I see the ads for the training all the time, however, I just stumbled upon a company actually looking for one. A bit of web research shows tons of info and it certainly looks like there are a lot of people doing it.
Do you?
What is the work like?
How hard was it to get started?
Is the pay decent?
Can you really work from home?
Overall, what is your opinion on it?
I used to do this, but don’t anymore.
The work is monotinous and boring. Physicians tend to speak really quickly on a tape and you wind up having to go back about 100 times. Additionally, you’ll have to have a medical dictionary handy because until you’ve done it for a while, you’ll have to look words up every 2 minutes.
I believe the minimum typing speed required is between 85 and 100 WPM with excellent accuracy. If you’re there already, or close you should be OK. However, if 50 WPM (which is actually pretty fast) is your current max, skip it. You’ll just make yourself nuts.
The pay has to be decent, because it’s such a specialized job. Typically you’ll either be paid by the hour, by the page or by the patient file (depending on what sort of job it is). When you’re first starting out, hourly is good because you’ll be really really slow, regardless of typing speed - looking crap up will really slow you down. Don’t take less than $19/hour. Once you have experience, moving to being paid by the page is good. $4 - $4.50 is decent - generally you should be able to type about 5-6 pages an hour once you know the jargon and the spelling of stuff.
Yes, you can work from home. You may need to get your own equipment (a transcription machine) - it won’t necessarily be provided by the office you’re working from. Of course, there is a downside - you need to be able to concentrate fully on what you’re doing - MT is not the sort of thing you can multi-task at, so if you were planning on doing child care, or visiting friends, forget it. You’ll never get anything done and won’t make any $$.
As far as jobs go, it doesn’t suck. You are pretty well your own boss. I never panic too much when I think about quiting my job and relocating somewhere because it is a hard skill that pays well and can be hard to come by. Lots of people can graduate from “medical transcriptioninst” college (or whatever), but not a lot of people have a lot of experience - it’s actually fairly tricky to get good at it.
My aunt did this at a hospital. She typed something like 120 wpm and drank coffee non-stop. She was very good at it, but she did it for 30 years or something.
If you like to type, this is the job for you. I see ads for it all the time, so I always think the turnover is huge. Maybe instead of investing in a machine, start out in a hospital and see if its your cup o’ tea.
How do you find jobs at this? Do you apply to doctor’s offices, or to “transcriptionist services” or …?
It sounds like it would suit me fine, but the course is SO expensive here. I think it’s around $6000.
My mom does medical transcription for an ophthamologist’s office, and she’s done it for the last 15-16 years. I don’t know how fast she types, but she charges 15 cents a line, and usually makes about $4,500 a month just from typing. By now she can spell all the medical terms and has all kinds of shortcuts for phrases the doctors use all the time, and she has her own equipment. She stays at home in the morning (she gets up at five), so she can get my younger brother up and take him to school, and then goes into the office around noon or one and works there until 5 or 6.
Try searching in your local paper under “medical transcription”. I think the biggest thing about the course is they get you up to speed on the medical jargon. They’ll certify you and give you job leads. It’s expensive, for sure. I looked into it, but it’s just too much of an expenditure for us.
I answered an ad on Craigslist. I do have a degree in biology, but my transcription experience was limited to occasionally pulling quotes off a tape recorder when I was a sportswriter. I went to the company’s offices, took a test and they accepted me.
I literally can make money without getting out of bed. I download the file off the website, transcribe the interview, and upload the transcription. Kinda cool.
Nonetheless, it’s not something that I would want to do for my sole means of support. It’s certainly a nice way to bring in some extra cash. And, with the exception of a short-lived stint as a lab tech, it has enabled me to actually make use of my degree, which is satisfying in its own way.
I do it. It’s teeeeedious. And it can be hard if you get stuck with a lot of doctors with thick accents. I transcribe for a large, national company, and I have a primary hospital that I transcribe for, which happens to be in Miami and has many, many, many doctors with thick Hispanic accents. I get paid a premium for doing it, but it’s so not worth it, and try as I might, I can’t get moved to another account, since I’m actually really good at it, and they can’t find anyone to do it voluntarily.
Basically, the work is you listen to the voice, and you type what they say, editing for grammar and such. You have to have a pretty decent knowledge of medical terminology and pharmacology, because not only do you have to recognize and spell these words, but you have to be able to know, from the context, if what you’re typing makes any sense.
Most companies pay by the line, sometimes with production incentives. The pay is decent, if you’re good enough and fast enough. In a really good pay period (two weeks), I can bring in 1300-1800 dollars after tax, but it’s usually around 1000-1200, because I’m totally burnt out on my account and I keep spacing out for long periods. But, I’m not a good example, I’m much faster than average. The minimum we have to do in order to avoid getting in trouble, which is what most people do, is 1150 lines per day, which comes out to around 790 after tax per pay period.
