I worked my last day with Webmedx/Nuance on Tuesday. It was bittersweet, logging out for the last time; I have enjoyed the work, and especially enjoyed the people with whom I worked. I was pleased to work with one of the finest supervisors of my working lifetime, Dina Joseph. She's a fair minded, highly intelligent and hilarious person who is amazingly adaptable and rolls with punches that would leave most of us sniveling in a corner. I'll miss working with her. The Webmedx platform, when combined with M*Modal, was excellent for transcriptionists and I will be hard pressed to be convinced that anything else can beat it. Anyway, I leave on good terms, and have no beef with that company at all.
It's just that... *insert sound of trumpet fanfare here* I got a really GREAT JOB with Mayo Healthcare in La Crosse! I'll be one of two transcription supervisors. Yep. Back to middle management. I said I'd never do this. So here I am. It's the right time. I'm at the point in my career where I need to make a change. This particular opportunity came along at the most perfect moment that it had to have been God-sent. They created this job just when I was reeling at the thought of adjusting to a new management style with Nuance, plus my pay had dropped significantly over the past year for a combination of reasons and we really needed for me to be earning more. I applied for this job, got an interview, fussed and fidgeted for three weeks after that interview, nearly gave up, then got called in for a second interview - and then was offered the position.
I finished out my 2-week notice period on Tuesday. Mayo only starts people on Mondays, so that gives me a few days to catch my breath and get organized for a new adventure. Barry and I are planning on commuting together at least some of the time: Viterbo University is literally across the street from Mayo, and whenever we can coordinate our schedules, we plan to drive together. And maybe even have lunch together. Britta and I are already planning to meet for coffee after my first day of work. No more home office, no more working barefoot (I'm taking a lot of teasing around town because I'll actually have to wear SHOES to work from now on). Excellent insurance. AWESOME insurance. That alone was worth making the change.
I can't wait to meet the transcriptionists with whom I'll be working! Most of them work from their homes, so it may be awhile before I find out what they actually look like. I hope that, having been a transcriptionist for so many years, I can empathize with them and help them problem-solve in a way that increases their productivity and their job satisfaction, and serves everybody: Patients, physicians, the hospital's bottom line, and the transcriptionist team. It's exciting. My thoughts are just racing, my head full of ideas.
Okay, so, three days off, one and a half down already and I'm barely scratching the surface of my to-do list (which I admit was really unreasonable). But one thing that I did get done was to make a messenger bag for Lil Miss A. She needed/wanted something to carry her music to her piano lessons in. She helped me pick out a beautiful batik fabric of black on white in a piano keys print. I was going to just make a simple tote, but you know how these things go: I had a neat pattern for a messenger bag, and one thing led to another and I basically spent most of yesterday making her a messenger bag to carry all her music stuff in, for piano AND percussion. I figure since I made it non-kiddish-looking, and strong, she can probably use it all through high school.
The drumsticks slip into sleeves just under the flap.
Hard to see here, but the inside has
pockets for her cell phone, a pencil,
and a little notebook to keep track
of assignments and practice time.
I've gotta get hopping here. I think the next thing to tackle will be the last of our ripe tomatoes.
Monday, January 24, 2011
The week is off to an excellent start.
Unusually for a Monday, we all got up on time and in relatively good moods; I made homemade cinnamon rolls for breakfast; I just packed up two Amazon sales from the weekend (one I'm really happy about) and I'm about to pack up two nice decal orders. It's above zero outside. I don't have to go anywhere today. I just finished up a pay period of work in which I think I set a personal production record since starting with Webmedx 5 years ago, and have a fresh start on a new pay period. (Just realized that most of what I'm thinking about this morning is food and money. So what else is new?)
Oh, and yesterday I realized that the Acme Juicerator my parents gave to me (or gave back to me, actually, as I had originally given it to THEM) will work this summer to process tomatoes. I had never even thought of it as a possibility. But I tested it last night with some of last year's tomatoes that had been in the freezer and it very quickly pulled all the seeds and skins out and left me with a nice, un-seedy, smooth sauce or juice that tasted wonderful. So I can stop trying to find a tomato strainer/squeezer. Of course if I find a good deal on one, I'd still like to have one, but I can easily make tomato sauce with just the Juicerator. My goal is to put up 300 quarts* of tomatoes this summer (not all sauce, but mostly). So that's another good thing to know to start the week. (Note: Also about food and money.)
* This is a really unrealistic goal, to be honest. Not only do I not have anywhere near 300 quart canning jars, I don't even have a place to put them if I did.
