Accentus Inc. review: Mistreatment of employees 65

Blizzah, I agree with you. It is possible to earn a decent living as an MT. If people worked as much as they complain, their production just might increase.

Your account must have NO ASR/Voice Recognition documents, if you able to use a word expander. Not sure that using a word expander would help everyone. Some use a "virtual machine" on their computer. Not even sure that Accentus allows the use of any type of word expanders. Shortcuts certainly do not work in VR documents.

Well I'm glad someone knows how to use Photoshop...

I had to write in my $0.02 worth as someone who has almost 12 years of work as an MT and 6 years as an MT supervisor. My husband was transferred in 2010 to a remote location, so I quit an in-hospital job. I found employment with Accentus shortly thereafter, and for two years tried very hard to make it work. My word expanders did not work with Accentus software. The account I was on frequently ran out of work and other MTs quit after 3 or 4 months. My team lead was rude and unhelpful. When my gating period ended, she continued to enforce a 10-dictation per day limit on me for another three months despite my infractions being all in formatting and not in context. VR made up almost all of the account I was on, so my earnings were terribly low. Thank goodness for my husband and my savings. When my 10-dictation limit was lifted, I was rarely working because the account had so many MTs there was never enough work to go around, and when I asked about being trained to work on a second account I was told that Accentus had enough MTs already.

I do know how to use photoshop but it wasn't necessary. My next pay will be over $3000.

To the MT making $1500/week - I have to agree that some people can do this. I can average $30-40/hour on an easy account with plenty of work. However, if I have a difficult account or an account that runs out of work, it is very difficulty to make $30-40/hour, and yes, sometimes it seems like I only average about $10/hour. To all the MTs complaining on here, you really should stop and think about why you feel you are not making that much money. Do you sit diligently at the computer working non-stop? How often do you get up to take care of your household chores? How many personal phone calls do you have a day? For those of you with small children, how many times do you stop typing because someone is saying "Mommy"? I bring these questions up because not too long ago I had to answer all of these questions myself and I realized that I really wasn't spending as much time typing as I thought! To make money as an out-home MT, you MUST be self-disciplined! You must sit and type when there is work. When an account is slow, you just have to figure out when the dictation is being loaded and adjust your schedule accordingly. This is not an 8 to 5 profession. You might have to work a couple of hours in the morning, a couple in the afternoon and get the rest done at night. If you want a straight 8 hour/day job, this is NOT the profession for you! Accentus is not that bad of a company...certainly not any worse than the rest. You people just need to quit whining and get transcribing or else just get out of the business all together!

And by the way...I am not in any way affiliated with Accentus, before all of you start accusing me of that! I am just an MT trying to make a living for my family and wish that you whiners who aren't cut out for this work just move on so the rest of us can make the money we need!

Your insults are unnecessary, rude and callous. In case you forgot, THIS IS A COMPLAINTS BOARD. The MTs are on here specifically to complain. Not really sure why you are on here. It seems to complain about the complainers? Or maybe to brag how perfect you think you are. I really doubt if anyone else is interested in your opinion or would agree with you that "Accentus is not that bad of a company." This is a complaints board specifically for Accentus complaints and mistreatment of employees.

Quit whining Santanblanna. People are entitled to post whatever they want. Just shut it, and get to work!

Dear Just get to work: Your attitude and language just another perfect example of an Accentus Team Lead and/or Accentus management.

I am not a team lead for Accentus, nor do I work for them. I am an MT who works hard. Just sick of all the whining going on.

Well, 'Just Get To Work, ' if you're sick of all the whining going on, why on earth do you keep logging in to this site. Surely, for someone who is an MT who works hard, I would think you would have better things to do than read the Accentus Complaints Board. So, 'Just Get To Work, ' butt the hell out of this site and (you all know what is coming next) 'JUST GET TO WORK.' As someone has already mentioned, this is a complaints board. People log in to complain. Nobody forces nitwits like you to log in and read the complaints. So, Get Back to Work!' Oh, and don't forget to let us all know how many thousands of dollars per week you are making. That's what holier than thou delusionals like you usually do! I'm surprised you haven't banked enough to retire by now!

I too tried to work for this company. I have over 30 years' experience as an MT, yet they put me on accounts where the team leads were not MTs - one was a former nurse and the other worked in IT. I then switched to another account where they did not tell me they did more voice recognition than transcription and decided, after 3 days, that "I was not good enough for the team". On a third account, the team lead marked things incorrect that were actually correct, and was very disparaging with her comments. While I made decent money when I could work, I became very ill and was not able to get to a computer for some time and they unceremoniously terminated my contract. At this point, I make more money at home with private clients than I could ever make with Accentus.

