Does anyone do Medical Transcription?

nursekatie22, RN · Jan 1, 2007

No, but I always thought it'd be fun!

MUCHO MACHO MURSE · Jan 5, 2007

I am a RN and am also interested in working from home. I have not taken a medical transcription course, but have been interested in doing this anyway. There is a website (with forum) which Michele Miller has which is [email protected] . She did not take a MT course and has been working at home for quite a while and staying mega busy. She does not advocate taking a transcripton course.
I went to my local college to actually register for their non-credit MT course and they asked me to teach it. I said...what? I ended up teaching it somehow. I learned a lot myself....but they are certified and not me. That was wild!
I was also looking in another forum on here and someone said there was a company in New York which hires new MT's and I don't think you need a class to work for them. Also Mediquest hires new MT's. They have you take a short test online and then proceed from there.
Hope this helps. Do you know of any other work-at-home nursing positions. I contract with a company CHCS out of Florida (I live in VA) and do in-home assessments for them. They are a third party adminstrator and contract with insurance companies. I really want to stay at home and do some type of nursing - which is non-traditional of course.

HI do you how to contact mediquest? do you know what company in NY? thanks

MUCHO MACHO MURSE · Jan 5, 2007

I am also in MT school. I did the work-study program and only paid $350. I think they also do payment programs. Even if I don't actually work as an MT when I graduate from there, it has helped me sooo much with my nursing. If you want to check it out, it's MTA Computer Consultants.
~Joy

hi, I could not find on the website anything on medical transcription, would you email me the correct link please. I ams assuming this is the course for approx $350 thanks

jov · Jan 6, 2007

I have heard of people doing MT from home and I have some experience as a secretary. I found a course offered by M-TEC but it cost over $3k and I don't want to pay that much for the course if I am not going to get work and make money.
If anyone is a medical transcriptionist or took the course through M-TEC please give me some adivice. Feel free to PM me if you don't want to share in this thread.

DO NOT spend $3000 to get into the MT field! :trout:

I have been an MT for over 25 years, both for services, in-house and for the last 10 years, I have owned and operated my own transcription service. The MT field is collapsing. Every time I go on the MT boards, there are more and more new MT's that tell the same story "I paid $X for this MT course and NOW I can't find any work!" Well, no wonder the MT courses tell you that, I guess they don't sell any MT courses if they are truthful about the state of the MT field.

I went to nursing school specifically because of the declining MT field. Used to be you could get good at it and make $30 an hour. Not any more. Most of the big services have gone to voice recognition. It doesn't work any better but guess what, they can charge the clients less AND pay the MT's less. VR editors frequently make only about 4 cpl. A large percentage of the doctor's offices (which used to be a good place to get your own accounts) have gone to electronic medical records. This will continue to happen as EMR's are better at accessing data. A few EMR's still can have an MT input transcription, but most are point and click, cutting the MT out of the picture ENTIRELY.

Then bring the third factor into the picture, outsourced and offshored work. India is happy to do transcription for 4 to 6 cpl - wholesale! Their nation is well educated and has a good technological infrastructure. Right behind them are the Philippines, etc.

As a business, on a regular basis, when doctors call me to ask for a bid, I get OUTBID at 11 cents per line. If the service can't charge 11 cents per line, they sure aren't going to be able to pay transcriptionists 9. Are there are a few good paying jobs out there yet? Sure. But how are you, a brand new MT, going to land it when there are displaced MT's with 10 and 20 years experience that the service can just plug and play?

Put these three factors together and you can see that MT isn't going to be what it used to be. All that's left are the English-as-a-Second-Language doctors that VR can't do. If you would like to have any idea of what it is like trying to transcribe a sleepy, mumbling, Pakistan eating an apple while dictating a pathology report, just play your answering machine backwards at high speed with a pair of earmuffs on. It's horrible! Wages are dropping, the work is getting harder, every day.

Not only that but with a significant part of the market being replaced by technology and off shore, the competition amongst remaining MT's is positively fierce.

How are you, as a brand new MT with no contacts and no experience, going to compete against people like me?

The only way you can is by doing the work for peanuts and even then you will still be competing against India.

So if you want to invest $3000 to be trained in a career where you can't get a job, or where you do get a job but you work for 4 hours, crying and tearing your hair out because you can't understand what he is saying, only to realize you've managed to crank out 400 lines for a whopping $16, be my guest.

I can only STRONGLY ENCOURAGE you not to do it. Things in MT are getting worse, not better. Take it from someone who has been watching closely for a long, long time.

jov · Jan 6, 2007

HI do you how to contact mediquest? do you know what company in NY? thanks

The company is Medquist. They were recently in the news because --oops, seems like they overcharged a few hundreds of their clients!

Medquist WAS the transcription provider at the hospital where my transcription service is also a vendor. They lost the account to Keystrokes.