Oh, and yesterday I realized that the Acme Juicerator my parents gave to me (or gave back to me, actually, as I had originally given it to THEM) will work this summer to process tomatoes. I had never even thought of it as a possibility. But I tested it last night with some of last year's tomatoes that had been in the freezer and it very quickly pulled all the seeds and skins out and left me with a nice, un-seedy, smooth sauce or juice that tasted wonderful. So I can stop trying to find a tomato strainer/squeezer. Of course if I find a good deal on one, I'd still like to have one, but I can easily make tomato sauce with just the Juicerator. My goal is to put up 300 quarts* of tomatoes this summer (not all sauce, but mostly). So that's another good thing to know to start the week. (Note: Also about food and money.)
* This is a really unrealistic goal, to be honest. Not only do I not have anywhere near 300 quart canning jars, I don't even have a place to put them if I did.
Friday, October 08, 2010
On reduced pay for editing versus transcription
Webmedx pays less for editing "intelligent speech recognition," or ISR, than it does for transcribing the same reports from a voice file. This is not unique in the field; all the major MT companies of which I am aware do the same. But I disagree.
Editing involves listening through an audio file of physician dictation while editing the text file created by the ISR engine. It requires exactly the same knowledge that medical transcription requires, with possibly an increased level of alertness, as at least I find it very easy to "zone out" and miss important errors if I am not the one typing the words myself. The only thing that does not match up with straight transcription is the number of times one's fingers pound the keyboard to produce the same length of typed text file.
The skillset is the same. The experience that makes a good medical transcriptionist is the same experience that makes a good medical editor. The training is the same. Why isn't the pay the same?
Sometime, try saying to your hair stylist, "I have thin hair, so I have fewer hairs than most people, therefore you will not be cutting as much hair, and there will be less wear on your scissors. Please charge me less." See how far that gets you. The same skillset is required. (Possibly even more, because the hairstylist can make even you, with your thinning hair, look just as good as the last person who sat in that chair.) We don't pay for haircuts by weight - as in, 6 ounces of hair ended up on the floor, therefore we pay six dollars, or whatever. We pay for the skills and talents of the hair stylist.
I am not paid by the number of times my fingertips hit the keyboard. Or I should not be. I should be paid for the accuracy of my transcribed or edited reports, paid for the fact that my employer, and hence my employer's client hospitals, can count on any reports that pass across my desk to be accurate and precise, that any errors I find that I cannot legally rectify are brought to their attention to be fixed by someone who can rectify them, that patient care will not be compromised by a sloppy report that will make them look incompetent if it ever ended up read out loud in court.
I know this blog post isn't going to change anything, but I wanted to say it anyway.
Editing involves listening through an audio file of physician dictation while editing the text file created by the ISR engine. It requires exactly the same knowledge that medical transcription requires, with possibly an increased level of alertness, as at least I find it very easy to "zone out" and miss important errors if I am not the one typing the words myself. The only thing that does not match up with straight transcription is the number of times one's fingers pound the keyboard to produce the same length of typed text file.
The skillset is the same. The experience that makes a good medical transcriptionist is the same experience that makes a good medical editor. The training is the same. Why isn't the pay the same?
Sometime, try saying to your hair stylist, "I have thin hair, so I have fewer hairs than most people, therefore you will not be cutting as much hair, and there will be less wear on your scissors. Please charge me less." See how far that gets you. The same skillset is required. (Possibly even more, because the hairstylist can make even you, with your thinning hair, look just as good as the last person who sat in that chair.) We don't pay for haircuts by weight - as in, 6 ounces of hair ended up on the floor, therefore we pay six dollars, or whatever. We pay for the skills and talents of the hair stylist.
I am not paid by the number of times my fingertips hit the keyboard. Or I should not be. I should be paid for the accuracy of my transcribed or edited reports, paid for the fact that my employer, and hence my employer's client hospitals, can count on any reports that pass across my desk to be accurate and precise, that any errors I find that I cannot legally rectify are brought to their attention to be fixed by someone who can rectify them, that patient care will not be compromised by a sloppy report that will make them look incompetent if it ever ended up read out loud in court.
I know this blog post isn't going to change anything, but I wanted to say it anyway.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
On 98% accuracy
The owner of Digital Sermon Transcription recently realized that her promise of "98% accuracy" means that, since the average sermon is 6000 words, one can make a LOT of mistakes and still make the standard. She is changing her standard to 99.9%.It occurs to me that one way to look at this would be that 98% accuracy means that one could easily make six errors in the Ten Commandments (the list in Exodus is 313 words long) and still be 98% accurate. One could even just leave out the 6 words one liked the least. As an example, one could take the "nots" out of the last 5 commandments and still be well within the 98% accuracy standard. Ack!
Webmedx has a 98% minimum accuracy standard, but I always hate when I fall below 99%. It's very embarrassing. One can do a lot of damage even with just one error in 100 correctly transcribed words.
Sunday, February 07, 2010
The end of a pretty nice weekend
photo courtesy Ricki Lee G.