I am a recent graduate from a BC college. I just finished my 3-week practicum with Accentus. What a nightmare that was. For 3-weeks I was sent insulting emails, no matter how long I spent on making sure my reports were correct and error free, there was always something wrong. Even though on my gating reports I was around 92 - 96%, I failed. What the hell is that...I would say that is a pass, at least in my books. I would spend a few hours replaying my crappy tapes to make sure that I had everything down correctly, and I would do my research on drugs.com/google/stedman's/and any other resource I had available. When my team lead said, I did not know how to research my material or that I did not spend enough time researching, that was the last straw. I was done with Accentus and I would not want to work for these people no matter what. To be underpaid, degraded, demoralized is just not worth it. This company should be investigated and put out of business. How do they get away with paying below minimum wage and then belittle you and make you feel worthless. Thanks Accentus for the pleasant experience. I am sure to pass this on to everyone.

I find it impossible to make above $10/hour with Accentus. In response to the rude, callous, demeaning, and holier-than-thou words from fastphalanges: I have worked from home for many years (for a hospital and now Accentus because my hospital outsourced to Accentus), am disciplined, turn off my cell, don't have laundry going, etc. I treat this job as if I were at the office and in fact dress the part too. FWIW in hospital, where I worked for 15 great years, I churned out 100 to 120 minutes per shift. But then, work was constant and I got the hang of some very difficult dictators.

I have been sitting at my computer for four hours. So far today, a total of 15:36 worth of dictations have come my way. Only 2:07 of that has been straight-out dictation at $1.15/minute and the rest voice recognition at $0.70/minute. I notice that a total of 44 MTs plus two team leads are logged onto the system. This account is for a hospital in which I worked as an in-house MT for almost nine years and was part of a team of 15, a mix of full-timers and part-timers. With 15 people, we never ran out of work but we rarely fell behind either. But 44 people?

My account is overstaffed to the point where all I get is between one ten minutes of voice recognition per hour loading up in my inbox. I have been charged the equipment rental fee for four straight pay periods despite it not being my fault that I can't hit 200 minutes of dictation a week, and that is with me in front of the computer between 10 to 14 hours a day, six days a week.

The problems other posters have with their team leads has been my experience too: insulting and disparaging correspondences including a phone call in which the team lead basically called me names. In fact, of the 12 in-hospital MTs who with me went over to Accentus, only two of us stayed beyond six months. My own managers held Accentus in such low esteem that they did not accept Accentus contracts to be team leads. For me, though being an MT is my passion, I'm looking for a way out...unfortunately in the area where I live, outsourcing to Accentus has been the way to go for nearly every hospital. I have to agree, when one looks up past reports there are many mistakes. I have seen 'Advil' typed instead of 'Advair' on a patient's medication list as an example. I think this is what happens when the focus turns to productivity and time instead of quality. Alas outsourcing seems to be the way to go because the bigwigs main concern is saving money.

As a result of hospital outsourcing, I have lost my living wage salary and benefits. The Accentus recruiter gave the soon-to-be ex-in-house-hospital MTs a pep talk about how Accentus has a "comprehensive benefits package" available but it turns out that isn't the case and in fact this recruiter ignores us when we email and when we call her about it, she denies ever saying anything about benefits.

I only hope to goodness that Vancouver Coastal Health and Providence Health Care see some of these comments, so they don't give Accentus the contract. There have got to be better companies out there for this huge account. By better companies, I don't just mean serving the client, but also treating their MTs fairly and with respect. Oh my goodness, I only hope someone, somewhere, with a bit of clout, investigates this company and holds them to account for their terrible mistreatment of their MTs. I only hope the BC conglomerate of hospitals (which is a HUGE account) looks for a company that treats their MTs as fairly as they, themselves, treat their own employees. In the real world of real live hospitals and facilities, Accentus wouldn't last 5 seconds. If the unions didn't get them, the Labour Relations Board certainly would. Fingers crossed they do not get this account and hopefully the word will get out and they will lose all their other accounts. (Let them eat cake!) I wonder if we could forward this website to people who matter in the hope that Accentus is nixed in the outsourcing world. Horrible people.