Medquist and the other big services are cut throat and will run you into the ground quicker than you can say polymorphonuclear leukocyte.

kjfhome · Jan 9, 2007

I have been a medical transcriptionist for 13 years and plan to continue to keep my foot in it as long as possible. With that said, I am also planning on starting nursing school soon and in the pre-req stage right now. 15 years ago I was going to nursing school, but then postponed it all becuase it was going to be too time-consuming and I wanted to spend lots of time with my kids. I learned about MT work at that time and went to a tech type school that was not worth what it cost me, but I pushed my way into a hospital pahtology dept and eventualy into medical records and after about 3 years of that I started working at home as an independent contractor for MT services. I earn good money and will actually earn less per hour as a fresh out of school nursing student, but that is okay. My original dream was for nursing school and now that my kids are 16 and 17 I can do it. I feel pretty blessed to have had the opportunity to do MT work out of my home. I worked on deadlines only and set my own hours so I had plenty of time to spend with my children. I honestly don't ever want to completely leave the work because it is a good job if you need to be home and pays well. I do question about the future job market though.

Now, with that being said where you take MT courses is of huge importance. The only two programs I recommend are M-Tec and Andrews. They both have good track records and students are hired fresh out of school and able to go to work independently doing all types of reports. That is of utmost importance unless you want to put your time in at a hospital, which is hard to come by without experience. These courses cost more, but the ability to find work and get paid well is the difference. MT work is production only so the better and faster you are the more you will make. It is kind of a catch-22 with this line of work because everyone wants experience so the importance of your training may be your one ticket in somewhere. $3000-$5000 may sound like a lot, but then again if you can pay this to earn a decent amount of money and fulfill your other obligations you should be able to earn that back plus lots more in the first few years. And no - I have no relation to either of these companies. Actually, the local community college in my area offers a decent program, but I would still recommend M-Tec or Andrews.

So, I hope that helps some. Being a transcriptionist can be very rewarding, but is a line of work all of its own. I am thankful for the opportunities in my life it has given me with my family and the ability to earn good money with flexible hours, but it also requires you to sit forever in isolation basically. I could not work 8 straight hours in a day. Even working 6 straight hours would really be pushing it for me. I have to break that up even, but everyone is different. There are good dictators and bad, good MT service companies and bad and as all jobs good days and bad days. The future of this work is questionable with rates going down and work being outsourced to other countries. I would not want to rely on it for many, many years as a career choioce, but it is not that expensive to get into to meet needs that someone might have then - as in raising a family or other reasons that one would like to be home based. I hope this helps out some.

Kim

avazmom · Mar 16, 2007

Hi All-

I am an RN who works for a Medical Transcription Service Organization as a Dir. of Operations. We often hire nurses to perform editing work (QA editor)or as an MT (medical trascriptionist) If you are an RN and have good grammar, PC and typing skills, you do not need to go to school to do this. You will be tested on your knowledge first. If you pass the terminology and grammar and basic PC skills test, you may be hired. If you do not pass, we will recommend schools. Most good schools should have at least 6 months worth of training. I will recommend some that we frequently hire from: Career Step, Andrews&Holbrook Training Corporation, M-TEC and Oak Horizons. These programs all offer online courses.

Being an MT is not an easy job, you do need a quiet atmosphere in order to transcribe an accurate document. (I am sure many of you have heard how some docs can dictate!! Imagine deciphering that!) Most MTs are paid by production (by the line typed.) If you have some MT background or can prove good proficiencyin this field, you can be a QA Editor. Editors review other MTs work. You'd be responsible for helping to educate new MTs into the field so you would need to have good eyes for error! (beware of this though, some companies use offshore and will ask you to read sloppy work!) Editors are paid hourly, anywhere from 12-20/hr, depending on the shift, region you live, experience, etc. The money is less than an RN job, however, working from home is a big bonus. (no work clothes, no gas/travel, etc.) Also, of note, many Companies now work with Voice Recognition Software. Therefore, instead of straight traditional transcription, you may be editing computer generated text. (you are paid half that of traditional transcription, however, you are 2-3 times more productive when editing with VR software.) Hope this helps shed some light to the nursing community on this industry.

SingingFrog · Mar 26, 2009

The course that mostly likely is offered at your local community college can be just as good (if not better) for learning transcription. I took an 18 month program at a local college and learned quite a bit (medical law/ethics, pharmacology, anatomy/physiology I and II, word processing, actual transcription in business and medical, etc...)--I doubled up courses and completed my classes in 9 months. Some companies require so many college credits before they will hire you--credits in transcription. Obviously, a degree in nursing will help you very much. A lot of RNs and transcriptionists swap jobs and do the other when they are burned out on one. It is great, same terminology and meds, specialties, etc...