It's 10:00-something on a Sunday evening, the end of a very good weekend. Britta was home, and yesterday we girls went to Decorah to watch the Kee High speech team perform at the state competition (which is really the regional competition if you ask me, as there are 4 of them in Iowa). It was great fun, as usual, but we were very disappointed in K's improv team's score. Not their performance, as it was wonderful, but their rating was not high enough to advance them to the All-State Festival in Ames. We are still waiting to hear the scoring on the Choral Reading performance in which K also took part.
After church this morning, we got to go eat a lovely Thanksgiving-esque turkey dinner at our friends the Fruechtes' home. I brought pies.
And this evening I drove Britta back up to Viterbo in light snow. On the way back, just after I turned onto the 26 south of La Crescent, a strange thing happened. The snow came down very heavy and fast for maybe 5 miles, and there was no traffic but me. The road was completely covered, so I could not see any of the painted lane markers on the highway. Normally when you're driving in snow, there are at least other people's tracks to follow, but not this evening. Plus I was listening to Simply Folk on Wisconsin Public Radio. Suddenly it seemed like the car was just floating in this sea of fluffy white critters. The inside of the car was warm, there was Irish music playing on the radio, and there I was gliding on this white, trackless, smooth expanse of nothingness. Hard to describe, but rather special. By the time I got to Brownsville, the snow had cleared and I could see the road markings again, and the effect was over, but for that 5 miles, I felt like I'd been lifted away from my usual life. It was like being underwater, or something. Weird, and kinda neat.
I just finished a 2-week pay period which may have been the best single pay period since I started working for Webmedx. I'm tired, but triumphant.
Wednesday, December 09, 2009
We knew we were the best, but...
... now more people do. :o)
This just in from Webmedx CEO Sean Carroll:
This just in from Webmedx CEO Sean Carroll:
Webmedx has been awarded this year’s #1 ranking in KLAS for our industry. KLAS independently monitors vendor performance through the active participation of thousands of healthcare organizations and then scores the data to create this ranking.
Not only that, but this was the first time Webmedx had been included in KLAS rankings, and it scored the highest any MTSO has ever scored. Ever. Ev-er.
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Wednesday, April 01, 2009
Company Meeting
The big bosses had a phone meeting for everybody (all but the few left holding the fort) this afternoon. Now I am conditioned to panic when I hear "company meeting," after the last year or so of Barry's job, where "company meeting" meant "lots of layoffs." Not so with Webmedx. In fact, there's a new recruitment drive on to help out with the $3.7 million worth of new business coming on board in the next 3 months! They are committed to the belief that a highly skilled medical transcriptionist/editor listening to each and every report produces a vastly superior report, and thus helps with risk management, reimbursements and of course patient care. So while we use speech recognition ("ISR," or intelligent speech recognition, is Webmedx's coined term for it), still, a real live MT listens to every word and edits the final product. And they don't send work offshore.
I have been with Webmedx for nearly 2-1/2 years now and am quite happy with the company. If you are an MT looking for a place to stay for the next several years of your career, please take a look around Webmedx.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Equipment meltdown
I was on a real roll at work on Monday and Tuesday. Doing great on the line counts. Getting my hours in. Flying! Then yesterday my headset broke. One of the wires got a funky connection or something, so that I could only hear audio through it if the wire was held straight up at an angle alongside my head. I could wind the cord around the earpiece just so and as long as I didn't move a muscle, it would work. Trouble is, I cannot keep from moving a muscle, and at some point after the wire had slipped for the stimulus time and I lunged for it, my ergonomic keyboard slipped off my lap and landed upside down, and now the 2, the control and the O keys, and probably some others but those were the ones I noticed immediately, don't work.
I quickly ran through the spare headsets I had in a drawer and all of them were worse than nothing. I am currently transcribing with the teeny little laptop keyboard and listening through the laptop speakers. I'm crunched up in a tiny, tense little ball with my arms crabbed up trying to reach the keys and straining to hear the dictations. Really ergonomic! My arms hurt, my elbow pain flared up big time (I'm back in my elastic elbow brace) and I am cranky as all git-out.
Webmedx used to replace these things for me, but I am hard on keyboards, and the last time I broke one, the equipment guys strongly hinted that I am TOO hard on keyboards, so I bought my own. That's the one I just dropped. Tonight I did win 2 spares on eBay which the seller is shipping right out, but it will take awhile. I use the Microsoft Elite keyboard which is sort of wave-shaped. I also have a couple of headsets on order, just cheapos but they work well; they are just like the set that broke.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Interviewed by a High School Student
I received a neat e-mail this morning from a high school senior who was researching careers and found this blog by searching on medical transcription. She wanted to interview me for her project. Of course I agreed. She asked good questions. I decided I'd post her questions and my answers here, just for fun.
She is in bold, I am not.
Thank you for your response.
Here are some questions that I came up with:
1.) Why did you choose this career?
