At home medical transcription

BSNinOK · May 14, 2007

I did this for about a year when my daughter was younger. I took several classes at a local community college to get a certificate and then was hired by an internet company, MedQuist. I know there are other programs for training, many advertised on line but I decided to go the local college route. With a medical background it was a fairly easy thing to pick up but getting fast at typing was more of a challenge. It was convenient to be able to do it out of my home but the pay is very low--you often get paid by the line and you have to be really fast and really accurate to make any money. I also did some work for a local medical office where the pay was a bit better but still low. I felt like I was working all the time trying just to make a few hundred dollars per month.

I did enjoy the flexibility of my schedule, i.e., I could work any time of day and set my own hours but it is very hard to make much money at it, especially if you are used to a nurse salary. I think when you read about nurses making a decent income this way they probably have their own business and are connected with several medical offices. It takes awhile to get yourself established that way, though.

Ms Kylee · May 14, 2007

I loved being a transcriptionist, but I worked in hospitals and a dermatopathology lab. I didn't do the work at home route because I knew I'd just fool around all day and not get any work done because I was at home. A lot of doctor's offices will let you transcribe from home. Some hospitals will too, but you need to put your time in at the hospital and become proficient before they will let you take that step. I wouldn't work for any internet companies because you're paid by the line, and it's usually very low (5-8 cents a line), and usually no benefits. Most require at least 1000 lines of production per day, which equals out to about $50 for an 8 hour day. At the hospital and at the lab, I was paid by the hour, had benefits, and I had no mininum amount of transcription that needed to be done per day. I miss those jobs...

Natkat, BSN, MSN, RN · May 14, 2007

Be very, very careful before you lay your money down for a transcription training program. There are a lot of rip-offs out there. They make it sound so heavenly - work at home!!!! set your own schedule!!!! spend more time with your family!!!! BIG, BIG, BIG MONEY!!!!!!

I was a medical transcriptionist for 15 years and I got out of it because every year my pay kept decreasing. When I started out in the field, transcription was done in the hospital. Now it is done by a few select companies (Medquist being one) and they won't hire you unless you have hospital experience - but just how do you get hospital experience if hospitals don't have transcription departments anymore? It's a catch 22.

They inflate the prospective pay you will get. As I said, I have years of experience and couldn't make enough money to support myself. I had to get out of it to survive. You can do it as long as you have another form of income (husband, parents, trust fund) to fall back on.

Still there are a few reputable companies out there. Spheris is one. Medquist is another. Keep in mind that they outsource a lot of their work to The Philippines and India, and who knows how long they will offer jobs in the U.S. If you want to enroll in a training program check out

Andrews School http://www.andrewsschool.com/ ,

Meditech http://www.meditec.com/medical-transcription.html

and Career Step http://www.careerstep.com/site/page=typingtest. Lots of companies will take you if you have gone through either of these 3 training programs.

Again, take what they tell you with a grain of salt. They will promise you easy work for big money, and it's just not how it is. You work your butt off for peanuts, but a least you get to do it from the comfort of you home.

Good luck!

hope3456, ASN, RN · May 21, 2007

A friend of mine wants to get into this....all about the 'work from home' job. I checked into the jobs with my hospital and mostly they just hire PRN but require you to have experience - there was one fulltime position and it was night shift 11p-7a 5x a week, no thanks! And the pay - $13.50 an hour. I don't know how long the training is, or how much it costs, but where I work, that is how much CNA's make.

Natkat, BSN, MSN, RN · May 21, 2007

A friend of mine wants to get into this....all about the 'work from home' job. I checked into the jobs with my hospital and mostly they just hire PRN but require you to have experience - there was one fulltime position and it was night shift 11p-7a 5x a week, no thanks! And the pay - $13.50 an hour. I don't know how long the training is, or how much it costs, but where I work, that is how much CNA's make.

If you get a certificate from a community college it takes about 2 years. If you take one of the online courses it is self-paced, but if you go at the pace they recommend it takes about 18 months. Last time I checked with anyone who actually did this it took them about 3 years. Shoot, you might as well go to nursing school. I learned transcription back in the day when my boss said "come here and let me show you how to do this."

Yeah, how about that pay? That's actually fairly decent. The big shocker is when you go work for a place like Spheris http://www.spheris.com/careers/. They pay by the line (which is about 65 characters to a line). And this doesn't account for the time you spend fixing things when a doctor dictates a report under the wrong thing and you have to cut and paste a bazillion pages into a bazillion different pages, and money is just flying out of your pocket. Or when you have someone who doesn't speak English well, and you spend over an hour trying to transcribe a report. You don't get paid for listening, only typing.

They also have rules about blanks. Some accounts won't let you leave any blanks at all. Some will let you leave one or two. They have rules about sending reports to let someone listen to them for you and fill in something you don't understand. They audit a certain amount of your work for mistakes and you have to have something like 95% accuracy or you get put on probation (not actual probation, but I can't remember what it's called, but they watch you carefully for a while). Then when you sit down and figure out how much you actually made it comes out to be around $7.50 an hour.

There are also outside aggravations that make it impossible to make money. The doctor could be dictating in a noisy area, and the sound of people laughing and screeching in the background drowns out the dictation. I once had a doctor who had a habit of tapping her pen on the phone while she talked so it came over sounding like WHACK, WHACK, WHACK, WHACK, WHACK, WHACK and drowned out her dictation. Sometimes the dictaphones are crap so whenever the doctor moves the receiver, there is crackling in the phone line that, you guessed it, drowns out the dictation. And we all know doctors well enough to know that you can't ask them to do it over if you can't hear it. Oh lord no! Transcription managers treat doctors like the Gods they think they are.

Then there is stuff on your end that makes you lose money - if the power/phone/cable goes out you can't type and they won't pay you for that. If their server goes out and you can't log in and get work, you don't get paid. Oh yeah, you could log in later when the server comes back up and put your time in, but forget about your dentist appointment, making dinner, picking up kids or whatever you had planned for later.

Bottom line, it's a crappy way to make minimum wage. I'd rather be a greeter at Wal-Mart. There is far less aggravation and I don't have to pay to learn how to do it.

roxburin · May 21, 2007

The best I've seen so far is Sten-Tel.

You can submit your resume to: [email protected],

or their number is 1.888.STEN.TEL.

On their website (http://www.sten-tel.com) there is also a useful paragraph:

"If you do not have experience in the medical transcription industry, it is strongly recommended that you complete a quality medical transcription program. Click here [ http://www.careerstep.com/clientspromos/sten-tel/ ] for more information on medical transcription training."

Hope that helps!