A community of 30,000 US Transcriptionist serving Medical Transcription Industry
Let's try this again...
Posted: Feb 21, 2015
The main reason I come to this board is this: I've been an MT my whole adult life. I know what it takes to be a good MT: intelligence, mental toughness, talent, bravery, and a willingness to learn. What is it that we have done throughout our careers that makes us special, that makes us unique? The ability to listen and discern what the speaker is actually saying! I care about and want to learn from what all other MTs have to say. I remember all the MT conventions I attended way back when we were thriving. We devoured the new books the vendors brought like we were starving! We were ecstatic when as a team we figured out a new term or med or procedure. I remember how exciting it was when arthroscopic knee surgery and gallbladders and even hysterectomies began! Remember drug-eluting coronary artery stents? Remember hilarious bloopers (MD Eyes for MDIs)? I remember our team getting a new account that was 6 months behind with poor quality grades and how it took our team of 42 MTs and we three supervisors/QA editors 6 weeks to catch up to a 24-hour turnaround with 98 percent quality. I remember doing that when I worked for Optiscript. I managed to work through that ordeal while sick with strep throat and sinusitis, yet I would not take the time off to go to the doctor because I could not bear to leave my team. Most of us stayed up night after night, neglecting our children and our households and ourselves just for the sake of our goal! We did that for the patients because we cared about their continuity of care. We knew when we had a priority report and an elderly patient was waiting for our report to be transported to the nursing home. My God, the price I paid for what i did that spring. I was sick and overworked and stressed to the point something in my immune system triggered the lupus that was just waiting in my body, and I've struggled with that ever since. I remember fellow home-based coworkers sacrificing just as much if not more than I had. And nowadays, I think about all we have lost: the respect, honor, dignity, and value that came from being the cream of the crop of clerical health care workers: medical transcriptionists. We often had to know more than MDs and RNs, because we had to know and understand and decipher all specialties. I grieve at the great professional status we have lost through no fault of our own. And, if you will forgive me for being far too wordy and writing an epic novel about it, but here is the point I am trying to make: I miss you all. I miss having several dozen coworker MTs who understood my working world. I miss being able to go to Golden Corral and eat too much and talk to a whole bunch of friends who understood our unique world. We all knew how different our religious beliefs and political backgrounds could be. But we all had that one thing in common: who we were on the inside. Yet, we could talk about everything and get along. We could respect each other and ourselves. So, I guess what I am trying to say is, I just wish we could all talk here, together, and be good to each other, share what we are thinking and feeling, what worries us, what our hopes and dreams are for our lives, for our country, for our future. I care about what you all have to say, and I just wish we could all get along and discuss politics and current events and not let our emotions cause us to react and say things we would not say if we were all together at the table. I grieve our not being able to do that, don't you? Again, I apologize for the length of this and the lack of paragraph breaks, for my poor punctuation, spelling, and my sentimentality. I hope some of you might understand what I mean even if we don't agree. I just wish we could all talk.
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The thing is that many people on the Politics board....sm - VTMT
[ In Reply To ..]are not MTs and have no frame of reference when it comes to our hopes and problems. Many people here think we are lazy and takers because our income has declined and many qualify for government help. I hope you stick around Mary. We need more MT voices on this board.
How do you know they are not MTs? - I believe you, but just wonder
[ In Reply To ..]How you know is all.
What would be their motivation to come here if they are not MTs? And who are they do you think, do they have something to do with this field at least, owners maybe?
I do feel so many on this Politics board seem to have a completely different life experience than I do, in that I feel very impoverished and I feel I am getting a raw deal from my MTSO in terms of terrible insurance being offered and terrible pay. I have not asked for govt assistance YET, but every week I get closer and closer with lack of work and poor pay. You hear nothing but negatives about Obamacare (which I WISH I could get) and some people sound as though they consider immigrants and indigent way beneath them when I feel I am right at their level thanks to our job!!!
On my company board, some on there seem to be perfectly okay with the poor pay and terrible benefits, and sometimes I wonder if it should be mandatory we fess up where we are coming from before we give others advice, i.e., if you do NOT need the money or the benefits and you are okay with making almost minimum wage, please put that out there before someone who is trying to support a family and children on their own takes it to heart that they are being "negative."