I had been working in the publishing field before I had any children. Counting the commute, I was away from home 13 or more hours a day. When I had my first child, I could not stand the idea of leaving her for that long. When my maternity leave was up, my employer offered me a layoff, and I took it. A friend of mine was a medical transcriptionist and she encouraged me to retrain (the unemployment rate was pretty high then, as it is now, and there were funds available for federal job retraining programs) as an MT, as it would be a much more family-friendly career path. I did so. It would be untrue to say I chose this as a career, I more like fell into it. :o)
2.) How long have you done Medical Transcription?
I started training in 1991 and started working in 1992, so, 17 years.
3.) Why did you think that this career would suit you?
I am pretty detail-oriented and self directed. I like editing written text - frankly I like pointing out people's mistakes! I had no medical background, but plenty of interest. I was good with computers; in my past jobs, I had done quite a bit of software training. I picked up new things quickly. Mostly I did not care if it suited me particularly, as I needed a job and I needed it quickly.
4.) What education did you need to follow this career?
I would have done things differently had I known better, but what I did was take a few courses at the local junior college. I already had a BA degree with a strong emphasis in English. I took some medical courses at the junior college and then did an internship. Had I to do it over again, I would have chosen more formal training even if it took longer.
5). How fast can you type?
I'm not sure. Probably about 85 wpm. I use a lot of expansions, though, that gets my actual transcription speed more up around 150 wpm. Most medical transcriptionists rely heavily on expanders to save their hands (and their brains).
6.) How long did it take you to find employment?
At first I was not really looking for employment, per se; I looked for individual medical offices that were interested in contracting out their transcription. I found my first contract within about 3 weeks. Within 3 months, I had enough work coming in to work 30 hours a week.
My first "real job" came years later when I closed up my business and we moved across the country. I was hired at the first national MT firm where I applied, mostly because I had a personal recommendation from someone already working there. Networking on the Internet has been invaluable in my MT career. All of my jobs have come from networking.
7.) What is your job atmosphere like (home or office)?
I work from home, so my atmosphere is whatever I make it. I have a bedroom in my house converted into my office. I use an ergonomic keyboard and a laptop to transcribe. One thing I love about working from home is that my pets are always around. Right now I have one dog and two cats snoring away while I work.
8.) What do your daily duties consist of? (pros and cons)
I work 8 hours a day. I am paid by the line (that's 65 characters), but I still have to put in 8 hours. So if I can concentrate on just working during my 8 hours, I can earn more than if I allow lots of interruptions. I still have 3 kids at home, so my daily routine is usually this: The last kid leaves the house between 8:15 and 8:30 a.m. I make coffee, pay some bills or clean something till 9:00, then clock in and transcribe. I try to have 6 hours of work in before the first kid arrives home at about 3:00 p.m. The other kids usually come home around 4:00 p.m. I use the time when they are in and out and wanting to talk to me to get supper started, then usually get 30-60 more minutes of work in before supper, and the rest after supper. So you can see my day is long. It's not 8:00 to 5:00. :o)
My daily work duties are reading the emails that we get all through the day about procedures and progress on our various accounts; keeping up with any changes on how we are transcribing a particular account (as the clients are constantly changing things); transcribing/editing and proofreading reports and sending them in and downloading more work. I am only paid for actually typing, so if I can do the email reading and other clerical stuff off the clock, I earn more. Some companies require a lot of paperwork that you don't get paid for, but the company I'm with now is really good about keeping that to a minimum and letting us just work.
I guess this is a good place to mention that we are not transcribing anywhere near as much as we used to. The industry is switching over to editing reports that have already been run through a speech recognition program. I would say that 90% of my work is still actually transcribing, but I am probably in the minority with that; many, many MTs now edit a lot more than they transcribe. If the program is set up properly, an MT can produce a ton more on speech recognition than transcription.
That's not really pros and cons as you asked for. Okay, so, pros: I'm at home. I love working from home. Within the bounds of my work schedule, I am flexible. I can work when I am most mentally alert. I can work in comfortable clothes, with comforting things around me, and use strategies that I know work for me to keep me productive. Cons: I'm at home. Other people live here too, and even though 3 of them have lived with a work-at-home mom their entire lives, they still forget that when Mom is working, Mom is WORKING. When I'm in my office with the door closed, they are killing each other or doing things on the Internet they are not supposed to be or NOT doing their homework or eating junk food right before dinnertime or starting fires or whatever. Oh, I can't think about it right now! Grrrrr! Sometimes I think if I dressed up in work clothes and drove somewhere to work and came home hours later they would respect me more. But they would be broke, because I could not earn as much money doing that as I earn now.
9.) Are there any advancement opportunities for you to rise into a higher position?
Probably, if I want them. :o) Within our company, the next step up would be someone who supervises a team of MTs. I held that position in the last company I worked for. I can't say I really liked it all that much. I was not good at keeping my life and theirs separate. I let myself get too personally involved. Another advancement opportunity is to become a quality assurance/mentor who helps train other MTs and helps them with things they get stuck on. I know several MTs who have wrecked their hands and wrists with years of typing and now are QA mentors and really like it.
