Medical Transcription and working from home

[wingsandsword]

I'm asking for some advice/information from my fellow ENWorlders. . .

My girlfriend is looking for employment. However, she has a two-year-old son she has to look after much of the time (her ex looks after him about half of the time) so a job that she can work from home, or set her own hours, or preferably both, is ideal. Sadly, most "work from home" offers out there are scams of various kinds. You either are a mule for money laundering or check forging, or you pay a fortune for start-up-costs for dubious get-rich-quick schemes that never go anywhere.

From what we've been able to gather, the most legitimate "work from home" type job is Medical Transcriptionist, where you take dictation recorded by physicians and type it up and turn it into finished reports/paperwork. It isn't "get rich quick", and there is the start-up cost of getting training, but it seems real.

The sister of somebody in my gaming group worked from one at home several years ago and made an adequate wage working from home at this, but she wasn't a lot of help in finding out how to get started at this, but it was an anecdotal proof that it is real.

However, trying to find out where to get started on this is a confusing morass. There are lots of various training/certification programs and employment services and it is very hard to tell how to get started. Presumably you get some training for a certificate or diploma of some kind, then contact an employment service to get work.

Do any of my fellow ENWorlders have any experience with this? Does anybody know which training programs are "legit"? Which ones offer credentials that employers want to see or useful training that will really help people in the job? Does anybody know which employment services actually provide work or ones to avoid? Or, otherwise do people know of any other legitimate "work from home" type job?

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

Do you have a Tech school or community college in your area? Try checking them out. Also, perhaps the Department of Labor, or Employment or whatever they call it in Kentucky, can help. They often have information on training programs in the area.

 

[Goddess FallenAngel]

One of my friends is getting a Medical Transcription certification from the Community College. The college also offers help in job placement. Maybe check into local colleges or, as Thornir suggested, local tech schools. A counselor at the school should be able to help answer questions. As you've already mentioned, be very wary of offers from the internet. Sorry I can't help more than that....

 

[werk]

Is she a good typist and is she familiar with medical terminology?

If she can't type laryngeal pharynx or anterio-lateral cartilaginous avulsion, then it's probably not a very good pick for her. If she doesn't know what they are saying, it's hard to type it appropriately.

Pretty sure it would pay by the word, possibly by the transcript, so it'll probably pay fairly low for the time commitment...like tech support in India.

My wife just finished transcribing a bunch of interviews for her dissertation and what she did was trained some voice recognition software, then parrotted the recordings to text. It worked really well, and I know they make medical VR programs...but that may be a lot like cheating.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

It was recently claimed (by someone likely to provoke political debate, so I won't cite) that 700,000 people make their living selling things on E-Bay. Of course, that first requires getting things worth selling on E-Bay, but I thought I'd mention it... For example, a friend of mine sells comics on E-Bay.

 

[Korgull]

It's an excellent field to get into. It may be somewhat difficult to get into without schooling, though. I had the advantage of knowing someone who was well-established in the field. If you don't have that luxury, you may need to take some Terminology classes at your local Community College.
Most hospitals have full-time transcriptionists working for them. They usually supply the equipment, as well. Most individual doctors pay by the line, but hospitals (usually) pay hourly. They also offer ample overtime. I am working freelance until I feel I have enough experience to get a job at one of the local hospitals. That's not strictly necessary, though.
I'm pretty sure there is a website devoted to Transcription jobs. I'll find it and post it later, if that would help.

 

[Bayushi Seikuro]

My mom works at home as a transcriptionist.

1) I'd agree with the comment about how are her typing skills, but there's something else. The ability to deal with frustrating accents, or ways people speak. Some doctors do not enunciate enough; there were plenty of times where my mom would ask me to come help to try to figure out what a word is.

2) My mom's been doing this for twenty years now, and she took classes at the local community college. I'm not so sure about all of these ads you see on tv; you'd be better off to stick with colleges in your area. Alot of medical terminology classes, etc.

3) I have mixed thoughts on most of the work-from-home places my mom's worked for. For the most part, she has two jobs: one is doing transcription from home for the local hospital - it saves them room in the actual hospital, and all of her work is done online; the other, for a subcontractor type company, is where the worry might be. The subcontractor pays X cents per line; you need speed to make any money, and you make ZERO money as an hourly rate. The hospital pays Y dollars an hour, with incentives, etc.

That's just some general info. The big key is you have to be able to decipher what's being said, and type accurately; what they're transcribing can get called in during legal hearings of all kinds. My mom had just done the autopsy report on a kid who was shot trying to rob a pharmacy with knives, to get Oxycotin, etc. So, needless to say, every little detail has to be perfect in those cases.

I'd warn ya, it's a worthwhile, good career, but highly stressful. And again, with a work-at-home situation, my thoughts are: get one that pays an hourly rate, because if your cable access goes out, or your power goes down, you make ZERO money on the piece-work jobs.

My random two cents.

BTW: Working at home, there's also a tendency to get distracted. I've noticed my mom's friends seem to have little respect for her work time. Whereas they might not call her to see what she's up to if she worked in an office, they have no qualms calling her at home - essentially at her office - to see what she's up to. Etc.

YMMV,

EDIT: I believe the website with job postings is MTJobs.com. Some of the places will even send you a work computer; others will expect you to use your own. Also, one obvious concern too is carpal tunnel syndrome, but... I'm a constant worrier

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

It was recently claimed (by someone likely to provoke political debate, so I won't cite) that 700,000 people make their living selling things on E-Bay. Of course, that first requires getting things worth selling on E-Bay, but I thought I'd mention it... For example, a friend of mine sells comics on E-Bay.

My sister is a stay-at-home mom, and she also makes a decent "supplementary income" as an e-Bay Queen.

I didn't ask her exactly what she's pulling in, but I doubt she makes "single income" kind of money.

 

[Goddess FallenAngel]

My sister is a stay-at-home mom, and she also makes a decent "supplementary income" as an e-Bay Queen.

I didn't ask her exactly what she's pulling in, but I doubt she makes "single income" kind of money.

I would imagine that is what most ebayers that make any sort of money make. Honestly, it's a job that can be done in little time, and requires little supervision, so it's good for work-at-home types. The problem is getting the capital to purchase things to sell on ebay in the first place, and then hoping that someone actually wants to buy them - or having the capital to continually relist them until they sell.

 

[Harmon]

I have done a lot of research on work from home jobs, and found that medical transcription is one of the few real things you can do. A community college here in Salinas had a weekend course last year that cost about $500, and they wanted you to sign a 6 month contract to work only for them. The pay sucked, at 80 wpm you might make a sensiable wage, but I would not bet on it.

eBay might be a good start. My brother is a manager-ish person at a storage place and he's wanting to buy storage units that are defaulting and sell the contents, but can't because he would need to get a storage place to store the stuff he was selling- an expense he don't want to put out for.

I would like to know the end result here, if you could keep us up to date on this as I am still looking for something to do while staying at home with my daughter.