There are lots of training programs out there that promise they’ll help you find a job, blah, blah, blah, but usually they lie, and it’s really hard to find a good one without experience. Until I had five years in at my in-hospital job, I couldn’t get a reputable company to give me the time of day. Which is probably better, it’s really not a good idea to try and do it on your own at home right away, not until you get some experience in.
If you decide to give it a try, I highly recommend working at a hospital or clinic for a while to get some experience at it. Or at least find a job that pays by the hour. I’ve known so many people who went into an at-home, production-pay job right out of training and ended up working 12 to 16 hours a day in order to get their lines in and make enough money to live on. Heck, I know EXPERIENCED transcriptionists who used to have to work that long to get their lines in on the account I’m on, until my company cracked down on that and started making us use a timeclock.
At any rate, if you happen to be one of those people looking into it so you can have a job where you can take care of your kids while you work to avoid daycare, don’t do it. Seriously, don’t. It will not work. Most transcriptionists I know still send their kids to daycare.
By the way, if anyone is in southeast Minnesota and you’re interested in doing transcription, go apply for the Mayo Clinic sponsored secretary/transcriptionist program. They pay your tuition and buy your books, you attend classes at the local community college for 12 weeks (they cover a LOT of information, so it’s fairly intense), and they pay you like 10 to 13 dollars (can’t remember what it is now, it was 10 when I did it) per hour, 8 hours a day, the whole time you’re going to school. Then, if you pass the final exam, you’re guaranteed a job at Mayo, and you have to commit to working there for a year.
Yeah, I went to a daycare at a Jewish temple (though my family isn’t Jewish, we still have the Star of David I made out of tongue depressors and glue sticks–it tops our Christmas tree every year) when my mom started out as a transcriptionist.
I am a poker dealer now. My major was cultural anthropology. I am looking to move to the country and want a job that is a tad more portable. While child care could be an issue, to me, being able to work from home even if I have to have a babysitter would be preferred to having her in daycare and being unable to check on her. Both of our houses have rooms that I could convert to an office that is pretty far away from the hustle of the house. The job market in the area I want to move to is not very good, it is rural, a local plant just shut down. And the pay there is abysmal.
I’ve found the completely online courses to cost around $1500 and a local school that does it for $1700. The job I have now can be pretty fun, but since my daughter was born, it’s just a job. It pays me money. I don’t know that I care what I do anymore.
I got into real estate without having any concept of what realtors do all day. I don’t want to end up in that position again.
I do not have a deep burning desire to do medical transcription. What I would like is a portable job that I could take with me wherever I go. It would need to pay me. Being at home is a plus, but a night shift would work too.
I live in a small town and I’m still not sure how one would get started as a medical transcriptionist, once the course was completed. Can you get jobs all over the place, just by applying? Anyone know of any reputable companies who hire online?
Thanks for starting this thread.
It seems to me, after reading the anecdotes in this thread, that it would be entirely possible to forgo any sort of training were one willing to put in some long hours – learning on the job, in effect. That is, it would be possible, if employers did not typically require, as Mishell claims, a bunch of experience and the ability to get things done within a certain amount of time.
However, Snoooopy reports he or she cadged a job by walking in to an office, taking a test, and stepping right into the thing, and doesn’t offer any complaints about the tedium of the job.
I have the same questions as Stainz but also: what is the likelihood of some firm hiring a part-timer, who would transcribe two or three days per week? Exactly what sort of equipment is needed? If these are digital audio files, one could easily rig up a MIDI foot pedal to control the playback from one’s computer, with only minimal expense. That sort of equipment, I presume?
But I definitely meant to imply some complaints! Part of the reason that I wouldn’t want to rely on it as my sole means of support is that I wouldn’t want to do it for that many hours every day. At my peak of transcribing, I combined it with a tutoring job, and that was a pretty good mix.
What everyone else said, pretty much. And here’s more details, I’ll get into the nuts and bolts. This is lengthy, sorry.
Medical transcription is one of those “pink collar ghetto” kinds of jobs that can be done from home and often at odd hours, so it works out very well for stay at home moms. I bet 95% of the transcriptionists at my company answer to that description, maybe more.
People get into it for all kinds of reasons. The people that seem to do best at it are those with some medical or science background/training; it’s a good fallback for nurses who get burned out, for instance.
As a music major I was neither medically or scientifically inclined (English minor), so it took me a bit longer to get up to speed after my initial training class.
