I recently saw the post of Indian Scribes (indianscribes@gmail.com) in a MT forum in India wanting to shortlist Freelance Transcriptionists/Medical Transcriptionists who could understand and accurately transcribe audio recorded in US/UK/Australian accents.
Is it the arithmetic that I find difficult to comprehend or that there are such fantastic medical transcribers in this profession that makes me wonder.
Requirement 1: Typing speed of 70 wpm.
This implies 280 characters per minute assuming (on the safe side) that the words on an average comprise of 4 characters (though medical terms can be as long as 22 characters or more). At 65 characters per line with spaces, 70 wpm would imply four lines per minute. That also means 280 lines per hour.
Requirement 2: Ability to devote at least 10 hours per week to the job.
That implies two hours per day of five working days. Correct?
Requirement 3: Ability to meet a turnaround time of at least 1 audio hour per day.
That implies a minimum of 500 lines in a 60-minute audio. Correct?
In other words a person should be able to transcribe 250 lines per hour and that too with 98.5% accuracy. In my opinion, to maintain such accuracy standards, a MT doing long hand would not have time to check medical terminology words in the medical word finders or new drug names on the net. Medical terms, drug terms, surgical terms, etc. are not plain Queen’s everyday spoken English. To me it seems the speed of 70 wpm has been set after arithmetical calculations above. And if a medical transcriber needs to check references, then he should have a speed of 80 wpm or 90 wpm or ……..or better still run a speech to text editor running in the background as Express Scribe downloads files so that the medical transcriber only has to edit and, hence, can go through it at a fast speed.
If I had to apply I would first check if my pockets are deep enough to invest Rs 45k (US$ 1100) for Dragon Natural Speaking software professional version 9 with a medical dictionary.
Sorry. I have yet to earn 45k working from home for the last six months where firms initially agree to give you 50 minutes of dictations after familiarization with a set of physicians. However, as soon as their immediate requirements are met, not only forget the minimum quantum of dictations/day but most of the time start using vague excuses like “their being little work today,” “first we need to give sufficient work to in-house MTs who are drawing a fixed salary,” “please look elsewhere for now,” “if you could do direct upload work at 90 paisa/line (2 to 2.25 cents/line) then we could consider,” etc. Some may even buzz you after a couple of months to see if you could do the extra work that they had by mistake downloaded from a MTSO and if I could do it for them in the middle of the night. Having gotten it done there chat ID blip on my Yahoo! IM map goes dead again. Forget the payment. It was a favor until next time. I better stop as I am going off the subject matter.
I hope some forum members at MT Stars are reading the plight of an Indian MT and may, henceforth, be less critical of outsourcing to India that holds one-sixth of the world’s population of those living below the poverty line.
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
HBMT aur Whore main kya Difference?
A home based medical transcriber is like a whore. A whore is also human and would like to familiarize with a small set of clients rather than have one and all clients. With a small set of clients, a whore can know them and understand their nuances better with each visit and, thereby, no how to please them the next time they come calling. If the whore gets infrequent clients who are only interested in voiding their libido and care not where they do it, you can never perform to get them to visit you again.
Now if this whore gets infrequent visitors, the clientage may be more but performance will be poor. So, though the brothel earns, the poor whore does not get an increase in pennies. If the clientage is regular then they stay longer and depending on the performance shower more pennies both on the whore and the brothel. Thereby, she feels honored and has an increase in earnings. She also feels that her time has been well utilized. Her clients will stick with her and her brothel, maybe even fix an appointment before visiting, and she does not have to work harder to get such clients to regularly visit her. What a contrast to that whore having infrequent visitors who to invite more of them has to display and work harder and earn less. The latter has no time for herself, go to movies, or do other chores beyond whoring as she can be asked at any time to take a client. She cannot refuse as she may then expose herself to looking for new brothels regularly.
But then there may be seasons that the well-off whore may have few of her regular clients. Not necessarily that they are not visiting her brothel, but just that the clients may be traveling with their spouses or want to try another one or the brothel may want to put the jobless ones on their panel to use too less such jobless ones leave her panel for more exotic pastures
That is what happens with home based medical transcribers too. There is no minimum guarantee of daily work (line count) or/and regular clients (dictators). If the HBMTs join big accounts like hospitals, etc. both their line count and quality takes a hit! Much of the time brothel owners (MT firms) recruit HBMTs for overflow work or quality of dictations being such that their regular office-based MTs take too much time on or find difficult to do or to break into new difficult dictators.