I owned my own MT service before we moved and I supervised a team of MTs and delivery people. I enjoyed it. It was stressful, but I enjoyed it.
10.) How great are the employment opportunities for someone seeking a job?
That's a tough question, and I absolutely don't want to discourage you, nor do I want to get your hopes up too high. :o) There are opportunities all over the place for people who can do the work. There are a lot of people out there who say they are MTs and cannot do the work. If you are trained well and go through the process to become certified or registered (CMT or RMT), if you are dedicated to what you do, you will have more work than you know what to do with. Our company recently bought an MT training school because it was having such a hard time finding good MTs and decided to grow its own. :o) Other companies have taken another path and hired workers in other countries to try to meet their staffing needs.
Getting the first job is the hardest part, and it will be much easier if you pick a training program that offers some kind of internship or externship that gives you actual experience. That's how many MTs land their first job. After you have the first job, you can pick your next one.
11.) What do you think your future will hold, because of this job?
I know it will change. I told you about ASR (automated speech recognition, which my company calls ISR, or intelligent speech recognition). That will be a big factor. The job will become more automated to be sure, but in my opinion, ASR will become just another tool of the job. I cannot imagine transcribing on a typewriter, yet that's how it was done for years. I cannot imagine transcribing without an abbreviation expander, yet I did it for years. With each change, we became able to produce more (and usually better) medical records. That will continue.
When I went into this field, I was not sure what my goals were. I was looking at this little baby who needed me and that's all I could see. I couldn't see years down the road. After a few years, I figured I would transcribe until the children were all in school, and then when they needed me less I would probably go back to the publishing field and work in an office again. But what I learned was 1) the kids never stopped needing me, and 2) I really liked MT! I was making excellent money at it. It would have taken a long time at a publishing job to work back up to what I was making every day doing medical transcription.
I could not foresee that we would move to the Upper Midwest. I sure never guessed I would end up living in a beautiful tiny town on the banks of the Mississippi River, with no industry to speak of and a pretty depressed economy. Yet here we are. And my employer doesn't care where I am so long as there's a good Internet connection there. My husband is losing his job of 11 years, the job that brought us to the Midwest, this Friday. (Friday the 13th. Great day to lose a job.) We are concerned, but not panicking, because I have a great job that is as secure as any in this economy. It has turned out to be a good choice.
So I guess to answer your question, I believe I will be doing this till I retire. :o) The shape of the job will likely change in that time. It has changed a lot in 17 years. In another 17 years, maybe I will not need a keyboard. Maybe I will be editing rather than transcribing. Maybe I will be teaching MTs. Maybe I'll be teaching computers. :o) Maybe it's something I have not yet thought of. But my skills will still be needed, somewhere. I will still be learning new stuff and putting it to work. I would not like this career if it were static. I would get bored if it were the same old, same old all the time. I learn new things nearly every day and I love that.
Thank you so much!
[redacted]
You're very welcome, and I'm glad you asked. I also forwarded your list of questions to my supervisor and I believe she will be answering too, so you get another perspective. (Yep! I just got a copy of her answers! She is much more articulate than I am.)
Best of luck on your project.
Kind regards,
Maria Stahl, CMT
Thank you for your response.
Here are some questions that I came up with:
1.) Why did you choose this career?
I had been working in the publishing field before I had any children. Counting the commute, I was away from home 13 or more hours a day. When I had my first child, I could not stand the idea of leaving her for that long. When my maternity leave was up, my employer offered me a layoff, and I took it. A friend of mine was a medical transcriptionist and she encouraged me to retrain (the unemployment rate was pretty high then, as it is now, and there were funds available for federal job retraining programs) as an MT, as it would be a much more family-friendly career path. I did so. It would be untrue to say I chose this as a career, I more like fell into it. :o)
2.) How long have you done Medical Transcription?
I started training in 1991 and started working in 1992, so, 17 years.
3.) Why did you think that this career would suit you?
I am pretty detail-oriented and self directed. I like editing written text - frankly I like pointing out people's mistakes! I had no medical background, but plenty of interest. I was good with computers; in my past jobs, I had done quite a bit of software training. I picked up new things quickly. Mostly I did not care if it suited me particularly, as I needed a job and I needed it quickly.
4.) What education did you need to follow this career?
I would have done things differently had I known better, but what I did was take a few courses at the local junior college. I already had a BA degree with a strong emphasis in English. I took some medical courses at the junior college and then did an internship. Had I to do it over again, I would have chosen more formal training even if it took longer.
5). How fast can you type?
I'm not sure. Probably about 85 wpm. I use a lot of expansions, though, that gets my actual transcription speed more up around 150 wpm. Most medical transcriptionists rely heavily on expanders to save their hands (and their brains).
