Edited to add: please don't take this wrong, this is not to insult your, or anyone else's, intelligence in any way that might be thinking of trying this.
i did it for 5-1/2 years.
what do you do now?
medical transcription is not just something you start doing one day, is why i ask. even if you were in the healthcare field, this is not something you could just start doing.
the next problem, is it is hard to find a job doing it. everyone wants someone with 2 years or more experience. how do you get that experience, if no one will hire you to get it? and, they're not just going to hire anyone that says "i want to do this." medical terminology is another language. you may know what a word means, but to hear someone say it, or to hear someone say it with an accent and recognize it is another story. learn some common, simple spanish phrases and try to "hear" them when some spanish-speaking folks are talking. knowing what a word is and recognizing it when spoken, AND knowing when it is wrong based on context (just because someone dictates something you know is wrong, doesn't mean you should transcribe it) are two totally different things. you almost have to know what the dictator is saying before they say it. and in actuality, that is what it comes down to. after a while of doing work for the same people you can build up shortcuts. you could have a shortcut that when "perar" it types out "pupils equal, round and reactive." sometimes you'll luck out with providers that say mostly the same thing every time, unless something is wrong. you could have an entire shortcut that gets filled in for some providers.
once you do find a job, you won't just start raking in the dough. as stated before, it takes time and experience to "hear" what they're saying, and hear what they're saying while typing what they said just before what they're saying now. try this: watch the news, transcribing as much as you can of what they say. now, try transcribing as much as you can of what they say with perfect spelling, punctuation and fixing grammatical errors without changing the context of what they're saying, just enough. this isn't a truly fair test, as when doing transcription you have a foot pedal that will reverse a few seconds (or more if you program it to) every time you let off, and you're able to keep stopping and rewinding to hear things over and over. how are you going to make money if you're constantly doing that, though. you're getting paid by the line. that means no proofreading. it takes time to be able to type what you hear the first time you hear it, and not have to go back at the end to make sure you transcribed it correctly.
i had been transcribing for a year and a half, and was making 12.5 cents a line, which came to roughly 1000 bucks every 2 weeks. the gal i worked for had an account that went to T-sheets in the ER and clinics, wiping out most of her work. i was laid off, and only she and her 2 daughters remained on staff. anyway, i found another job (thankfully i had made contacts with salespeople of other companies) a month later. it took me a month and a half to get back to making a grand every 2 weeks! every doctor says something different, and every doctor says things differently. you need to know every muscle, joint, ligament, organ, vessel - everything - of the body, or you will spend more time on the internet researching than you can afford.
there isn't just medical transcription, either. there are many different types. there are emergency room transcriptions, orthopedic transcriptions, surgical transcriptions, and on and on. if/when you start out, they won't just throw you to the wolves and into ortho's or surgicals, you'll probably start out with ER's. i just mention the different types, because you could be the best ER transcriptionist in the whole world, but feel like a newbie when starting surgicals (tons, tons, tons more technical).
by the end of my transcription stint, i was doing quality work (not the status of my work, but meaning i was reading others reports and proofreading, filling in holes they couldn't get, etc., before sending the report back to the hospital). there is a lot of work and time that goes into transcription before it becomes worthwhile doing. i was without a well-paying job at the time, and kind of fell into it, thanks to my wife (i say this in a good way). still, 26K a year is not "go out and buy a Cadillac pay," either. so, i moved on to what i'm doing now. it served me well, allowed me to work from home and keep my daughter out of day care for the first year and a half of her life, but i don't think people understand the amount of time and work that goes into it.
you may transcribe 8 hours a day and make pretty good pay. first of all, do you know what typing for 8 hours feels like? an eternity. not to mention, you don't just start the day by typing 4 hours, stop for lunch, then type another 4 hours. there isn't just 8 hours of work always there, ready to type. at the first place, i had my own clinic that everything that came in was mine. the second company i worked for, before i was qc, i was one of 15-20 transcriptionists trying to make a living. quite often, everything would be caught up by 10 a.m., and everyone just waited for work to fall into your que. ours held 2 dictations, so it's not like i could leave for an hour, come back and have another couple hours worth of work to do. you literally sit there all day waiting for work to come in sometimes. with larger companies, especially. i would literally wake up at 6:30 to be on the computer by 7 a.m., and would worship my computer until 11:30 at night, 6 days a week, to make 26K a year.
more and more hospitals and clinics are utilizing oversea transcription, also. our company had two different cost levels (to put it simply) for our clients to chose from. they could pay to have the dictations transcribed by people in india, or they could pay more to have them typed by americans. part of my qc duties were to proof oversea transcriptions that came back. my gosh, they do a horrible job, but between them and us fixing their stuff, it was cheaper for the hospitals.
anyway, more and more companies are utilizing overseas transcriptions and voice recognition systems, making actual human american transcriptionists obsolete. so, you've got a lot of competition for a job right now.
i haven't done transcription in over 4 years now, and i embrace typos and grammar errors
it is such a free feeling to not have to be 100% accurate (your job depends on at least 94% accuracy) all the time in transcription. now, i just type to type, albeit much faster than anyone else i know
i hate to be a downer, but having done that job for a while, i can say unless you have training in it, your likelihood of even getting a job are VERY nill. i just happened to luck out. my wife had taken the course, and i just did it along with her for s**ts and giggles. she got a job in medical records, so never utilized it. however, because of her job, she knew the gal who owned the transcription company, and she was in a lurch and was looking for ANYONE who knew anything about transcription.
