MedQuist Class Action Settlement Goes to AHDI; No Money to Individual MTs

I would never join ADHI or consider becoming certified by them.  I've never had much use for them, but they completely lost me last year when I was visiting their site and saw their MT Week message outlining how the industry should move away from work at home moms and that they are lobbying for legislation to require CMT for ALL transcriptionists.  Ridiculous ploy for more money in their pockets.  The MQ settlement was just another slap in the face.  I'm a current MQ MT/ME, reluctant to leave because I love my accounts, but with the low morale/ASR on our team leading to lower production and unhappy clients, we're likely to lose them soon anyway.  Since it is not our family's primary income, I was hoping to make it the 3 years until I finish my degree in Education, but it's looking less and less likely every day.

I'm an MT with Medquist.  Does anyone in this group know what blogs I can participate in, not counting this one?

Settlements are suppose to compensate for a loss.  What exactly did AHDI lose?  A former employee.

I was a MQ employee for 6 years during the period in question.  I have never been a member of AAMT or AHDI and have no plans to become one.  Therefore the settlement won't benefit me one iota, but opting out of the settlement won't either, because I can't as an individual afford to take on this corporate Goliath.  Either the judge is totally naive as to the REAL role that AHDI plays in the life of the "average" MT, or he's also in bed with the Q.

This is quite a surprise.  I had gotten information regarding the lawsuit and was waiting to see how it played out, but I hadn't heard of this.  

I had worked part-time weekends for two years for MedQuist, due to my husband's illness and subsequent disability,  while holding a full time weekday hospital job.  Since I've been in the field for 20+ years, there isn't much I would want from the "AHDI Store."  

I would like the wages that I believe I had earned though, as I don't remember any entity called AHDI offering to transcribe my reports during those two years.  

So why is it they are getting my money?

Did you know that if you Google "MedQuist," almost every entry is an article about, and I quote, "the lawsuit-beleaguered MedQuist"?  HA!  Anyhoo. . . I only read the first few comments, but I must be the stoopidest person that ever worked for ye olde MQ because I hung in there for TEN years, thinking things would get better.  Wrong!  Every "improvement" made things WORSE.  My rallying cry was, "REMEMBER ENRON!"  I predict that MQ will ultimately collapse under the weight of its own incompetence and/or corruption, & I told them so more than once.  But, I digress. . . Settlement-wise, because "Procrastination" is my middle name (ha!), I didn't exclude myself from the lawsuit, which is not a big deal because I had no plans of suing anyway.  Nevertheless, the AHDI "benefits" are pretty much useless to me, as they are all targeted toward "beginners," i.e., educational packets & whatnot, whereas I have been transcribing for 26 years & have no need for any of that stuff.  I'm not even interested in a free year's membership dues.  Furthermore, the million dollars isn't even really punitive, considering what they pay their top 5 or 6 executives.  So, in a nutshell, I think the settlement is basically bogus, but I'm not losing any sleep over it.

Since when does a company not involved in the lawsuit who did none of the work receive a settlement for what I did not earn for the work I did.  Not only that, but recently  Medquist also lowered our rate of pay for speech recognition.  So who will benefit from that extra money.  Why is every company in America working against their employees.  Not only do they not pay us fairly they even go outside the United States to other countries for transcriptionists and try to take our jobs away.  We as Americans cannot win as long as big business rules.

I worked for MedQuist from 2000-2002 and went from making $28,000 down to $10,100 in 2 years.  I had to file bankruptcy due to this.  After 1-1/2 years, with making a lot of phone calls, I finally got a half penny raise.  It's unbelievable how MedQuist got out of this lawsuit, but it doesn't surprise me either.   I wouldn't recommend anyone working for them.  

I am absolutely furious with this company and their underhanded ways.  Their modus operandi (sp) is to buy smaller companies, i.e., Transcriptions Limited and YOG and leave "employees in the dark."  The MTSOs sold out in the name of trhe "almighty dollar" in light of having employees who were happy doing "their job" back in the 1980s and early 90s.  In general, Medquist turned the industry around to a negative effect.  I am barely making a living at my current job and having to work 12-14 hours a day  -- I totally agree with my fellow posters to the effect that the cost of living has gone up, but as medical transcriptionists our wages have gone down. %0d%0a%0d%0aFortunately, I am now with a company who has provided me with ample work

I spent 4 years with this company and often had to work OT without being paid.  I can't even imagine how much was taken from me.  Now they give it to an organization who does nothing for us....I would have been happier had they given it to an actual charity than this bunch.  All they do is pat themselves on the backs and travel to lots of meetings. What a joke.