6.) How long did it take you to find employment?
At first I was not really looking for employment, per se; I looked for individual medical offices that were interested in contracting out their transcription. I found my first contract within about 3 weeks. Within 3 months, I had enough work coming in to work 30 hours a week.
My first "real job" came years later when I closed up my business and we moved across the country. I was hired at the first national MT firm where I applied, mostly because I had a personal recommendation from someone already working there. Networking on the Internet has been invaluable in my MT career. All of my jobs have come from networking.
7.) What is your job atmosphere like (home or office)?
I work from home, so my atmosphere is whatever I make it. I have a bedroom in my house converted into my office. I use an ergonomic keyboard and a laptop to transcribe. One thing I love about working from home is that my pets are always around. Right now I have one dog and two cats snoring away while I work.
8.) What do your daily duties consist of? (pros and cons)
I work 8 hours a day. I am paid by the line (that's 65 characters), but I still have to put in 8 hours. So if I can concentrate on just working during my 8 hours, I can earn more than if I allow lots of interruptions. I still have 3 kids at home, so my daily routine is usually this: The last kid leaves the house between 8:15 and 8:30 a.m. I make coffee, pay some bills or clean something till 9:00, then clock in and transcribe. I try to have 6 hours of work in before the first kid arrives home at about 3:00 p.m. The other kids usually come home around 4:00 p.m. I use the time when they are in and out and wanting to talk to me to get supper started, then usually get 30-60 more minutes of work in before supper, and the rest after supper. So you can see my day is long. It's not 8:00 to 5:00. :o)
My daily work duties are reading the emails that we get all through the day about procedures and progress on our various accounts; keeping up with any changes on how we are transcribing a particular account (as the clients are constantly changing things); transcribing/editing and proofreading reports and sending them in and downloading more work. I am only paid for actually typing, so if I can do the email reading and other clerical stuff off the clock, I earn more. Some companies require a lot of paperwork that you don't get paid for, but the company I'm with now is really good about keeping that to a minimum and letting us just work.
I guess this is a good place to mention that we are not transcribing anywhere near as much as we used to. The industry is switching over to editing reports that have already been run through a speech recognition program. I would say that 90% of my work is still actually transcribing, but I am probably in the minority with that; many, many MTs now edit a lot more than they transcribe. If the program is set up properly, an MT can produce a ton more on speech recognition than transcription.
That's not really pros and cons as you asked for. Okay, so, pros: I'm at home. I love working from home. Within the bounds of my work schedule, I am flexible. I can work when I am most mentally alert. I can work in comfortable clothes, with comforting things around me, and use strategies that I know work for me to keep me productive. Cons: I'm at home. Other people live here too, and even though 3 of them have lived with a work-at-home mom their entire lives, they still forget that when Mom is working, Mom is WORKING. When I'm in my office with the door closed, they are killing each other or doing things on the Internet they are not supposed to be or NOT doing their homework or eating junk food right before dinnertime or starting fires or whatever. Oh, I can't think about it right now! Grrrrr! Sometimes I think if I dressed up in work clothes and drove somewhere to work and came home hours later they would respect me more. But they would be broke, because I could not earn as much money doing that as I earn now.
9.) Are there any advancement opportunities for you to rise into a higher position?
Probably, if I want them. :o) Within our company, the next step up would be someone who supervises a team of MTs. I held that position in the last company I worked for. I can't say I really liked it all that much. I was not good at keeping my life and theirs separate. I let myself get too personally involved. Another advancement opportunity is to become a quality assurance/mentor who helps train other MTs and helps them with things they get stuck on. I know several MTs who have wrecked their hands and wrists with years of typing and now are QA mentors and really like it.
I owned my own MT service before we moved and I supervised a team of MTs and delivery people. I enjoyed it. It was stressful, but I enjoyed it.
10.) How great are the employment opportunities for someone seeking a job?
That's a tough question, and I absolutely don't want to discourage you, nor do I want to get your hopes up too high. :o) There are opportunities all over the place for people who can do the work. There are a lot of people out there who say they are MTs and cannot do the work. If you are trained well and go through the process to become certified or registered (CMT or RMT), if you are dedicated to what you do, you will have more work than you know what to do with. Our company recently bought an MT training school because it was having such a hard time finding good MTs and decided to grow its own. :o) Other companies have taken another path and hired workers in other countries to try to meet their staffing needs.
Getting the first job is the hardest part, and it will be much easier if you pick a training program that offers some kind of internship or externship that gives you actual experience. That's how many MTs land their first job. After you have the first job, you can pick your next one.
11.) What do you think your future will hold, because of this job?