The company I work for used to train people, now they don’t. I got lucky. There’s all sorts of courses out there. Some of them are scams, maybe most of them. Organized programs like through junior colleges and accredited schools are probably the safest way to go. If you can find a company that will train you in house like I did, this is the most economical way to go. (The Mayo plan sounds GREAT.) I did have to sign a contract stating I would work for the company for at least one year after my training or I’d have to give them $5,000 on my departure; however unless you’re some sort of genius nobody else is going to hire you with no experience anyway, so what the heck.
I’m still learning stuff every day, even after several years, there’s a lot going on, changes on every front, different lab tests, new drugs and procedures. It’s not impossible to do this if you have no grounding, but it will take you longer to get up in it and you need to understand that going in or you’ll be frustrated and miserable.
There is some upfront cost. Some companies will give you a computer and the software needed, etc., but I’ve only seen that offered as an incentive/bonus to really experienced transcripionists with specialized skills. The big companies that make these offers generally don’t want to hear from anyone who does not have five years of major experience like working in a hospital setting or a large clinical practice.
Most people think of medical transcription in the old fashioned sense of doctors speaking into tape recorders, collecting the tapes, etc. I’m sure that still goes on somewhere but most companies these days use digital equipment and so it’s all computer driven.
You do occasionally find companies that still use the boxes that hook into your phone line. Chances are if they do they will rent you the box. My company used to have them and charged 10 bux a month. If this is what is used you’ll either tie up your phone line or need to get a second line.
On the hardware side, you will also need:
On the software side:
My company also uses VOIP; you’re tied to their network when you type and you download the dictation files and then upload the finished product back to them on their pipe. I suspect that is probably how it is with most transcription companies.
You’ll most likely need a high speed connection (DSL/cable); it can be done on dialup but it’s slow as Christmas and it’s yet something else that will keep you from making money. To make the most money you will need to look at everything that takes up more of your time that needs to be spent typing and eliminate all roadblocks.
Depending on the company you work for, they might offer you some or all of these tools for free or reduced rate; my company made us pay for all this on our own. (The actual dictation program they use is free, as is their in-house tech support.)
The other big expense is reference books. You can use the internet for a lot of the reference – looking up spellings, words, phrases, confirming stuff – but sometimes the information is not there and sometimes the Internet is just plain wrong. Medical reference books are expensive, running between $35.00 and $60.00 per volume. I have a bookcase full of books I have accumulated over time. Some of them are useful; some more specialized ones may help further down the line. I bought many of them from other transcriptionists, on ebay, etc. I figure I probably have at least $2,000 in my books alone (if I had to replace them all at full retail). Some companies will help you by selling you the books and payroll deducting over time.
Working from home and being on your own takes discipline. You have to apply your butt to the chair and stay fixed on the screen and the job you’re doing. You can’t go Google something for reference and then look at another fascinating link that popped up. (Well, you can, but you won’t make any money that way.) You’re paid for what you produce and that means you type and type and type and type some more. And then you type on top of that.
You need grammar and spelling skills; automatic spellcheck is not near enough. If you have problems here you’re not going to do well.
It’s not as easy as it sounds. Doctors are busy people; they often dictate when they’re tired or juggling other duties. They slur their words. They run things together. They forget to breathe. They cough, sneeze, shuffle papers. They talk to other people while they’re dictating. Sometimes music plays in the background, sometimes alarms, or the hospital paging system. The phone connection may be lousy too. (One infamous doctor on the client list at my company dictates on a cell phone driving home from the hospital. In his convertible. The sound quality is horrendous. But that’s what he does and whoever types his jobs has to deal with that. ) Whatever the condition you have to deal with it.
They use jargon and medicalese and it takes time to learn what that means. They also tend to dictate quickly, like they’re auctioning tobacco.
“Thepatientisa35yearoldmalewhopresentdtotheemergencydepartmentwithachiefcomplaintoffallingdownwithanailgunsustainingapuncturewoundtohisrightupperthigh.”
I think most companies pay by the line; mine does. They also pay more for certain types of work; for example, typing ER charts (the easiest there is) pays less than some of the clinics they have as clients. This is because it’s tougher to type, say, an oncology chart than a chart where someone is in the ER because they dropped a hammer on their foot. Surgical notes tends to pay even better because again it’s specialized knowledge with esoteric terms and complicated procedures. Many companies offer a shift differential (another penny or two a line) for work at odd hours, nights, weekends. There’s also an accrediting organization, the American Association of Medical Transcriptionists. AAMT certified transcripionists often get differential added to pay; it’s recognition of superior skills.
To sum up: If you’re a self-starter, if you’re good at being disciplined, if you can stay focused on a job for hours at a time and keep this up for days and weeks, medical transcription might suit you. If you dislike having management hovering over you (or talking to you hardly at all) it’s a great job that way. I talk to the office twice a day on average; when I start and when I finish. That’s nice.
