Is Speech Rec Wrecked?

The standard is now 1/2 pay and even less than 1/2 for SR editing industry wide.  I work two jobs w/ a mix of VR and traditional transcription.  At 300 lines per hours I earn $11.40 or $12.00 per hour.  Sorry, but this is not realistic pay for a highly skilled job.  It is heartbreaking to enter this field and find that top pay is $12. hourly.  I really don't think that an individual can achieve over 300 lines hourly every hour for 40 hours a week.  It is not realistic.  There is too much research involved especially with acute care, too many times that you have to manually fill in patient details because they don't come up automatically,  just too many doctors names and spelling that need to be researched, on and on....  Every half way decent dictator is put on SR, so it is literally the worst time consuming dictators left for traditional transcription which means even producing 150 lph for 7 to 10 cents per line is not realistic.  All across America we have MTs working for less than minimum wage.  We are the ony at home workers not being subsidized for our equipment and technology cost.  People are working at home more and more and companies in every other industry compensate for equipment, phone hookup, internet...  Because this field is female dominated, we really do settle for way less than we deserve especially in acute care transcription which anyone who has done the work knows is not and can never be as fast as clinic work.  Again, it is so heartbreaking to find a job I love, devote literally my life to it, to find that earning a living wage (even minimum wage) is not realistic.  I would like to thank Jay for speaking up.  We need to band together to make this a viable career choice.  We know the AHDI is not working for us, but against us.  We need to form an organization.  It would not be unrealistic to ask the AFL CIO or other organization to help guide us.  I know we are all settling for even less and less because of the economy and the fact they ship our jobs, but that is no excuse to earn substandard wages for highly skilled work.  We should at least be able to earn 1980 wages doing this.

You make some very good points, Bob.  I know of some employers who have, in fact, gone to a compensation model consisting of base pay plus production incentive, and they have had good success with that.  I imagine that the vast majority of MTs working as SR editors would benefit from such an approach.  

Thank you for your insights.

If MLS productivity increases 50 percent, then a line rate reduction of 33.3 percent would keep a MLS whole.   This is, in fact, the employer’s view of line rate based MLS compensation.  I agree that a line rate cut above 33.3 percent takes money away from a MLS group where SR productivity is 50 percent greater than transcription productivity.  However, another problem with reducing the SR line rate relative to the transcription line rate is that in any group very few MLS are average.

From the viewpoint of an individual MLS using the group’s average SR productivity lift will not result in pay equity for many MLS.  While about one-half of the group will be above average, the other half will fall below average.  The MLS doing well with speech recognition (achieving 50 percent or greater productivity lift) will be happy with an average approach to setting the SR line rate but the other half will take a pay cut and will be unhappy even though the employer pays out, in total, the same money for SR as for transcription.

Reducing line rates for MLS en masse when SR technology is introduced based on reduced line rates determined from the average productivity increase, will result in many unhappy MLS.  Such an approach ignores some important factors:

• One-half of the workforce will fall below average SR productivity lift and will make less money than they made in transcription

• MLS who reach the average SR productivity increase level will do so at different times relative to their introduction to SR requiring an individualized analysis to determine SR pay equity

• Continuing developments in SR technology are likely to result in more accurate SR drafts which may result in further line rate reductions  

• SR process improvements may result in increased productivity which will increase pressure for additional SR line rate reductions  

Line rates have been a source of MLS frustration for a long time.  SR introduced significant changes that added to this frustration and continued reductions in SR line rates as SR productivity improves will create ongoing MLS dissatisfaction.  Changing the MLS compensation model to include a substantial fixed component (e.g. hourly pay) plus a smaller portion of production pay (line rate) would significantly diffuse the issue.

Bob, I have no problem with SREs having their line rate reduced AS LONG AS the reduction in line rate is proportional to the increase in productivity provided by the technology.  But if an editor's line rate is cut in half, but the technology only provides a 50% increase in productivity (which is about average, in my experience), then the SRE has just taken a significant net pay cut.  Certainly experienced MTs who have adapted their skill set to that of a speech recognition editor should not be financially penalized because a vendor made unrealistic promises about how much his software would increase productivity, wouldn't you agree?

Competing forces are vying for savings from increased productivity created by technology such as speech recognition:

• Medical Language Specialists many of whom are paid by line

• Speech Recognition Technology whether purchased or owned

• Health care providers looking for savings from reduced medical transcription costs

• B2B services such as outsource medical transcription companies

Line pay for Medical Transcription can account for 75 percent or more of direct production costs.  If line rates for a speech recognition editor (SRE) are not reduced relative to Medical Transcription rates, then 75 percent of all productivity savings will go to the SRE.  If, for example, SRE productivity is 40 percent greater than transcription, the SRE receives a 30 percent raise (40 percent times 75 percent).

If SRE rates are not reduced, the remaining productivity savings are not enough to pay for speech recognition technology, which can cost several cents per line, and also meet the needs of health care providers for savings.   Health care providers are looking for savings in the form of price breaks from outsource medical transcription providers or from in-house medical transcription savings.

Speech recognition is having a significant impact on the medical transcription industry and a healthy distribution of savings among the competing forces is needed to maintain a thriving industry.  Changes from speech recognition and other technology developments such as templating will continue to challenge the medical documentation industry to adapt with equitable representation for all competing forces.