Anyone do medical transcription at home?

Steph2078 · **Anyone do medical transcription at home?**

Just curious about training and if you actually make money? How much work do you have to do? etc!

TIA!

Missystuy · 09-06-2008, 09:29 AM

Bumping this up because I'm curious too. HOW does one get started doing this?? Is there a huge cost to getting trained to do this?? It seems everywhere you look someone is offering a course on this, how do you know which ones are legit and which ones aren't???

Sugarmama · 09-06-2008, 03:24 PM

I have a friend who is trying to help me get started in this field. She took the training course online and has been working from home for a couple of years. I have seen courses offered at our local college. I have tried a few sample transcription tapes and it does seem to be a good way to make money from home. She gets paid .04 cents a line for editing and .08 cents a line for straight transcription. She told me she can make between $8-$10 and hour. Some people make more depending on the company you work for and how fast you type. I would love to hear from someone else in the field too. Any tips about online companies that are good to work for and who to buy the course through.

desertmom · 09-06-2008, 08:33 PM

I haven't done it myself, because I've researched it. My SIL did do it, even though I told her what I'd found, and found out my research was right. She paid $840 for the course, but had no previous medical experience. As I'd found out, the biggest issue is that you have to find the clients yourself on so many of those that advertise the course. Knowledge of procedures and insurance laws/rules and coding is really essential and having a company that has the clientele is essential.

I did consulting work once for two psychotherapists who sent their coding out to a billing company. It was simply a billing company that worked in the medical vertical market. I don't know if they hired at home workers, but I do know they had substantial fees to the doctors.

So if you're really interested, I'd first make a call to a doctor's billing office, or call your own doctor's office and see what they do. Sometimes the office staff does the billing, but many send it out. I'd ask what it takes to learn to do it (if the insurance codes are off by even one digit, or you can't read it, it could cause a huge mess up at the ins. office, the Dr. office and with the client). And if you take any course at all, I'd ask how the clientele is gotten; by them (is there a guarantee for you of how many you will have?) or how to go about getting business. I, personally, had no inclination to go knocking on doors to get billing business, when they usually use established companies. Perhaps some of the biller's offices will allow such work at home.

My SIL's completely out her $800+ (she also paid interest to them on the financing of the class) because she didn't check it all out and is not a salesperson. She held on the materials too long to even get a partial refund, as she was trying to figure out whether she could get clients.

maggiemay1 · 09-06-2008, 08:46 PM

I am a medical transcriptionist and love it! I work from home 4 days a week PT and make between $7-$9 an hour right now, but I have only been doing it about a year. You make more the longer you do it and the faster you are.

I trained through an online course (don't know if I can post the name here so PM me) and it cost me around 1000 dollars, I think! I did it online but also paid to have all teh textbooks so that I had them for reference materials. It took me about 8 months to do the training, another 2 months to find a job, and I love it.!

I work for a company, so I don't find my own clients. I type for them and tehy pay me. Everything is submitted via the internet on their medical platform.

I was able to take out a student loan to pay for my schooling through Sallie Mae and my payments are very cheap! There are so many companies out there and most will be or are hiring pretty much all the time.

Let me know if you have any other questions. Most, if not all, doctor's offices and companies will not hire you unless you have the training and a certificate to prove it.

desertmom · 09-06-2008, 08:59 PM

Maggiemay, you can post names as long as you don't get referrals or rewards for doing so.

How did you find the job? Did your training company have people come to them looking for billers or did you answer and ad through the paper or Monster.com?

maggiemay1 · 09-06-2008, 09:08 PM

desertmom, I went to a school called Careerstep based in utah, just google them. I did not get hired by them. I then had to search for a job just like you would a regular job. Most companies have hospitals, doctor's offices, etc, that hire them to do all of their transcription. The company then hires transcriptionists to do teh transcription for them. I work for a company in California who is contracted with a hospital in Wisconsin that I type for. They send me the jobs over the internet via their platform or word processor. I type the report and submit it back to them and they send it on to the client where it goes into the client's chart for future reference.

Let me know if you have any more questions.

And, I don't do billing. I type the actual doctor's notes. The doctor talks into the phone and I type his report which is teh patient's visit and what was diagnosed and all that.

melsb · 09-07-2008, 01:59 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by maggiemay1

desertmom, I went to a school called Careerstep based in utah, just google them. I did not get hired by them. I then had to search for a job just like you would a regular job. Most companies have hospitals, doctor's offices, etc, that hire them to do all of their transcription. The company then hires transcriptionists to do teh transcription for them. I work for a company in California who is contracted with a hospital in Wisconsin that I type for. They send me the jobs over the internet via their platform or word processor. I type the report and submit it back to them and they send it on to the client where it goes into the client's chart for future reference.

Let me know if you have any more questions.

And, I don't do billing. I type the actual doctor's notes. The doctor talks into the phone and I type his report which is teh patient's visit and what was diagnosed and all that.

Thank you for sharing this. I've always wondered what exactly it was.

Missystuy · 09-07-2008, 07:23 AM

thanks so much for the info, def something to look into.