Medical Transcription

[Rusty Hills Farm]

since my response was inappropriate, I have edited it.

Thanks for understanding.

 

[justuschickens59]

Doesn't have any bearing on what part of the country a person lives in. You can ask any MT out there, go on any MT forum board and you'll see the same thing. Wages continue to drop as off-shoring and voice recognition take over. I was just trying to point out to people considering getting into this business to be very careful and to do their homework. There are some websites out there that paint a lovely, rosy picture of making mega bucks while staying home with the kiddos, and this just is not the normal. I'm not saying you cannot be successful and earn a decent living, just that it gets harder and harder to do. I make a good living and I just hope it holds out until I can retire. I also have 5+ years of experience in acute care and can pretty much get a job anywhere.

Off-shoring and voice recognition is cutting hard into the US MT industry, as it is in other industries. Did you know that not only does the U.S. off-shore a tremendous percentage of its transcription, but it is also now off-shoring a large percentage of it's imaging films to be read? If you get an x-ray or MRI, etc., chances are very good that your films will be sent to somewhere outside the U.S. to be read. This is a growing concern in the field of Radiology. Did you know that when Spheris filed bankruptcy, it was only the U.S. division? Spheris India did NOT file bankruptcy. Now that Cbay is trying to snap Spheris up, and probaby will be successful at this, and already owning MedQuist, an even larger percentage of work is going to go off-shore and out of the U.S.

I'm just saying this business is tough right now, as it is a with a lot of other industries. Do your homework before you make the leap. Don't take a school website's word for it. Remember, they want your money so they will only point out the positives, and overplay and inflate those as well. To any of you considering this profession, take a look at MTChat.com and some of the other MT forums. Yes, there is a lot of negative on some of the forums, but if you read through some of it, you'll get a good handle on the state of the MT industry.

 

[Rusty Hills Farm]

Since my response was inappropriate, I have edited it.

Thanks for understanding.

 

[justuschickens59]

Yes, they are still hiring at Spheris because their MTs are running out the door as quick as they can. A good friend of mine works for Spheris and he keeps me aprised of the situation there. However, he has left Spheris as of yesterday and is coming to work at my company.

I'm not saying that there are not jobs out there. I'm just trying to stress to folks who may be considering MT that the business is on a downhill slide and who knows where it will end up. The off-shoring is such a problem. I'm sure the folks who used to do tech support for a lot of places never thought that all the tech support would be off-shored to other countries; these days, trying to find tech support in the US is practically impossible. And with speech recognition, as well as other contributing factors, wages are going down instead of up. Just something for people to consider and research before investing thousands of dollars in a career that may/may not be viable a few years down the road.

Oh, I thought you said in an earlier post that you had been an MT since 1992, but were now retired? I didn't realize you were still working and had only been doing this a couple years longer than me.

 

[Rusty Hills Farm]

edited to say:

Folks who may be reading this, please remember that much of this thread is 2 years old, so lots of the information in here has changed since the thread started and I have edited my responses to reflect this. If you are seriously interested in MT, PLEASE don't take anyone's word for stuff--do your research!


Rusty