I know it will change. I told you about ASR (automated speech recognition, which my company calls ISR, or intelligent speech recognition). That will be a big factor. The job will become more automated to be sure, but in my opinion, ASR will become just another tool of the job. I cannot imagine transcribing on a typewriter, yet that's how it was done for years. I cannot imagine transcribing without an abbreviation expander, yet I did it for years. With each change, we became able to produce more (and usually better) medical records. That will continue.
When I went into this field, I was not sure what my goals were. I was looking at this little baby who needed me and that's all I could see. I couldn't see years down the road. After a few years, I figured I would transcribe until the children were all in school, and then when they needed me less I would probably go back to the publishing field and work in an office again. But what I learned was 1) the kids never stopped needing me, and 2) I really liked MT! I was making excellent money at it. It would have taken a long time at a publishing job to work back up to what I was making every day doing medical transcription.
I could not foresee that we would move to the Upper Midwest. I sure never guessed I would end up living in a beautiful tiny town on the banks of the Mississippi River, with no industry to speak of and a pretty depressed economy. Yet here we are. And my employer doesn't care where I am so long as there's a good Internet connection there. My husband is losing his job of 11 years, the job that brought us to the Midwest, this Friday. (Friday the 13th. Great day to lose a job.) We are concerned, but not panicking, because I have a great job that is as secure as any in this economy. It has turned out to be a good choice.
So I guess to answer your question, I believe I will be doing this till I retire. :o) The shape of the job will likely change in that time. It has changed a lot in 17 years. In another 17 years, maybe I will not need a keyboard. Maybe I will be editing rather than transcribing. Maybe I will be teaching MTs. Maybe I'll be teaching computers. :o) Maybe it's something I have not yet thought of. But my skills will still be needed, somewhere. I will still be learning new stuff and putting it to work. I would not like this career if it were static. I would get bored if it were the same old, same old all the time. I learn new things nearly every day and I love that.
Thank you so much!
[redacted]
You're very welcome, and I'm glad you asked. I also forwarded your list of questions to my supervisor and I believe she will be answering too, so you get another perspective. (Yep! I just got a copy of her answers! She is much more articulate than I am.)
Best of luck on your project.
Kind regards,
Maria Stahl, CMT
Friday, January 23, 2009
Prayers and the confidentiality of medical records
I know I am not the only medical transcriptionist out there who prays for the patients whose reports cross her/his desk. I just transcribed a real heart-breaker, something where if it happened to people in my town I would immediately activate the prayer chain at church, post about it here and ask you to pray, e-mail my parents and ask them to pray... but of course it's a confidential medical record, so the only person I will ever talk about it with is God. I'm glad I believe in Him and His personal attention to us here on earth. I just cried out to Him to heal and comfort in this particular situation.
They'll never know, nor should they, that a nameless medical records person in Iowa prayed for them, but I did, and I know the prayer was heard.
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Listening in on a conference call
Right now I'm in a conference call with Jay Cannon, the COO of Webmedx (my employer). He just told us that about 35% of medical transcription is down outside of the USA AND that nearly the same percentage is done by ASR technology. He stresses that we need to transition to being paid for what we know, not what we do.
Thursday, December 04, 2008
Praise report.
I don't like that phrase, but I have to report this, and it's a praise. So, praise report it is.
Barry called from work with more bad news about his job. Nothing definite but just more bad stuff in the offing. My supervisor had left it to me to call her about switching to full time, and he said I'd better do it. So I called her. And that wonderful woman is going to do all she can to make sure I can get full-time work. This is a terrible time to be asking; in the MT business, December and the first half of January are usually very hard months when the work load slows way down and it's hard to keep the staff busy. And you can't lay people off because come about January 18th all h*ll breaks loose again and you need them all. So this was not a convenient thing for me to ask. But she will try to help see that I get enough work, and she gave me strategies for dealing with it if I do not.
Benefits won't start for 3 months, but maybe Barry's job will last that long. If nothing else, maybe we can pay for COBRA coverage between the end of his job and the beginning of insurance under my job.
Now I just have to get to work.
Oh, and the Council did not seem sad to see me go at all. Ha!
Barry called from work with more bad news about his job. Nothing definite but just more bad stuff in the offing. My supervisor had left it to me to call her about switching to full time, and he said I'd better do it. So I called her. And that wonderful woman is going to do all she can to make sure I can get full-time work. This is a terrible time to be asking; in the MT business, December and the first half of January are usually very hard months when the work load slows way down and it's hard to keep the staff busy. And you can't lay people off because come about January 18th all h*ll breaks loose again and you need them all. So this was not a convenient thing for me to ask. But she will try to help see that I get enough work, and she gave me strategies for dealing with it if I do not.
Benefits won't start for 3 months, but maybe Barry's job will last that long. If nothing else, maybe we can pay for COBRA coverage between the end of his job and the beginning of insurance under my job.
Now I just have to get to work.
Oh, and the Council did not seem sad to see me go at all. Ha!
