Alternative Work-at-Home Job, Business, and Income Ideas for MTs

These days often I am bogged down by the query to suggest alternative work-at-home job, business, and income ideas for MTs; an idea that could fetch a steady, reliable income; a job that is less tiresome and has better prospect than medical transcription. Amusingly, I too have been thinking in the same lines, about the alternative career options for medical transcriptionists for a long time, for me too to jump ship. Indeed you will still get a rosy picture on the Internet that medical transcription yet is a better paid job! But the truth is otherwise, medical transcription has a bleak future with the ongoing trend of events in the healthcare documentation sector. Of course, a medical transcriptionist must have a second income to keep the family boat afloat.

Though I do a lot of research for myself to make money online, I am still skeptical about my expertise to pin point you a perfect idea. I’m more interested in a business with passive income, with less intervention of mine rather than a work-at-home job or a day job. Hence I usually search the Internet for “making money online” rather than “work from home” and sieve through the information to separate wheat from chaff. May be my thoughts would be biased due to that but I will try to get out of that enthusiasm for a while here and would list here a few work-at-home ideas if some MT could find it useful and make use of it.

Data Entry

More or less, this is the same what we MTs have been doing all these days or rather I would say this would be one step backward as you don’t need any special skill except good typing speed. After all, we are medical language specialists! You just have to look at the hard copy or scanned copy of the data and type. However, if you are able to get competent rates compared to medical transcription, isn’t it a good option? The rates provided would be peanuts if you inquire any data entry services company in India. A better idea would be to find some genuine resource online.

Business and General Transcription

Here you will be transcribing conferences, teleconferences, meetings, annular general meetings, board meetings, seminars, speeches, lectures, webinars, podcasts, webcasts, interviews, workshops, radio/TV shows etc. So you can work with the same setup that you have been doing with medical transcription. The scope is unlimited. The rates are usually per minute of audio/video transcribed. The ease of getting freelancing work lies in your ability to prove your skills and convincing a potential client. Again, you are prone to get good rates if you are able to associate yourself with a client or a provider onshore than offshore. Keep trying persistently. Else, start working for a business and general transcription service provider as an employee and later find your own way.

Legal Transcription

Legal transcription seems to be another pair of shoes that a current MT could easily slip into except the odd of getting acquainted with the legal terminology. You will act as a typist to an attorney as you act as a typist to a doctor in medical transcription.

Though currently there is no formal education or training required to do legal transcription other than that you have already possessed with medical transcription, there are a few certification options like Accredited Legal Secretary (ALS), Professional Legal Secretary (PLS) etc., for those who are interested onshore. Earlier I have been skeptical whether voice recognition could thwart MTs and why shouldn’t it be the same fate for legal transcription too? However, the fact that legal transcription includes testimonies, interrogations, pleadings, court hearings, wiretap recordings and depositions, all of which are often not directly spoken into a microphone, the scope and pay do not seem to be as limited as that of medical transcription. Since the propensity for litigation is high in the US compared to elsewhere, the outlook doesn’t seem that bad as medical transcription. The hardship for a medical transcriptionist lies in adopting to the new role as a legal transcriptionist, convincing the provider to get the first work and regular workflow thereafter.

Medical Billing and Coding

The proposed transition in the US from ICD-9 to ICD-10 coding from October 1, 2014, is expected to further increase the need for qualified coders. (ICD is the abbreviation for International Classification of Diseases.) Hence this opportunity seems to be a very good, viable alternative for medical transcriptionists to easily step into. As is the case with medical transcription, you do not need any specific credentials to squeeze yourself into coding also. The salaries onshore seem to be better than medical transcription; coders onshore with a CPC credential (Certified Professional Coder) have an average earnings of approximately $46,800, and most coders onshore make $40,000 or greater annually. I am wondering if the CMTs are regretting now!

If you search the Internet for a work-at-home opportunity, medical billing and coding would be one of the prominent ideas that would prop up related to our field, medical transcription. However, you need to stop yourself from getting trapped in a medical billing job scam! It seems hard to land straightaway on a home-based medical coding and billing job as the providers are reluctant to give out these jobs to be done from home. Hence there are only a very few legitimate work-at-home job opportunities in this field. The next possibility may be to work for a medical coding and billing company as an office employee and later take the work home, as you did with medical transcription.

