medical transcription, pay rates and productivity - please help!

[kallyn]

I completed a medical transcription online course with an internship and then got hired doing work at home by the company I was interning for. So I am a paid MT as of 3 weeks ago. However, I'm still really slow and from the online reading I've been doing it seems like the pay I'm getting is really not good at all (3 cents for edited lines, 6 cents for standard lines, and probably 80% of the work I do is edited - I prefer the standard stuff, but I just don't get a lot of it). Is this line rate criminally low, or is it standard for complete newbies?

Also, how do you increase productivity when you are doing editing as opposed to standard transcription? I've seen recs for word expander programs, but that seems kind of pointless when you are editing. I have a "system" where I will listen to the report at normal speed once through and edit as I go along, then I will read the report over once again to check for errors and go back and replay any iffy spots. If the report was particularly hairy, I'll listen to the whole thing again at high speed to double check. I use my mouse to move around the document a lot and I think that slows me down, but I don't know how to move around quickly in a document without using it, especially when there are large chunks that the voice recognition software got right that I don't need to touch. And listening to it at normal speed is probably not ideal either, but I'm doing acute care for a hospital and I get every kind of report under the sun so I am always listening to something or someone new I have never heard of before and trying to figure out what the heck they are saying.

As you can see, I need some major technique help, but I don't know what kind of help I need or where to look for it. Can anyone give me some tips or point me towards some good resources? I have tried perusing some MT chat boards but they seem really cliquey.

[Billie]

That is pretty low, even for a newbie. Do you work for a large company? Smaller service owners pay more, but that's low even for a National company.

A word expander would do you a lot of good for the other 20% of your reports in which you are doing straight transcription. It may even help with the editing, depending on the quality of the reports or program and how much editing needs done. One of the programs (Shortcut?) even allows a sort-of rental option, where you pay a monthly fee rather than spending a huge chunk up front. Most offer a free trial (usually for a month). You can always try it out and see if it's worth the extra money.

I have some keyboard shortcuts saved somewhere on my computer. I can try and find them later, when I have a bit more time. Are you using a specific program or just a basic Word document?

Is it necessary to read through each report 2-3 times? I would suggest trying to cut out those extra steps (increasing or decreasing speed as needed for each section, rather than wasting time trying to find it later). Of course, if your quality starts to decrease, then you may need more time before you can cut out those steps.

Hope that helps!