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Monday, July 14, 2008
Got the house to myself
Long story, but -- Miss B has wanted to go to Noah's Ark, a big water park in the Wisconsin Dells, all summer. She was grounded for a good chunk of the summer so far, but now that she is a Reformed Person, she asked if I would take her, her friend M, and Master K and Lil Miss A to the Dells. She planned out a pretty neat arrangement, where I would provide the wheels, gasoline and chaperonage, and she and the other kids would each pay for their own admission tickets and split the cost of a motel room with wireless Internet so I could still work. The kid's a genius, what can I say?
I was all set to do this today when Barry started feeling left out and said he wanted to go too. What he meant was, "go with you, my lovely wife," but I deliberately misunderstood him to mean, "go instead of you, and allow you, my lovely wife, to stay home and work in a nice quiet house and not miss the New Albin Days planning meeting Monday evening, because I love you." Now don't get me wrong, I think water parks are cool, but not ALL DAY LONG, and not when I don't get paid vacation! I need to work. I want to work. And while I was planning on working at the motel anyway, this will work out much, much better.
So at 7:00 this morning they all hauled out for the Dells, leaving me to a) take a nice hot bath with a book; b) sip my morning coffee slowly and peacefully; c) thaw out what I want to have for supper (which is, liver) without anybody making gross throwing-up noises; d) work in my quiet house with my quiet pets; e) go to the meeting that I was going to miss, which is an important one because New Albin Days is... this week.
I was all set to do this today when Barry started feeling left out and said he wanted to go too. What he meant was, "go with you, my lovely wife," but I deliberately misunderstood him to mean, "go instead of you, and allow you, my lovely wife, to stay home and work in a nice quiet house and not miss the New Albin Days planning meeting Monday evening, because I love you." Now don't get me wrong, I think water parks are cool, but not ALL DAY LONG, and not when I don't get paid vacation! I need to work. I want to work. And while I was planning on working at the motel anyway, this will work out much, much better.
So at 7:00 this morning they all hauled out for the Dells, leaving me to a) take a nice hot bath with a book; b) sip my morning coffee slowly and peacefully; c) thaw out what I want to have for supper (which is, liver) without anybody making gross throwing-up noises; d) work in my quiet house with my quiet pets; e) go to the meeting that I was going to miss, which is an important one because New Albin Days is... this week.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Morels!
My friend Bill called today, asking if I wanted any morels this year. I did, as it turns out. I'm a terrible mushroom hunter. I have found exactly two morels in my lifetime; I have to bum them from friends!
On a less happy note, my Internet and phone were out for nearly the whole day, finally coming back at about 4:00. So I'll be working all evening.
Friday, May 02, 2008
Got my CMT again
I took the day off work and drove to Rochester, Minnesota, to take the Certified Medical Transcriptionist (CMT) test. I passed. I'm a CMT again. I had the credential for 9 years but let it lapse because I didn't think it was really helping me any.
Now my employer is encouraging a bunch of us to get our CMT or RMT credentials, with the incentive of covering all but $75 of the testing costs and a small raise if we become certified. I figured the raise will pay off the $75 in about 6 weeks of work, so it's worth it.
Just sign me,
Maria Stahl, CMT
Now my employer is encouraging a bunch of us to get our CMT or RMT credentials, with the incentive of covering all but $75 of the testing costs and a small raise if we become certified. I figured the raise will pay off the $75 in about 6 weeks of work, so it's worth it.
Just sign me,
Maria Stahl, CMT
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Medical transcriptionists, thinking of a job change?
Webmedx has a referral bonus program going right now. If you are thinking of applying to Webmedx and do not already have a buddy who referred you, please consider letting me refer you. If you come to work for Webmedx for at least the next 180 days, you and I can both get a $500 bonus.
Wednesday, April 09, 2008
Edible Cat Toys, a.k.a. Homemade Pasta
One of the (many) great things about working from a home office is being able to actually accomplish something on one's lunch break. Today I made lasagna noodles. Barry has been craving lasagna, and we have all the ingredients except the noodles, so I broke out my Atlas Marcato pasta roller and made these over my lunch hour.
Every once in awhile I think I should just get rid of that pasta maker, because I don't use it very often, but when I do take the time to make homemade noodles, I'm so glad to have it. It is great fun. Remember the Play-Do Fun Factory? This is a Fun Factory for grown-ups.
This pasta dough was of the simplest possible, just flour and eggs.
I remember my grandma making noodles on the kitchen table. If I remember right, she dried them over the back of a chair. Around here, there are too many intensely interested critters to dry noodles anywhere that easy to reach! These that I just made are hanging in a doorway. Even though I thought I was being watchful, I was still surprised at one point by a black paw darting over the edge of the work surface trying to snag a noodle while they were in process.
Now the hanging noodles are encouraging some rather ungraceful leaping about by two cats, at least one of whom can certainly use the exercise.
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