Re. Vancouver Coastal Health and Providence Health Care. Does anyone know if Accentus actually GOT the contract? HOPE TO HELL THEY DIDN'T! Really feel sorry for the MTs who used to work in the hospital and got hoodwinked into signing up with Accentus with all their false promises and talk of great wages and the 'FREEDOM' to work when you want. NOT THE CASE. If any of you got e-mails from Accentus promising you benefits, etc., etc., then you have it in writing! Why not take it to a lawyer and sue the ###! It's about time somebody did!

Below is a VERY INTERESTING article printed from Yahoo Finance on April 30, 2012.

Of particular note: "Accentus increased its billings to Providence Health Care and the three other health authorities by 151 percent between the fiscal years 2006/2007 and 2010/2011." So THEY INCREASED THEIR BILLINGS BY 151 PERCENT WHILE CUTTING THE WAGES OF IT'S OWN MT's FROM $1.17 per dictated minute (manual typing) to $1.15 per dictated minute! Is there anybody out there who is in a legal position to stop these criminals before they take over the whole damned MT World! (Puts me in mind of Nazi Germany!)

VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(Marketwire - April 30, 2012) - The Hospital Employees' Union is raising the alarm about Lower Mainland health authorities' plan to completely contract out in-house medical transcription even though costs for limited outsourcing of this service ballooned from $2.4 million to $6 million in just four years.

The deadline for bids on the medical transcription contract was April 26. Providence Health Care (PHC), acting for Fraser Health, Vancouver Coastal Health and the Provincial Health Services authorities, says it will lay off 130 medical transcriptionists once the contract is awarded.

It's all part of a government-mandated exercise to shave $100 million from health budgets in the Lower Mainland. They say that contracting out medical transcription will save $3 million towards this goal, mostly in labour, rent and technology costs.

But an HEU investigation of health authorities' financial documents show that Ontario-based Accentus Inc. - a for-profit medical transcription firm - increased its billings to PHC and the three other health authorities by 151 per cent between the fiscal years 2006/2007 and 2010/2011.

Outsourced medical transcription is usually performed by home-based subcontractors who must put in about double the hours to earn the same wage, and work with few benefits.

HEU's secretary-business manager Bonnie Pearson says that contracting out of medical transcription is too big a risk.

"Based on their track record, I'd say health authorities will have a hard time controlling costs if they contract out 100 per cent of their medical transcription, " says Pearson. "In addition, outsourced medical transcriptionists do not have access to secure electronic medical records or other health care team members within the hospital system.

"Our in-house medical transcriptionists already spend a lot of their time editing and correcting outsourced work. What will happen if all the work is contracted out?"

Pearson also says British Columbians should be concerned about the privacy of their records, which would now be produced on personal computers by home-based contractors across Canada.

Medical transcriptionists are responsible for transcribing physicians' dictation of surgical procedures, consultations, patient histories, test results, and various other reports.

Backgrounder at www.heu.org.

..Contact:.
.Mike Old
Hospital Employees' Union
Communications Director
[protected](c)

Contact Mike Old of the Hospital Employee's Union, details above. Hopefully, the union still has some power to keep fair wages and benefits for those lucky enough to be employed by a hospital.

Anybody out there know of any GOOD Canadian outsourcing companies. I am looking for work but there's no way in hell I'd work for Accentus. Just want to make a living wage without having a nervous breakdown to earn it. Thanks.

I just read that one MT has benefits that she's complaining about! Well, holy cow, Batman. Do you pay for benefits for the guy who fixes your roof or paves your driveway? And someone else complaining about $1.17 per dictated minute? Awesome! I knew going in that I would be paid $1.30 (!) until I was trained and out of gating, and that my pay would go down to $1.15 (!). I, too, had to upgrade my computer equipment. For my accounts, I needed to download an entirely separate Microsoft XP system, and that takes space, I'm afraid. It is the cost of doing business. I made a choice. I also chose to work at home as an independent contractor, and to me, that means that Accentus is my client. I made an arrangement with them that was, yes, on their terms, but acceptable to me; otherwise, I would not have signed the contract. Do I wish we were paid more for our expertise? Of course! But this is the way it is, and if we don't like the pay or how the industry is shifting so that hospitals no longer hire MTs, then we can go back to school. That's what we did when we were last looking for change, and it will work again.

As an aside, I've worked for other large MT companies, and believe me, they compensate and respect less than Accentus does.

I am experienced medical transcriptionist, but new to Canada. Can anyone direct me a proper path to go in that direction. I have read the discouraging stores and i am bit scared. thanks.