Virtual Assistance

I have seen couple of medical transcriptionists transitioning successfully as virtual assistants. Diane Saarinen (a.k.a., Diane Fusco) is one such veteran medical transcriptionist. She was a transcriptionist for around two decades and was blogging part-time on her blogs at ThrivingAndTranscribing.Com and ThrivingAndScribing.Com. She then transitioned to a virtual assistant and now to a public relations manager. She now runs a public relations firm called Saima Agency.

Virtual assistance involves helping someone in recurring tasks over the Internet sitting from your home that a personal secretary or an office assistant would be doing at an office on a computer. As a virtual assistant, you will be providing professional, administrative, technical, creative, or 100 other ways of support to clients remotely from your home office. To successfully switch over, you should have an open mind and willingness to explore unchartered territories in pursuit of knowledge. Your assisting skills earn money in virtual assistance and no formal education is required. You already have possessed a majority of the skills an assistant will have, like listening to what a doctor says and typing that, you are familiar with computer, Internet, MS Word, MS Excel etc. Anything you know above that will be an added advantage. The hardship lies in finding and joining a genuine resource.

Virtual Tutoring

If you have the affinity to teaching and children psychology and find happiness mingling with children, then Internet has made it a reality to do it from home. You need to find the right site suiting your aptitude, see the requirements to get onboard, fulfill them, and squeeze yourself in. There are umpteen sites providing opportunity for the right candidates, only you need to identify one. Search Google for “online tutoring” and “virtual tutoring.” The job profile requirements and terms and conditions vary from site to site. Don’t fall prey to any site asking for a deposit or any fees. Do proper research before zeroing in on any particular site. Indian MTs, you try to be associated with a site that pays remuneration in US dollars to benefit from the currency exchange arbitrage of USD to INR.

Web Publishing

Another alternative work-at-home-income opportunity for a medical transcriptionist is web publishing. A few medical transcriptionists have taken up this route and have successfully transitioned as webmasters. MT Desk, MT Chat, MT Exchange, Transcription Registry, Transcription Work at Home etc., are efforts of one such medical transcriptionist, Julianne Weight. Stephanie Foster is another MT who runs the site Home with the Kids. It is as simple as owning a blog (website), writing articles on a topic which you are passionate about, and making money by slapping ads around your site. Blogger, WordPress and Google AdSense has made it less tiresome for you. With Blogger, you can start it on your own for free from scratch. Else, you can go for a self hosted blog for a monthly expense of just $1.99. Alternatively, you can proceed straightway to buy an existing website or blog. While the process of starting a blog from scratch will test your patience as it would take months to rake in the revenue equaling your transcription income, an instant buy will start paying you from day #1; however, you need to have a decent amount of savings to buy one. If you think you have limited writing skills and doubt your ability to write on a regular basis, owning an online forum is another idea for you as the content there gets generated automatically by the updates of the members.

Online Affiliate Marketing

If you are less of a geek and a writer to own a blog and write contents on it, then an Internet affiliate marketing website could be for you. You could straightaway buy an income generating online affiliate marketing site and start earning from day #1. Again, you need to have some savings to invest, for buying out a good affiliate marketing site. Else, you could write an e-book or prepare some course material, put them on sale on a site, and then start promoting the site on the web. Michele Miller is one such medical transcriptionist who sells an e-book to start your own medical transcription at home business and an online medical transcription course.

Miscellaneous

Other ideas of making money online working from home like taking part in paid online surveys, form filling, posting ad, paid email reading, getting paid for browsing etc., seem just to be either scams or minuscules. You can’t make a full-time income from all those methods.

Bottom Line

The bitter fact is that overnight transition to a completely new role from medical transcription without a break in income stream seems next to impossible. Either you have to start any of the aforementioned options part time and migrate if the income stream becomes satisfactory enough to substantiate your transcription income or you have to depend on your savings until you build a new income stream, though the former would be wiser. However, none of the aforementioned work-at-home job, business, and income opportunities require any specific credential apart from what you have now but need just time, will, dedication, and patience until the hard work pays off. The other trouble is finding and landing on a genuine resource. You have the power of Internet at your fingertips; it is your friend if you use it for good. For information on any specific idea, scour the Internet and the respective forums for valuable information on reliability, feedbacks etc. Do your due diligence before you zero in on any of the ideas and their respective providers.

Apart from these, do you have any ideas about alternative work-at-home job opportunities for medical transcriptionists?