How utterly ludicrous that ADHI gets the settlement money!  How did they even get in the middle of things?  As a former MQ MT, I became part of the lawsuit (unbeknownst to me) and I really am not interested in monetary compensation.  However, couldn't MQ pay out the money to ANYONE but ADHI?  It deserves to go to the MTs who saw their salaries cut in half (I did not).  

I am a CMT.  However, the only reason I am a CMT is because MQ promised more money to become certified.  This has benefitted me in no other way, shape or form.  AHDI has done NOTHING and I can't state that strongly enough, for the MT.  Go to any message board and when the name AHDI is mentioned, let the flames begin!  They are the most despised place there is to the MT.  

I can't wait to see what AHDI does with the money if they get it (and I sure hope they don't).  I know that there is no way anyone will benefit in a significant way, enough to say they got compensated for all the money MQ ripped them off.  

AHDI = a huge joke.  And no one is laughing.

Well gee whiz...aren't we ALL underpaid and underwhelmed by this. I am in the "class" and was bewildered when the notice showed up in my mailbox. You are right, no way to know how to capitalize on it. I think AHDI is greedy and will not release any $$ to any lowly MT.  I am sooo tired of companies griping and complaining about costs, but never complementing the vast majority of MTs who are dedicated, work hard, self-educate, sacrifice for the good of the company and I might add the patient, that last STAT that MUST go YESTERDAY. I can't tell you how much overtime I have put in at the crying insistence of supervisors, I have covered weekends, even though I was only hired to work from Mon to Fri. In the past 8+ years I have received a useless coffee mug (don't drink coffee), a gym bag (don't have time to go there or the $$) and a clay pot full of shredded money(don't ya think I wanted to spend time pasting it together) and no raise. NOT ONE! Just more and faster. But, every foreign holiday that comes along, the outsourced have received it and we have been asked to "cover" their schedules. Never got a 4th of July, sometimes Christmas and worked all the Thanksgivings. Nurses don't get treated this way and doctors get vacations and yet without us, no charts, no coding, no revenue. Sorry, after 20+ years in the profession, I am getting out. My CMT never brought me anything but  more headaches as to how I was to get the 30 hours CE without leaving the keyboard!! Yep, I am plain FED UP!!!

Yup, something is rotten in Denmark, my friends.  I never worked for, nor every would have worked for, Medquist, as I felt they were ripping off the transcriptionists.  Also, I thought it a bit odd that some of the recurring "big-wigs" in AAMT, now AHDI, were in the upper echelons of  Medquist.  

I too feel abandoned by AHDI.  When the emphasis was on education and improvement of MT skills, I thought AAMT was great.  But I saw a change of direction at one of the AAMT national conventions (sorry, I don't remember which one, but it was after Claudia Tessier took a back seat) and there was a debate in the House of Delegates about offshore transcription. The Hawaii Delegate and I both commented that WE were offshore and we certainly didn't get any special consideration like the Indian workers.  Someone on the Board made the comment that AAMT was the American Association for Medical Transcription, not the Association for American Transcription! My confidence in the association left the building immediately, and my membership soon after.  Some investigation would find that Indian companies at that time were putting a lot of money into AAMT's pockets.

Now that Medquist has been unquestionably outed, it is criminal that they have chosen to give the settlement money to AHDI rather than the people who earned it.  With the cross-relationships between Medquist and AAMT/AHDI, it is more like merely changing pockets in the same pair of pants.  Shame on them all.

Personally I think it sucks.  I'm no longer a Medquist employee and will be opting out of the settlement.