Easy to be positive about things if you have a DH to support you financially and psychologically, but not all of us do.
Some of us really would like our decent job back and to talk about what has happened and what political parties and politicians at least talk the talk about rewarding companies bringing jobs back (rather than giving tax breaks to offshorers), and also addressing the wage theft they are widely perpetrating which is very difficult to challenge.
Different times/different people - sm
[ In Reply To ..]I think most of the people on the board are MTs, technically speaking, they do medical transcription, but that may be where the similarity ends.
They don't come from the same place that the people who have worked in MT 20-30 years do. They learned from a course at a career center or on-line. Many never worked in a hospital setting or with a group of coworkers. They don't have the same backgrounds. They don't remember being in the hospital, getting on the elevator, (fighting with the unit nurse because they didn't chart the stuff typed that morning on a typewriter, and that is the only copy) and you need to see it to verify a medication. They weren't in on the development of word processing systems for MR in the hospitals. Oh, there are lots of differences. We shared a lot of camraderie. We didn't fight over lines. We got paid by the hour. There was always a little bickering about who got the "good" work, but we worked it out. Then it went to production, then it went to services, then we went to services, then we worked for people we NEVER met and still have not.
And, then, there is social media. Social media has created the acceptance of rude, state what you want, be damned what they think, commenting. I FB with about 30 people, no more. It is sort of like that group you were talking about. We have respect for one another in our differences, but we have a common thread.
Frankly, if you are looking for close bonding, I don't think MT Stars is the place to find it.
Looking for close bonding? - Nope.
[ In Reply To ..]I don't expect any bonding at all from a Politics board, but it would be good once in a while to address matters which are affecting us as MTs such as wage theft and offshoring, not bickering over whose party has bigger jerks in it.
This new TPP trade agreement they are trying to fast track, for example. Even President Obama seems to be for it. It sounds even worse than the existing trade policies and even worse news for our profession. But if you were an owner of an MTSO, it might sound okay to you, so it is interesting the poster above said not many MTs are on this board.
I'm with you on the trade agreement. I would like....sm - VTMT
[ In Reply To ..]to know how it would benefit us little people, or not. I will have to send off an email to Bernie and have him explain it to me. I am pretty sure he is against it.
Senator Sanders says: sm - VTMT
[ In Reply To ..]I looked on line and found this.
The Trans-Pacific Trade (TPP) Agreement
Must Be Defeated
By Bernie Sanders
Reader Supported News
03 January 15
The Trans-Pacific Partnership is a disastrous trade agreement designed to protect the interests of the largest multi-national corporations at the expense of workers, consumers, the environment and the foundations of American democracy. It will also negatively impact some of the poorest people in the world.
The TPP is a treaty that has been written behind closed doors by the corporate world.
Incredibly, while Wall Street, the pharmaceutical industry and major media companies have full knowledge as to what is in this treaty, the American people and members of Congress do not. They have been locked out of the process.
Further, all Americans, regardless of political ideology, should be opposed to the “fast track” process which would deny Congress the right to amend the treaty and represent their constituents’ interests.
The TPP follows in the footsteps of other unfettered free trade agreements like NAFTA, CAFTA and the Permanent Normalized Trade Agreement with China (PNTR). These treaties have forced American workers to compete against desperate and low-wage labor around the world. The result has been massive job losses in the United States and the shutting down of tens of thousands of factories. These corporately backed trade agreements have significantly contributed to the race to the bottom, the collapse of the American middle class and increased wealth and income inequality. The TPP is more of the same, but even worse.
During my 23 years in Congress, I helped lead the fight against NAFTA and PNTR with China. During the coming session of Congress, I will be working with organized labor, environmentalists, religious organizations, Democrats, and Republicans against the secretive TPP trade deal.
I now want to know why the president is for it. I am trying to keep an open minds and don't feel that I must always agree with him.
Trade agreements never seem to benefit the - middle class, only big corporations.
[ In Reply To ..]nm
After having been an MT for many years....sm - VTMT
[ In Reply To ..]it has become second nature to notice grammatical errors etc. that no MLS would ever make and opinions about healthcare an wage issues that just don't ring true for an MT. Just my personal opinion of course. I have been a member of this board since the beginning and Mary is right when she says things are very different than they used to be.