Have a look at the statistics. Work is available five days a week, Sunday and Monday no work, i.e. on an average for 24 days, excluding labor days, Independent Day, Valentine Day, and other lay off whore-days, no work and no earnings. Now if the HBMT wants to earn Rs. 10,000 (just $250) per month and gets paid (say) 80 paisa (just 2 cents) per line of 65 characters with spaces then he needs to do 12,500 lines/month, 520 lines/day of 6 hours. This is not a tall order as most brothels expect 92%+ accuracy @80 paisa/line. The query is how may HBMTs really get work equivalent of 12500 lines per month to do? How many of them get clean clear dictations and not whispering or Latin/Spanish accented dictators. Imagine a Spanish accented dictator, dictating a surgery at 100 meter sprint with a bad English pronunciation, grammatical errors, abbreviations, and fill in the blank yourself sentences!
It is really not worth being a whore (sorry) I meant HBMT in India at least. You will not earn enough to repair and maintain your “assets” let aside have a healthy diet and medical attention as propounded in the dictations, not to say anything about other expenses of daily living. Better join as full-time employees and earn at least a salary.
Now if this whore gets infrequent visitors, the clientage may be more but performance will be poor. So, though the brothel earns, the poor whore does not get an increase in pennies. If the clientage is regular then they stay longer and depending on the performance shower more pennies both on the whore and the brothel. Thereby, she feels honored and has an increase in earnings. She also feels that her time has been well utilized. Her clients will stick with her and her brothel, maybe even fix an appointment before visiting, and she does not have to work harder to get such clients to regularly visit her. What a contrast to that whore having infrequent visitors who to invite more of them has to display and work harder and earn less. The latter has no time for herself, go to movies, or do other chores beyond whoring as she can be asked at any time to take a client. She cannot refuse as she may then expose herself to looking for new brothels regularly.
But then there may be seasons that the well-off whore may have few of her regular clients. Not necessarily that they are not visiting her brothel, but just that the clients may be traveling with their spouses or want to try another one or the brothel may want to put the jobless ones on their panel to use too less such jobless ones leave her panel for more exotic pastures
That is what happens with home based medical transcribers too. There is no minimum guarantee of daily work (line count) or/and regular clients (dictators). If the HBMTs join big accounts like hospitals, etc. both their line count and quality takes a hit! Much of the time brothel owners (MT firms) recruit HBMTs for overflow work or quality of dictations being such that their regular office-based MTs take too much time on or find difficult to do or to break into new difficult dictators.
Have a look at the statistics. Work is available five days a week, Sunday and Monday no work, i.e. on an average for 24 days, excluding labor days, Independent Day, Valentine Day, and other lay off whore-days, no work and no earnings. Now if the HBMT wants to earn Rs. 10,000 (just $250) per month and gets paid (say) 80 paisa (just 2 cents) per line of 65 characters with spaces then he needs to do 12,500 lines/month, 520 lines/day of 6 hours. This is not a tall order as most brothels expect 92%+ accuracy @80 paisa/line. The query is how may HBMTs really get work equivalent of 12500 lines per month to do? How many of them get clean clear dictations and not whispering or Latin/Spanish accented dictators. Imagine a Spanish accented dictator, dictating a surgery at 100 meter sprint with a bad English pronunciation, grammatical errors, abbreviations, and fill in the blank yourself sentences!
It is really not worth being a whore (sorry) I meant HBMT in India at least. You will not earn enough to repair and maintain your “assets” let aside have a healthy diet and medical attention as propounded in the dictations, not to say anything about other expenses of daily living. Better join as full-time employees and earn at least a salary.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
India's Broadband in Doldrums
At http:\\broadbandforum.in one comes across various subscribers or to be subscribers complaining of one or the other private broadband providers.What they fail to understand is that how private broadband providers hoodwink the Telecom Regulator (TRAI) and the public in the area of last mile connectivity.
BSNL and MTNL provide last mile connectivity to your home/business premises be it of telephone line or ADSL2 broadband via the same. AirTel, Reliance, Tata Indicom, Sify, etc. do not provide last mile connectivity. This the private operators have passed on to local BSAs/CTOs who do not use the same technology in distribution of connections as BSNL/MTNL do.
BSNL & MTNL have multiwired cables coming from the local telphone exchange to each junction box of your locality. In the junction box there are DP switches for each telphone connection. These DP switches get connected to the telephone exchange via the multiwired cables. As a result repair of a fault in one connection does not result in all telephone connections in a junction box being switched off.