Once you question a pay discrepancy between advertised and verified by an HR employee but missing from your contract, they assure you that everything is fine and then all of a sudden your QA score, which was good, takes a huge nosedive. Next, you are told you made errors that you know you did not make. Then they call you and terminate you. I don't know how these people sleep at night. These companies are getting away with "murder" and something needs to be done about it. After my experience with Accentus, I am seriously thinking of hanging up my headphones because it seems like they are all that is left. I am disgusted with their lack of integrity and deviousness. They want to pay employees strictly on production and that is not legal. Because I knew that, and told them so, I was let go - all to save a dollar here and there. QA can come up with some really ridiculous errors that you supposedly made and then they tell you that you aren't up to par - but were a couple of weeks before as stated in an email. Stay away from them.

I have been working toward becoming a home-based MT. I am mortified at all the horrible mistreatment these MTs have had. I used to work at a call center and the similarities are almost exact. They are sweat shops - nothing less than slave labor.

Is there any hope for someone like me getting decent work for at home medical transcribing? Does anyone know of any medical transcribing companies who treat their MTs like human beings?

Another Canadian hospital has outsourced to Accentus and the results aren't pretty!
http://www.stthomastimesjournal.com/2013/04/09/quality-of-hospital-transcription-services-suffers-with-outsourcing-worker

I began working for Accentus after 2 years working as a casual MT with no full time jobs opening. It has been almost 18 months with them, and most of the negative experiences already posted, I have personally gone through. Believe me, I'm not making much extra income because work always runs out, and the team leads were rude and patronizing. Eventually I got moved to a new account where my team lead was new, but I didn't think anything of this because we all start from somewhere. This new account had primarily foreign dictators I had trouble with, and on my first day of gating one incident sticks out in my head: despite spending TWO HOURS trying to figure out what one physician was saying on a three minute file, looking up 50+ past reports (which were all dictated by residents and interns, not the physician) I finally sent it in with several blanks. The next day, I received a nasty phone call from this team lead who called me incompetent for the blanks and lazy because I didn't spend enough time looking up old reports as supposedly I could have filled in 100% of the blanks! Really? Because I sure didn't find them! Team leads are paid by the hour and make more than the $1.72/hour I made on that one problem dictation! She also "corrected" things that she deemed wrong even though they were right in the first place as per the hospital's style guideline document.

I have nothing positive to say about Accentus except being able to work from home and write off a portion of my rent, internet, and electric bills. On a good day when I get work from them, I can make minimum wage. I would stay away though from this company, the lack of pay and terrible treatment are not worth it.

Working for Accentus is not a good thing if you have little experience - new graduates. I am currently working for Accentus for over five years now and am really happy. I have almost 20 years experience typing in hospitals, clinics etc. I make very good money working about 5 hrs./day, Monday-Friday, and make about $120/daily. You have to be accurate, have great typing skills and speed - if you don't, don't bother applying. For the record the comments about the team leads are uncalled for. The Radiologist's are the ones that determine who works and who doesn't. If they are not happy with the reports some transcriptionist's type then they are the ones that have them "kicked" off the team. As well, I have never had an issue with the IT department - very helpful - or anyone else involved with head office at Accentus for that matter. If you were let go or work was not there to do it is probably because certain MT's just don't cut it. Think twice before applying if you have little to no experience! Some of these people that complain need to take responsibility for the fact that they just don't meet the standards set to work here and don't blame others for your failures.

I have worked for accentus for 9 years now. If you guys think it was bad a couple years ago, you should see it now. The VR pay has been further cut to an insulting 56 cents a minute! There is almost zero traditional transcription on the account I am on. To make matters worse, the computer system they have moved us to, is caveman-like and makes things take twice as long as they used to. To make matters even worse than that, they have completely removed any ramp-up pay for newbies. And to make things pretty much unbearable, their IT department are a bunch of fools. They take upwards of a week to get back to you now (I just waited 9 days for the last call and was unable to work) and so you are sitting there making NO money while you wait. Their virtual machines (which by the way are actually illegal as they are not for commercial use - somebody should report them but I don't know who to call) are a total joke and are constantly freezing and don't EVER work properly which also contributes to how little money you can make in an hour. And I agree, their contract in NO WAY benefits the MT. It is a one-way street and it's disgusting. They only care about the bottom line. They don't care that there are people behind the phone or computer trying to make a living. I wish we could form a union of some sort across Canada and change this!