I've been here since the beginning too, and - am neither condoning nor condemning
[ In Reply To ..]the squabbles that occur on these boards. They just are what they are.
What I see that has changed over the years is the raw anger that most of us MTs feel at what has become of our profession, and to us as a result.
For many of us there is no real outlet for that anger. This board gives us a place not only to vent, but also to compare notes, and to see "It's not just me", as so many of us think at first when our employers cheat us right and left, then try to tell us "It's your own damned fault."
The politics of greed is the main reason we, and others like us who aren't even MTs, are all in this current financial boat. We're all angry at our employers, so at least we agree on that point.
But we're also even angrier at our government for allowing these big, wealthy companies to continually screw their employees, and there lies the divergence point, as half of us lean right, and half of us lean left, and each side is 100% sure it's the other side's fault.
So yes, there are bitter arguments here and such, and lying, finger-pointing, name-calling, etc., but even that serves a purpose, because I have yet to hear of an MT walking into an MTSO headquarters and gunning down everyone in sight. Maybe it's in part because we have a place to let off steam.
Just to clarify.... - Mary
[ In Reply To ..]My OP was originally posted to the Politics board, since it was in regards to the Politica board. The moderator chose to move it to the Gab board. I was hoping we might evolve to a place of actually discussing political issues, ideas, stances, etc, instead of fighting, but I am beginning to believe I am wasting my time and efforts. I worked really hard on my OP and put a lot of time and effort into it, all to no avail.
I agree that it should be on the - Politics Board
[ In Reply To ..]Things like wage theft, offshoring, outsourcing, what has happened to our jobs and how we can improve things by looking at political parties and their stances on such and discuss, are not really "Gab" material IMHO.
I also felt that Ferguson was political and that also got shunted here. Again, Gab?
I guess the Politics board regulars would rather just have the us vs. them types of putdowns than discuss anything that is likely to change our situation as MTs.
Maybe we should just have these - conversations on the gab board
[ In Reply To ..]Hi Mary, I found your post compelling.
Do you still work for Optiscript? When you talked about going to Golden Corral, were you working at a hospital at that time? Do you still have lupus? Despite knowing how to spell it and a vague general idea of it, I am woefully ignorant on the disease, except that it is an autoimmune disease which sounds horrible.
Okay, since we have been relegated to the Gab Board, let's gab! If we start talking about political parties and aspects of our work that are affected by policies, well, I guess that is not political, just gabby.
My personal opinion is that Republican policy is what is holding the middle class (and us MTs) down. Despite their lip service to the middle class, they are purposely voting against any bill the democrats put up to alleviate pressure on the middle class.
When I went to HR Block, the stupid tax lady kept talking about how awful the ACA was and the only way to get rid of it was to get a new type president. I did not want to argue with the tax lady, but honestly I wonder if she said the same when she came across someone with a preexisting condition who finally was able to get health insurance?
Despite having to pay tax this year, despite not making a lot and having zero exemptions, I still think the ACA is a good thing. I personally don't think freedom means not having to get health insurance and when you are sick you go to the emergency room. That is just stupidity, and personally if I weren't forced to get health insurance I probably would have to go to the emergency room if severely ill, not covered, because my MTSO provides horrible grandfathered coverage with a huge deductible before they pay anything, but luckily my husband gets halfway decent insurance for not much. His pay, of course, sucks, just like mine does.
The Republicans are for offshoring, the Chamber of Commerce is the greatest and most powerful advocate of offshoring. They donate almost exclusively to Republican candidates. The Republicans are against minimum wage, they are all for deregulating the workplace in any way they can, they are for "right to work" laws (right to get paid less to work and not be able to unionize you mean), and they are very anti-EPA and any environmental regulations. ALEC is a huge lobby group which pretty much writes laws which are put through as bills by their hand-picked congressmen and senators, and these laws are all anti-worker and pro-corporation. Guess which party they like?
So while not a rabid liberal, I do believe it is a provable fact the Republican party does absolutely NOTHING for us as MTs. In fact, one could argue that our present predicament, work-wise, has been caused almost exclusively by the workplace deregulation they rammed through during the 8 years of Bush.
So there you go, let's have a gab about that, since we are just gabbing after all.