Private operators providing telephone connectivity are providing only wireless except for AirTel in some areas. Wireless can support internet connectivity at the most up to 144 kbps, the average being 56 kbps, not exactly broadband. As a result all private operators provide broadband connectivity through local BSA/CTO who get the same through a wired connection from the city office of the provider who in turn gets it via wireless/satellite form the provider's servers.
The BSA/CTO has just one cable emanating from their PC, unlike BSNL/MTNL who have multiwired cables emnating from their exchanges to different covered localities. This single cable goes piggy back via street lamps or BSNL/MTNL telephone poles and splits as per requirements of subscribers via splitters. The splitters split further depending on the direction where the subscribers are located, and so on.... So, if one subscriber has a problem, the tech guy will work at the splitter end from which the subscriber is connected. This will necessitate disconnection of BB connections down the line from there. This, in other words, means that the nearer a subscriber is to the office of the BSA/CTO the lesser the disconnections. This is the "bania" system of distribution of last mile connectivity provided by the local BSA/CTO for which he charges one time installation of Rs. 1500 and monthly charge of Rs. 100 over and above the broadband rate. This is the rate as of Sify Broadband.
Sify customer care is totally impotent to complaints from customers. For the fact, Sify has to just pacify the subscriber as the BSA/CTO can even threaten to cut of connectivity to an ever cribbing subscriber. The situation is worse with Reliance and Tata Indicom where the customer care guys only hear complaints if the the complainer first hears to their marketing talk of some of their other products not necessarily related to broadband, else the complainer will either receive no attention or abusive language.
TRAI seems to be another impotent watchdog who can only come out with white papers knowing well that it cannot force implentation as all the private operators will then cry hoarse of it not getting BSNL/MTNL to provide last mile connectivity, which has been a contentious issue for upteen years for fixed line connectivity turned down by DoT.
Now you got the picture? This is the way India's Government, Department of Telecommunications (DoT), TRAI, Service providers all in this order have to function. The subscribers who voted this "SOB" government to power are reminded constantly of their error.
Do send in your comments.
BSNL and MTNL provide last mile connectivity to your home/business premises be it of telephone line or ADSL2 broadband via the same. AirTel, Reliance, Tata Indicom, Sify, etc. do not provide last mile connectivity. This the private operators have passed on to local BSAs/CTOs who do not use the same technology in distribution of connections as BSNL/MTNL do.
BSNL & MTNL have multiwired cables coming from the local telphone exchange to each junction box of your locality. In the junction box there are DP switches for each telphone connection. These DP switches get connected to the telephone exchange via the multiwired cables. As a result repair of a fault in one connection does not result in all telephone connections in a junction box being switched off.
Private operators providing telephone connectivity are providing only wireless except for AirTel in some areas. Wireless can support internet connectivity at the most up to 144 kbps, the average being 56 kbps, not exactly broadband. As a result all private operators provide broadband connectivity through local BSA/CTO who get the same through a wired connection from the city office of the provider who in turn gets it via wireless/satellite form the provider's servers.
The BSA/CTO has just one cable emanating from their PC, unlike BSNL/MTNL who have multiwired cables emnating from their exchanges to different covered localities. This single cable goes piggy back via street lamps or BSNL/MTNL telephone poles and splits as per requirements of subscribers via splitters. The splitters split further depending on the direction where the subscribers are located, and so on.... So, if one subscriber has a problem, the tech guy will work at the splitter end from which the subscriber is connected. This will necessitate disconnection of BB connections down the line from there. This, in other words, means that the nearer a subscriber is to the office of the BSA/CTO the lesser the disconnections. This is the "bania" system of distribution of last mile connectivity provided by the local BSA/CTO for which he charges one time installation of Rs. 1500 and monthly charge of Rs. 100 over and above the broadband rate. This is the rate as of Sify Broadband.
Sify customer care is totally impotent to complaints from customers. For the fact, Sify has to just pacify the subscriber as the BSA/CTO can even threaten to cut of connectivity to an ever cribbing subscriber. The situation is worse with Reliance and Tata Indicom where the customer care guys only hear complaints if the the complainer first hears to their marketing talk of some of their other products not necessarily related to broadband, else the complainer will either receive no attention or abusive language.
TRAI seems to be another impotent watchdog who can only come out with white papers knowing well that it cannot force implentation as all the private operators will then cry hoarse of it not getting BSNL/MTNL to provide last mile connectivity, which has been a contentious issue for upteen years for fixed line connectivity turned down by DoT.
Now you got the picture? This is the way India's Government, Department of Telecommunications (DoT), TRAI, Service providers all in this order have to function. The subscribers who voted this "SOB" government to power are reminded constantly of their error.
Do send in your comments.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