Thank you so much for this article and for my chance to blow off steam!  The idea of the settlement going to AHDI kind of reminds me of the $30,000 that MedQuist donated to the AAMT in honor of MT week, instead of giving each of us a bonus or raise.  I have been an MT for 25 years, and was outsourced to MedQuist 7 years ago.  Immediately, my salary was cut IN HALF, and I have had this exact same pathetic salary for the entire time I have been with them, with no increases, even though I have worked every weekend and holiday throughout my employment. I am self supporting, I am pre-foreclosure, I have declared bankruptcy, and I have no health insurance.  To top it off, my supervisor notified me just now that there will be no work for me tonight, nor will there be any until they can find some.  So, essentially, I have been notified today that I don't have a job.  She did add that I could do ASR work, because there is still a need for that, but I explained to her that I had done this before, and it resulted in a 30% decrease in pay.  So, it's either take the decrease, or have no job at all.  Of note, she did add that I am not being "laid off."  Obviously, this is MedQuist's way of keeping me from collecting unemployment. What a kick in the head!  This company is shamelessly unappreciative.  Those at the top deserve all the bad things I am wishing on them.

The Association for Healthcare Documentation Integrity (AHDI) has updated its website to include answers

I was an employee for MedQuist during the dates regarding the settlement.  I was shocked to just read that we get nothing.  I am fuming mad! It is our money.  Who has the right to spend someone else's money as they see fit?  That is like getting screwed all over again.  I don't need some membership; I need MY money that is due to me.  I will definitely send in my letter to object to the settlement.  That is ridiculous!

I worked there for only a year, but I was 99% to 100% accurate at all times and only quit because there were too many ESL doctors.  I asked for a raise at being at 7 cpl for almost a whole year and they said they are not giving out raises, that I was making as much as possible! It felt like I was being taken advantage of.  MTs are not appreciated for doing all that they do; afterall, we correct the doctors mistakes and are the back bone of the company, but we are paid so measley.  

I want MY money to spend it on my debts! How dare they?!?!

You know, it's very coincidental that the CEO of AHDI and MTIA has, in lieu of an election, appointed Eileen Dwyer, of MedQuist, to be the president elect of MTIA.  The timing is questionable and highly suspect.

I certainly DO NOT agree AHDI should benefit from this at all!!  Medical transcriptionists work very hard and to be taken advantage of by a very well-known national is difficult enough to swallow let alone AHDI getting money that they DO NOT WORK FOR!!!  Just because their memberships have declined doesn't help us any!!!  Maybe they need to look somewhere else for that answer.   Seems to me that AHDI would be taking advantage of MTs just as MedQuist did...hmmmmm.  If they were an upstanding association, they would decline it's use and insist it go back to the MTs who put a  lot of effort in providing sustenance for their families!!!  This saddens me deeply!!

I strongly disagree and object to the settlement.  I sent letters to the court and counsel telling them that I object with the distribution of the settlement to AHDI.  I encourage other MTs to do the same ASAP.

The distribution should be awarded to the many transcriptionists who pounded on their keyboards to make MedQuist the company they have become.  We are the deserving MTs who kept our skills fresh and our integrity intact.  We are the MTs who care about the future of the MT profession.  We are the MTs who are willing to stay abreast of always changing medical technology/terminology, often working overtime to type reports to keep an account in turn around time. We are the MTs who were not paid honestly for services rendered to MedQuist.

I do NOT believe that AHDI properly represents U.S. transcriptionists and I know this view is shared by many of my collegues. They have done very little to help the U.S. based MT profession. They do not stand up for U.S. MTs, do not work to keep our jobs in this country.  They instead line their pockets by becoming encouraging outsourcing and also by promoting costly classes for obtaining credentials. I do not feel that giving us a 1-year subscription to AHDI (or the various options) is just, nor does it represent any goodwill by MedQuist towards the MTs who were cheated during that time.

I was an employee of Medquist for 12 years and 8 years of that time period concerning the lawsuit. A lot of people told me over the years that Medquist was not being fair concerning their wage.  I didn't really have a problem with them until they closed all offices and went to just a few regional offices. When I was moving because of a job transfer on my husband's part, I was forced to quit. I really felt wronged by Medquist and after all my years as working as an MT, they finally "broke my back." I definitely plan to be a part of this settlement as I have been a member of AHDI for 30 years and I will feel that Medquist is in some way now righting a wrong on my part.

