Sometime in 2001, while searching for things I could do for a living from home, I came across http://www.careerstep.com/, which is the site for Career Step. They offer medical transcription and medical coding training. At that point, I thought it was an interesting idea, but kept making all sorts of excuses as to why I couldn't do it at that time.

Through the years, I would think of Career Step again every now and then. However, because of different things in our lives, I would continually make excuses to not do the course.

In the fall of 2005, Career Step came back to my mind and Richard also thought about it. After much research and prayer, we decided that it was the right thing for me to do at that time in our lives. In February 2006, we used part of our tax return to pay for the program. In February 2007, almost exactly a year after starting the course, I graduated with High Honors, getting a 97% in both the Objective and Transcription parts of the final exam.

Since March 2007, I have been a working MT. I work from home as an independent contractor for another company. Through the years, due to changes in our family situation and schedules, I have actually worked for 6 companies at this point. I am very happy with the company I am at now, Advanced Transcription (http://www.advancedtx.com/) and plan on staying put for a long time with them.

During my time in the MT course, I had started an actual blog where I shared my thoughts about the course and the MT field once I started working. Throughout the last 3 years, I have not been diligent in updating that blog. I also feel that since I took the course 3 years ago and they have updated the cousre since that time, much of the information I shared on the blog was obsolete. I am no longer active in the Career Step Student/Graduate Forums either. For a time, I posted my daily stats for how many lines per hour I did and things like that. However, I have not posted those in a while. I feel that the blog has become outdated. Therefore, I have deleted that blog.

If you are interested in the MT field, one of the best places to look for information about the field and available courses is The Association for Healthcare Documentation Integrity (AHDI) (formerly AAMT) (http://ahdionline.org/Home/tabid/37/Default.aspx). They have links on their site about becoming an MT & things you should know before you enter the field. They also have links to different "approved" schools that they recommend. Although you can get a job without going through one of their approved schools, there are many companies that prefer you go to an approved school. Many times, if you go to an approved school, companies will waive their experience requirement if you pass their employment test. However, if you go to a school that is not AHDI-approved, there are fewer chances they will waive the actual work experience requirement.

One other thing I wanted to address here is the topic of income as an MT. I honestly hate all the ads I see in Reader's Digest and other magazines or on TV that say that you can earn $40,000 a year as an MT. I know previously even Career Step's site said that. I'm not sure if it still does or not. Those ads aren't completely wrong, but they give you the impression that you can earn that much right away as an MT, which is wrong for most MTs. The truth is that most MTs start out earning anywhere from about $5 - $10/hr in the first 6 months to year (usually anywhere from $10,000 - $25,000 total in that first year). After the first year, many can earn $15,000 - $35,000+ depending on things like full-time vs part-time, clinic work vs acute care (hospitals), only a few doctors vs many doctors, straight transcription vs voice/speech recognition, good use of a text expander program vs poor use of one or not using one at all, etc. There are many, many factors that go into what you can earn as an MT, especially since we are paid on based on our production and not by an actual hourly or yearly rate.

There was one woman I knew from the CS forums who said she earned $8,000 working 30 hours a week, night shift and weekends, in her first year. She said she earned $24,000 her second year, working the same hours. In her 3rd year, she increased that pay to $50,000 - $55,000, again working the same hours. She used a timer and challenged herself all the time to beat her production from hour to hour & improve herself constantly. She was older and didn't have kids at home, although she did have animals and other responsibilities to attend do besides her work each day. Although her example is marvelous and gives us all something to work for & try to achieve, I believe that most of the MTs I know are moms with little ones at home who try to juggle reports in the middle of dealing with the kids and/or who are working in the early morning or late night to try to get work done while the little ones are sleeping. Therefore, the majority of the MTs I know stay around $10,000 - $35,000 per year after 1-3 years (or more) of working because of our kids or other distractions during the day.

Personally, I started out with the equivalent of about $7 - $10/hr for my first 4-6 months & then was at about $12/hr for a while. Currently, after working about 2 years 4 months, I earn $16 - $18/hr depending on the day and the accounts I'm working on. There are people who earn more than I do as an MT and there are those who earn a lot less. It really is a huge varying range of earnings. I believe that it's important for people who are looking into the field to know that instead of being deceived and having false expectations before deciding to take a course and be trained in this field of work.

MT Resources

Some people have asked about a stopwatch program that Richard wrote for me to help keep track of my time as I transcribe. I decided to go ahead and post it here so people will be able to use it if they want. It's nothing fancy just a stopwatch. It does require Microsoft .Net 2.0 or higher to be installed. So it only works on Windows-based systems. Most computers should already have this installed. Just try the program and if it doesn't work then you need to download .Net. We are not sure which versions of Windows it works on. We do know that it works on XP and on Vista but sure about 2000 and earlier. It is in a zip file, there are two files in the zip file. One is a configuration file that you do nothing with, the other is the program file. All you do is unzip the files into a folder and use the program, there is no install file. If you want an icon on your desktop for it, just right-click the program name & select "Send To Desktop" or "Create Shortcut" & then it'll put an icon on your desktop for it so you don't have to go to the folder all the time to open it. This program is free to be used by all. I hope it helps you like it helps me.

This sample cover letter and sample resume were given to me by another CS grad. I am sharing them here with her permission. I found these wonderful, not only because they helped me with formatting a simple resume, but also because of all the great comments she put on them explaining what to put in each section. They are Word documents. Feel free to download them.

This is an Excel spreadsheet that I made when I was in the CS course in order to track my productivity. You can use it for the course and also once you start working. Here is an explanation of the different columns in the spreadsheet:

This is a list that another CS student gave me. A similar list came straight from the course, but the one from the course had some extra explanations in it. This is a simple list of what is included in common laboratory tests. It is a Word document. Feel free to download it to use as a resource.


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