The downside of this is that you also don’t tend to talk to anyone else. I used to work in house and had some really nice friends there; now that the company sent everyone home to work, I never hear from any of these women and that’s a shame. Depending on your schedule your social life may also take a downturn.; when I started I worked nights AND weekends and I was quite isolated. A few years later I switched to days and I had to become resocialized all over again. The lack of face to face contact can make you crazy if you’re not careful.
On the other hand, what other job lets you go to work in your pajamas? I have no commute. I save money on office clothes, Starbucks coffee, etc.
A couple of other things:
For the most part transcription companies have no holidays; the work goes on regardless. My company does pay a little holiday bonus, but you do not get the day off like everybody else. If you’re scheduled to work on Mondays, you’ll be typing on Memorial Day and Labor Day unless you make other arrangements. Usually you have to work.
You have to be emotionally detached from your work. People have horrendous injuries. People get terrible illnesses and diseases. Bad things happen. Sometimes people die. You have to transcribe all of this and go on to the next job. I very recently lost someone very dear to me; he had one of those instant heart attacks that kills instantly. Every cardiac chart I’ve typed since then has made me cry. This is not good. You have to hear some pretty sad stories and type them and go on.
Hope this has been helpful and not just me blathering on. I’m happy to give more information on the board or off, just ask. Or send me an email.
Jenny
Well, here’s a job postings site. Having looked through it, there isn’t a single job posting that doesn’t require at least a year of experience.
I’ve known a couple people who sort of fell into transcription in that way. It’s not common.
I’m currently taking a course to become a transcriptionist. The course is pretty expensive, but it’s one of the few courses where you can actually get hired right after graduation in lieu of experience. The course tuition buys a foot pedal, a few hundred dollars worth of books, and the course materials. I think my school claims they have never failed to place a student, and in reading various messageboards they appear to be the most highly recommended.
The course instructors say it takes an average of 9 months to complete.
I was interested in the job because I live in a depressed region and getting a job is tricky. I wanted the flexibility to be able to live here, or to be able to move and keep my job. I will probably tend toward taking shifts other people would rather not, since I don’t mind working on Christmas or at 2 in the morning.
The training is easier than I expected, frankly. I started at the end of February and I’m more than halfway through despite not applying myself as I should.
I am worried that I won’t be able to wear headphones all day, since I tend to get squashed head headaches. I have headphones that were designed for ham radio, so they are good for the frequencies of the human voice.
A bit off topic, but for the sake of your head I hope I am indulged here.
I went through several sets of different kinds of headphones myself and finally switched to a Phillips behind the ear style. They have minimal pressure on the head and the ear part is padded nicely. I have been quite pleased with them. They fit comfortably and the sound is acceptable for transcription. They’re also inexpensive. Not at all fancy, but does the job.
Thanks for the tip. Do you switch headphones during the day ever? I wondered if that might be a solution for me.
Snoopy had a degree and a background that made the terminology familiar.
Lemme throw some words at you. Any of these sound familar? Know what they are?
alefacept chlorpheniramine chlordiazepoxide chloramphenicol chlorpheniramine cholestyramine cyanocobalamin cyanocobalamin erythromycin erythropoietin hydrocortisone hydrocodone hydrochloroquine hydrochlorothiazide methylphenidate methylprednisolone promethazine prochlorperazine propoxyphene propothyouracil olecranon arthropathy arthrodesis arthroscopy arthroplasty arthrogryposis ankylosing spondylolysis coccidioidomycosis dermatomyositis calcinosis cutis dermatopolymyositis duodenojejunostomy
Say these words fast. Mumble them to someone. Ask someone to mumble these words to you and type them. (Try it with someone moaning in the background and a ringing phone.)
For bonus credit, what’s BOOP? BPV? BVM? ADL? ACL? EDG? DJD?
Who is Brudzinski and what’s his sign? Who’s that Kernig guy and what the heck does he want? Not to mention Wernicke and Korsakov.
Okay, that’s a little unfair. But you have to be able to hear stuff like this all day long and transcribe it accurately and quickly.
The companies have work to be done and time is not their buddy; they want people who will type and produce volumes of work with minimal prodding and maximum accuracy. You might find someone who will let you screw around until you figure it out, but I seriously doubt it. They expect you to turn work around very quickly and can’t wait for you to be looking stuff up, listening over and over. If you don’t type it accurately someone else has to listen to it and fix it. If they send too much screwed up work to the client, they will lose the client.
There’s also health implications to what you type; medical personnel base decisions for patient care on what they read in these reports. This can have dangerous or potentially lethal consequences. Insurance decisions that can affect people’s lives in dramatic fashion are also based on medical reports, as are legal findings.
(This is also in reply to all the people who say, “Oh, just typing. Any idiot can do that, what’s the big deal?”)