White Lily MT

For quite some time voice recognition has been quite the hot topic amongst the medical transcription community.  What voice recognition is is a computer application/software program that converts a dictated sound file into text format.  In the medical transcription business whether you are a transcriptionist completing the work, a doctor dictating, or a medical transcription business stuck in the middle, this sounds very appealing.  Time definitely converts into money no matter which category you fit into.  My first MT job was VR work only.  What I quickly realized was that you get paid significantly less per line for VR work since you’re supposed to be doing mainly editing and not really transcription since that is supposed to be already completed for you.  I was just thrilled to have a job, so I was probably a little too eager to work for so little.  The VR recognition software that was being used to process these files was by no means even close to getting it right.  A computer program will never be 100% accurate when it comes to VR, but in order for this to be a productive way to do work, it has to do most of the work with the MT just doing editing.  In my first experience with VR, this was definitely not the case.  I found that it was much quicker to delete the entire document and start over, so I ended up doing straight transcription but getting paid for voice recognition work.

After only about 6 months I realized this company was not a good fit for me and moved on to transcription company that did only straight transcription for a much better line rate.  That was when I started making a decent living at doing this.  After being with this company for a couple years they too decided that they wanted to eventually convert over to doing all VR work and use their transcriptionists as editors.  I have to admit that I panicked when I first heard this.  My first experience with VR work was not exactly a positive one.  I am currently still with this company and they are still working on transitioning the accounts over to VR.  The majority of their work is still straight transcription.  I personally got officially trained using their VR software just a month or so ago.  I have to say that the software is much better than what I had previously used but still not good enough for me to the same amount of money as with straight transcription.  In order to do VR, it takes a huge commitment on behalf of the medical transcription company, as well as the provider.  It is like you are “training” the software to understand what is being said.  This takes time, as well as a really good software program to accomplish this.  I have also heard that many times the provider will have to change the way he dictates in order for the software to pick up on certain phrases or words.  Like many of us know, providers for most part do not want to change the way they do their dictations.  They like the quickest and easiest route possible.

On the other hand, there are some positives to VR other than it takes less time to complete files.  I pretty much worked on straight VR work for about a week about a month ago while the regular MT on this particular account was on vacation.  I quickly noticed that my hands and eyes didn’t get as tired as quickly doing VR work versus straight transcription.  When you’re working a 40-hour work week this make make a huge difference in how tired you feel at the end of the day.  There are sometimes when I get finished with work that I just feel both mentally and physically beat.  I did notice that with VR I didn’t feel as tired in the evenings.  This should also cut down on the rate of carpal tunnel, which anyone who works on a computer all day long worries about since theoretically you’re hands are doing far less work.

So to wrap up my ramblings, I personally feel for me the verdict is still out whether I’m 100% for voice recognition.  I do fear that somewhere in the future straight transcription positions will become more difficult to find due to VR taking over.  In my experiences, I have not found voice recognition to be anymore profitable than straight transcription.  In fact, I have found that I can profit more from straight transcription since the line rates are typically higher and I have an easier time just typing the work myself than having to worry about catching the computer’s errors.  Personally, I think it is much more important to focus on quality and accuracy in this line of work than quantity.