As you might know, I work as an independent medical transcription contractor for a small MTSO. As per the terms mutually agreed upon, my employer is to wire transfer my paycheck to my bank account every fortnight, 3-4 days after the last working day of the fortnight is over. Just for the first few months of the contract, he was on time. In due course, it’s just excuses and not action. Now my paychecks are getting delayed by more than two months! (It was a three-month delay until June 2011.) One of his favorite methods of delaying a paycheck would be to sent the computation sheet first which implies that the amount has been transferred; however, it wouldn’t have been transferred in reality. Waiting for a week after the computation sheet has reached me, if I peck him again, the commonest excuse will be that it was a technical snag at his bank’s end that the paycheck got struck there! At least I feel awful in pestering my employer every now and then, but he takes it for granted!
One thing that I could notice in general with small medical transcription companies usually is that the owners mess up their personal finance with that of their company’s finance rather than not receiving payments at their end thereby leading to faltering of paychecks to medical transcriptionists.
You too might have noticed that to dump any extra work on us, an MTSO owner instantly would pull us on instant messenger or cell phone and once the work has been done, his phone will be switched off or his/her chat ID will be offline for ever!
Most of the times when I remind my employer of the pay through email, he would remain mum. So this post is aimed at helping all such MTSO owners to keep some excuses handy in tackling such embarrassing situations instead of remaining mum or becoming wishy washy. In this scenario, I presume it to be a small MTSO with just home based transcriptionists working for it as independent contractors.
First let me give some hints to the MTSO owners in avoiding such embarrassing situations.
- Hire an office assistant who is well versed in handling lies.
- Never visit your office on a payday. Make your car or home as the working office that day.
- Switch off your cell phone on the payday.
- If unable to switch off your cell phone anticipating some other important calls, never attend the calls from MTs, put it in a silent/vibrate mode.
- If the office assistant is not going to attend the office phones, make sure the calls get diverted to the voice mail box.
- Sign in to your instant messenger in stealth mode or never log in at all.
- Never reply an email from a medical transcriptionist whom you need to pay.
- If MTs are not familiar with your face, change your seat in the office on payday. Just don’t sit in your seat on the payday. Occupy the seat of your office assistant or somebody else instead.
- Hire only faraway MTs who can’t make it to travel to your office on a single day!
- Try if you could get any clue from tricks to tackle distraction in home transcription. Isn’t locking the front door of the office from outside with a big padlock and remaining inside by backdoor entry a great idea?
If an MT bypasses by any means all the aforementioned blocks in reaching you whether over phone or physically, here are the excuses that you can make at that instant as the situation warrants:
- We have not yet been paid by the doctor/clinic/hospital.
- I am on a vacation.
- It’s a bank holiday.
- It’s a long weekend.
- I am away on a weekend trip.
- I am sick.
- My family member is sick and I am assisting him/her at hospital.
- Somebody died at my home.
- My wife gave birth to a baby!
- There is a technical snag at my bank.
- It’s Christmas, New Year, Thanksgiving, or any other holiday.
- The accountant is off for a week.
- I am stranded in a remote place.
- I met with an accident.
- Our line count software has a bug which shows reduced line counts and we are fixing it up!
The third option is to flatter out the MTs and shut their mouth before they could raise voice regarding delayed paycheck. Here are a few samples with which you can flatter out MTs:
- We are still wondering how you could consistently churn out highly accurate reports with bad dictators! We are thinking of sending you to train our doctors on how to dictate.
- Hey, how come you could finish the works assigned to you so soon? Which typing program did you practice with? We want you to help other MTs improve their productivity!
- We were thinking about utilizing you as an EMR operator rather than a transcriptionist!
- Our outsourcing operations are in bad shape; we are thinking about appointing you as the operation head for our outsourcing operations!
Of course, these guidelines are for helping small MTSO owners. For big ones, some of these might still help or better hire a World Wrestling Federation (WWF) retiree as PRO (paycheck relations officer) to handle the large number of MTs! All these embarrassments could be averted by prompt payments; however, even the United States’ credibility has been downgraded to AA+ in fear of faltering payments; no wonder if MTSOs falter their payments to MTs!
Raj, you are working for a crook. Report this company to the online Better Business Bureau. Do not let them treat you like this because eventually you never will get paid. Believe me, it’s going to happen. It has happened to me, but it wasn’t an MTSO, it was a physician who paid me only with excuses.
June, that seems to be a brilliant idea, but do I have certain limitations in reporting to BBB as below?
1.) The BBB has this clause mentioned clearly on their site: “BBB generally does not handle complaints which are more effectively handled by other government or private agencies or the legal system, such as complaints involving employment practices, discrimination, or matters in litigation.” Won’t my case be related to “employment practices?”
2.) The restriction of geography of my location in effectively solving the issue through BBB.
It has been going on for the past eight years and I have reduced exposure to that particular company in the last two months until they could be current on my paycheck. Furthermore, the cordial relationship so far prevents me from taking any harsh stance but he exploits that to his favor.
Raj, I too have some ideas for those crooks.
1.) Hide the face with a mask.
2.) Live in disguise. Dress like the opposite sex; a man like a woman and a woman like a man.
3.) Employ bodyguards.
4.) Post a security guard at the office door.
5.) Cover the face fully with bandage pretending like having met with an accident and unable to articulate.
If I would have been in your shoes, I would have battered him by now.
You have hit the nail very hard indeed. As long as a non-player (non-MT) handles such companies, their first reaction on receiving payment at their end is to pocket the same and showing total inaction as to the payment to the MTs. I too suffered and unfortunately for us, that bloke sold the company to someone equally incompetent (but prompt in payment). Ultimately, the company is non-existent today. Like he bear with legion of doctors who do not know the alphabets of dictating a good report, this is also a professional hazard we have to live with. Reneging on a contractual obligation is simply cheating.
Thank you for highlighting this important aspect.