Post by Debi A on Apr 22, 2014 1:46:33 GMT
There has been some scuttlebutt and several posts lately on various FB boards where people are either talking about forming scoping agencies, acting like a scoping agency (but denying that they are, in fact, a scoping agency), or otherwise trying to drum up interest in some kind of "bundled" service (like a team of scopist/proofer who work together and only invoice the reporter once for both services).
I personally am violently opposed to the idea of scoping agencies because I think they are just a recipe for disaster. In my opinion, one of the most important aspect of a good reporter-scopist relationship is direct communication. You can't have that if there's one "lead" scopist who is farming out work to various others and the various other scopists are only allowed to communicate with the lead scopist and not the reporter.
I also have concerns about rates. One agency that was recently discovered billed reporters $1.20 pp, but the agency "owner" (this woman denied she ran an agency, BTW) kept .35 pp of that for herself. She claimed that she gave finished transcripts a "quick look" before returning them to the reporter, so apparently this justified her .35 pp charge. SMH.
As I've said so many times before, I watched agencies kill medical transcription. The big agencies went out and gobbled up all the work, offering faster and faster turnaround for less and less money, leaving the independent contractors unable to compete. And once that happened, there was nowhere to go but down. Transcriptionists who were highly trained were unable to find work that paid a living wage. The only people who would work for the horrible wages were those who were poorly trained. So the work product went downhill so far that it's really quite terrifying (have you ever really read your own medical record at your doctor's office? You'd likely be horrified at what you'd see there -- if not ready to file a lawsuit because your health history is misstated, your medications are listed wrong, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera).
I really don't want to see that happen to scoping, but I'm worried because I do seem to be seeing more it lately than I did, say, a year ago.
So I'm putting it out there. How do you all feel about scoping agencies? Would you work for one if you're a scopist? Would you hire one if you were a reporter?
Would really like to gather some more opinions on the subject.
I personally am violently opposed to the idea of scoping agencies because I think they are just a recipe for disaster. In my opinion, one of the most important aspect of a good reporter-scopist relationship is direct communication. You can't have that if there's one "lead" scopist who is farming out work to various others and the various other scopists are only allowed to communicate with the lead scopist and not the reporter.
I also have concerns about rates. One agency that was recently discovered billed reporters $1.20 pp, but the agency "owner" (this woman denied she ran an agency, BTW) kept .35 pp of that for herself. She claimed that she gave finished transcripts a "quick look" before returning them to the reporter, so apparently this justified her .35 pp charge. SMH.
As I've said so many times before, I watched agencies kill medical transcription. The big agencies went out and gobbled up all the work, offering faster and faster turnaround for less and less money, leaving the independent contractors unable to compete. And once that happened, there was nowhere to go but down. Transcriptionists who were highly trained were unable to find work that paid a living wage. The only people who would work for the horrible wages were those who were poorly trained. So the work product went downhill so far that it's really quite terrifying (have you ever really read your own medical record at your doctor's office? You'd likely be horrified at what you'd see there -- if not ready to file a lawsuit because your health history is misstated, your medications are listed wrong, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera).
I really don't want to see that happen to scoping, but I'm worried because I do seem to be seeing more it lately than I did, say, a year ago.
So I'm putting it out there. How do you all feel about scoping agencies? Would you work for one if you're a scopist? Would you hire one if you were a reporter?
Would really like to gather some more opinions on the subject.