I will opt out of the settlement.  I am an ex-Medquist employee.  AHDI has done nothing to upgrade the transcription business and has no right to the settlement.  I find it hard to believe that they are being given anything!

One way of getting the money in my pocket is by participating in AHDI's program concerning this. I plan on taking advantage of this in order to receive some compensation, although I do not understand how AHDI enters into the realm of compensation.

...and you do realize anything going to AHDI is going to India to help fund their MTs, whether it be toward certifications, classes, etc.  The overseas MTs get quite reduced rates, but I requested a discount for hardship reasons and was flat-out denied, period, and was told they offered a discount once before but do not foresee any such happening in the future for American MTs.  (Of course not -- they need money to help the MTs in India).  

My guess is, as always, they will also make it more difficult for American MTs to actually get anything for free.  

The best thing they could do for me with my probably thousands of dollars I was shorted my MedQuist is to pay for my CMT, not that would be substantial and be of real benefit.  

...and it will never happen.  

I too am disturbed by the fact that Medquist employees are  required to learn and proficiently operate the latest medical transcription software, yet such additions to their skill sets and education were not compensated.  In fact when a new skill set was added (example:  voice recognition) wages were lowered under the guise that we could make it up in an improved line count as a result of the typing having been 'done for us.'  This was not the case.   The corrections are usually more painstaking and time consuming than straight transciption.  Therefore, the only way you can make any money at all is to ignore the voice recognition document and type from scratch; but the lowered line rate pay makes it impossible to earn what you did before, let alone make more money.  However, I do like voice recognition for new transcriptionists as it can serve as a tutorial as long as they do not rely on it when they are not absolutely sure about something.  I too have used it to compare mumbled or static words or phrases that I was not too sure of. It does cut down, just a bit, on researching answers.

While ADHI is offering classes, it would be nice to offer MTs basic foreign language classes in the languages of the MT's choice to familiarize them as to why English sounds so unfamiliar when spoken in ESL.  We need to know how people pronounce consonants and verbs in many languages to help us recognize a lot of the thickly accented dictation.

I am a former MedQuist employee.  I do not agree with the settlement at all.  I might would consider it if the 'freebies' from ADHI were for a lifetime period, but their not, they are only for a year.  Does it make up for what was stolen?  NO!  

The shaving of linecounts was only part of the underpay, nonpay.  I think the IRS and possibly even a deceived SEC may weigh in on what occurred:  after all, these are 1,000s of medical typists.  The lawyer fees in the memo-specific settlement are incomplete; typically, the lawyers consume most of the proceeds in these sorts of complaints.  I know IRS disliked my filing for unpaid work, and I refiled for that fiscal year.  I worked ten of the eleven years covered in the current settlement.  MedQuist actually paid excellent wages around Y2K, but soon executives switched, and the new world of speech recognition vitiated a once lucrative enterprise for independent typists.  The pity is the lowering of rewards for our learning, earning minimum wage for decades of studious research to improve our product is poor compensation for good faith learning.  One of the problems currently is the software output involves much gibberish which a good typist would never slip and type, so in a sense the new degraded payscale is more fair.  However, all the smart accounts seem to have left the clientele base, also adding to management's argument's validity that the work is much easier now than over the previous ten years.  The challenge is going to be upgrading the software for keyboard-smart typists, so we can excell in thruput as we used to do before Windows, then on Win 3.x platforms.  That, and figuring ways to retain the smartest transcribers.  The supervisors I knew who all quit predicted this crisis.  And, certainly, management must be worried about the global economy crunch, as well.  I have great hope for president-elect Obama's plans to infuse new energy into digital healthrecordkeeping; there are gross incompatibilities that are keeping doctors on a short leash, though liability issues have to be resolved.  Consider:  if you had a CT one year ago and an x-ray series, then appear for care in a hospital 100 miles from the first one, your urgent care providers and their emergent consulting specialists likely will have only fragments of those prior tests and their companion narratives dictated as baseline reference points.  Plus, HIPAA is corrupting the public image of English-As-Second-Language dictating physicians.  I hope Obama scrutinizes the quality of education for doctors, as well; the young physicians and their professors need lots of help improving their learning environment.  In sum, MedQuist has a dominant but fading position in a perilous environment, and is losing cred with its best workers.  This fiasco has yet to reach resolution.  I know how I plan to compensate for the lack of any meaningful share of the current "settlement".  If MedQuist pays me commensurately, I will help; but, right now, if they are content with automated intelligence, that is all they are going to see issuing from their typists, further opacifying the company's capability to discern a way to modernize, and to reward its key people.  Let's hope for brilliant management achievements, and yet further cases to bring more direct compensation to the best people.  Got to get back to work.

