[anand33]

For a poor MT one rupee also counts for making his living. If an MT has 13,000 salary per month they will deduct 1300 per month as 10% tds and that money is not available until December of next year. Unnecessarily a poor MTs money is decaying in income tax department while poor MT very much needs it for his daily expenses. This is the reason for crying.

[lloydssolutions]

Anand, as told before, the TDS is not just for the MT industry. It is applicable for any profession where people work as freelancers/consultants.

[vishnu]

do you have other platforms too sir like editscript?

[lloydssolutions]

Yes Vishnu, but the pay rates are different for Editscript. Kindly send your resume to careers@lloydssolutions.com

[mt4life]

This whining is only good for letting out your frustration, nothing more. Greed has no conscience, so your dollar rate comparisons, line rate increment requests, failing to meet ends cry, partiality complaints, etc., all fall on deaf ears. Either get out of the field, try to get work direct from the US or from a philanthropist, or submit yourself to your luck with occasional whining here and there.

[themt10@gmail.com]

mt4life,

Since this comment "so your dollar rate comparisons, line rate increment requests" was made by me, I guess I have to reply, don't I?

If you notice, apart from Lloyd Solutions, no one except you has commented on my post directly, or tried to justify themselves.  I appreciate Lloyd Solutions attempt at reasoning although I still have some misgivings regarding the salary/line counts.  Given today's high standards of living, there should be a corresponding increase in salary.  It is for the employees to fight for their right with management and if they do not then they deserve what they get no matter how good they are.

Yes, in principle, I agree that any job, let alone medical transcription, you aim for the stars, resign yourself to being sheep or simply move on.  It is survival of the fittest and if you simply cannot better yourself and get a better deal then get F**ked.

[lloydssolutions]

Dear Friends,
The MT industry has become something like the present Airline Industry in India. There are many players and majority of them do not make money but still survive on the hopes that in future they can grow. If you can see, most of the MT companies requires people badly but still the MT pay rates does not rise, why? It is NOT because the companies are greedy and want to deny the pay hike of the MTs. When the revenue itself from the industry is dwindling, it is difficult to give any rise to the MTs and do more lines. If that was the case many companies would have already done that and generate more revenue and more profit. There is no point is doing more lines by making a loss, it is simple business logic!

Thank you,
Lloyds Solutions

[The MT]

Good to see an employer participating in a discussion positively compared to the other disgruntled lot. I think the future does hold promise, but that is still far off when both the inefficient MTs and companies get weeded out by market forces and the hospitals themselves face severe shortage of MTs. They will have no choice then but to increase the rates to get people, unless of course some new breakthrough happens in this field which renders the MTs completely redundant! Everything has a boom and bust cycle; lets hope for the best.

[anand33]

There is no hope to medical transcription as a career. There are strong reasons found. They can be listed as follows.
1. The advent of automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology minimised the need of MTs. Now speech recognition softwares do up to 85 to 95% on average accuracy without the need of MT. On easy dictators speech recognition technology give up to 98%. So the need for MT is abolished. Now only experienced proofers or editors and QAs only needed.
2. EMR technology is coming to use in USA which also abolishes the need of MTs. In this technology preset templates are available where doctors need to enter the patient care details. They do this within the time needed for dictating a patient's record. This is another blow to the medical transcription field.
3. In India people are available to work for lowest rates. This is because in India unemployment is high and graduates come out of colleges every year in crores of numbers. They do not find sufficient job. So they are ready to work in night shifts for lowest rates because all does not find job. According to the market rules when supply is more than the demand rate always dips to very low. This is the situation happening in MT industry. So in the future also there is no chance of getting good pay in MT field.
4. Medical transcription training institutes were grown in India like mushrooms. They attract unemployed graduates by giving false information on pay scale in MT field such as 60,000 Rs/month. Unemployed people fall prey for this false propaganda and join the course in the hope to get good earnings. They spend lot of money on course fee, computers and other essentials in the hope of doing online course. Because they have invested a lot on this course they are forced to work in the MT field to get what spent on course and computers, etc. In spite of advice of experienced MTs about the hopelessness of the MT field people are thronging into MT institutes due to unawareness of the realities of the MT field. There is no government regulation on MT training institutes. So they continue to cheat the newcomers in the name of home transcrition and high pay structure.
5. US companies once stopped giving work to home in 2008 but now all big US companies also started to give work to home. They are forced to do so because giving work for home is inevitable due to the market condition. Home transcrptionists are ready to work for low rates. There is no need to give regular work for home transcriptionists like in-house MTs.

[lloydssolutions]

Anand, your post seems to be copy pasted from some outdated articles which is not correct in the present circumstance. Please see my response:
1. It is totally incorrect to say that the need of MT is abolished after the advent of ASR. The need of an MT transcribing has become less. In that place, still an MT is required to do the editing. Also, not everyone has adopted the ASR technology. It is only the big hospitals that have adopted this technology. There are still plenty of Clinics and individual physicians and even hospitals who use the non ASR platforms. So do not say that the need of MT is abolished. The proof is just look around for the advertisement you see for the need of MTs. Just look at MTforum itself to see how many companies are still advertising for MTs.
2. EMR was considered to be a blow to the transcriptionists just like ASR was considered as a threat few years back. It is true that few hospitals have embraced the EMR. However, the doctors still prefer to use the conventional method of transcription rather than interfacing more with the computer. They are spending more time with the computer rather than with the patient. So do not make a blanket statement that it is a blow to the transcription field. We have many doctors who use the EMR but depends on us to update it on the EMR system as the doctor himself does not get any time to do so. They still dictate as they used to do earlier, our MTs transcribe and then update the same on the EMR system.
3. As I said in the beginning, the article you copy pasted was from one that was published many years back. Any industry you take there is a dearth for quality people. Man power requirement is huge in almost any industry. However, the rates of the MTs are not going high even though the demand for them is huge because of the reason I mentioned earlier, in my previous post. The demand for MTs still continue as very few new comers are coming to this field and the existing people who are well experienced are leaving the MT industry. Earlier you used to see many MT training institutes and companies, but we hardly find any of them now.
4. If somebody is paying huge money in MT training at this age, it is sheer foolishness. They haven't done their home work or as I said, this article is an obsolete one which you copy-pasted which was relevant say more than 10 years back. There is not a huge difference in pay scales for the MT as the industry has stabilized in India. If you do a research for 10 minutes you can easily find out the pay rate of the MTs. So if you fall prey to the false promises of the training institute it means you haven't done your home work properly. You yourself are to be blamed if you fall prey to such fall promises by training institutes or you allowed yourself to be a victim to such institutes.
5. Even for home MTs we are not finding quality people who can send files directly (DU). MTs who are direct uploaders are still in demand and are not paid poorly. So if your work is of a superior quality you will always be in demand and can command a better pay.

Anand, I can see a tinge of pessimism in majority of your posts. See things on a realistic angle, I am not asking you to be optimistic either. There is still future for high quality MTs as the industry is evolving towards real time transcription.

Thank you,
Lloyds Solutions