I appreciate having found your blog article, a deep pool of problems, if the author should have time to investigate, much of it confidential information, and with subtle legal implications.

I am very displeased with the money going to the AHDI.  I dropped my membership years ago because I felt abandoned  by the AHDI as a working transcriptionist as I do not feel our jobs have been protected and have seen not only my income, but also the income of fellow transcriptionists dwindle and have only personally encountered very few employers who recognize the accomplishment of obtaining the CMT and what that means to them.  I have watched AHDI thump their chests about creating education requirements for entry into MT and creating standards, yet have not seen this accepted and put into action in the last 20 years while I watch my profession being treated as if anyone can do it.

I think this settlement is wrong and cruel.  ADHI has nothing to do with the labor and loss of wages to the thousands of MTs who were not paid fair wages.  They have no right in any way to receive any monies from this settlement.  Even if I am only entitled to $10 in lost wages, that money should go to me, not ADHI.  If it is impossible for MedQuist to figure out what the loss was to each employee, then let the employees choose where it goes.  I would rather it go to a homeless shelter or other such cause that genuinely offers help to people in need than to go to ADHI.  I plan to opt out of the settlement.  It is so wrong to give any part of this settlement to ADHI.  I have yet to meet another MQer who is in favor of this settlement.  Check out MTStars.com to see how the employees feel about this.

The settlement, the amount of the settlement and the proposed distribution of the award is only symbolic.  ADHI could have sued for and won a lot more money and come to a fair retribution of funds amongst MTs.  This win is bitter-sweet for me.  I have taken a tremendous loss by way of Medquist's employee abuse; but ADHI's win did seem to have a positive impact on my burnout.  I feel like there is some bit of fairness in the corporate world.  However, their financial gain at the expense of the uncompensated difficult, painstaking and extremely technical work of hard working medical transcriptionists saddens me deeply.  Classes?  Free Classes and webinars to compensate for years and years of robbery???  The Plaintiff Class is being robbed again.  

Yes, I, too, received the above notice my mail this week.  As a long-time former employee who worked from home for Medquist, I now understand why I felt like I was making "chicken-feed" for all my hard work.  Not only was I not getting paid my rightful, agreed to wages, but having to rent a Dictaphone from Medquist for so many years (doubtlessly,  paying for the machine twice or three times over!), being required to pay for an extra phone line, etc.  My daughter seems to think that if we would collectively withdraw our names from the current settlement, since it does nothing to compensate those of us who were taken advantage of, we would be free to undertake a separate legal action in order to attempt to collect some monies due us.   Anything on the horizon?  I figure that I probably made $5.00 hour working from home, when everything is taken into account.  Medical transcription is VERY demanding and transcriptionists do their very best to provide an accurate report to physicians after much schooling to learn the language of medicine and its relationship to body systems.  I was treated well by Medquist office staff when I would call from home, but I was not earning nearly as much for my efforts as a previous in-hospital transcription job I once held and the Medquist physician dictation was just as demanding, if not more!  

Certainly everyone that has worked for Medquist can not possibly agree with the proposed settlement. AHDI only has a few thousand members, if that. This is a FARSE, pure and simple. I am having my name removed from the settlement, as I opposed the settlement in total. I am currently not an employee of MedQuist. %0d%0aLauren D. Spell-Michel

Certainly everyone that has worked for Medquist can not possibly agree with the proposed settlement. AHDI only has a few thousand members, if that. This is a FARSE, pure and simple. I am having my name removed from the settlement, as I opposed the settlement in total. I am currently not an employee of MedQuist.

Lauren D. Spell-Michel

Yes, that was a bit of interesting reading. I was surprised to read of the distribution to AHDI. Will I be taking advantage of the settlement? Yes.