We are at the fag end of 2009.  Yet another year has passed so quickly and we are older (and wiser) by one more year!  It’s time to take stock of our accomplishments last year, assess the effectivity of the already made resolutions, plan activities for the next year, and make New Year resolutions.  Where do you want to be financially and career wise the same time next year?  Proper planning and execution takes you well ahead of others in your career.

It’s also time to look back and take count of last year’s accomplishments here at MT Herald.  How did the posts fare and which were the top hits? Here is a list of those top ten medical transcription articles at MT Herald in 2009 for those newbies who might have missed them.  The posts are stacked in the descending order with relation to the hits they got, with the highest one at the top.

Free Medical Spell Checker For Microsoft Word, Custom Dictionary
A super duper success.  With no other such reliable free medical spell checker available on the Internet, this article received warm welcome and is still receiving good hits consistently for the queries free medical transcription software, free medical spell checker etc.

The Future And Other Side Of Outsourcing And Offshoring To India
With HIPAA tightening its grip, there exists a doubt in the air about the future of outsourcing healthcare services abroad from the US.  In this article, we tried to get some clues about the future of outsourcing trend and had a look at the other side of the coin of outsourcing and offshoring.

How EMR Is Going To Affect Medical Transcription Industry?
With the new healthcare reforms under process in the US, a question naturally arises in every transcriptionist’s mind – Will EMR take over the job of transcription from transcriptionists? (Similar to the fear at the turn of this decade when SRT was predicted to replace transcriptionists!)  Though doctors still prefer transcriptionists, in this article, we were trying to get a definite answer from the industry stalwarts about the future of medical transcription post HITECH as more emphasis has been given to EMR in the healthcare reforms by President Obama.

How Twitter Can Help You Find A Medical Transcription Job?
Social media is not just there to pass time or for hobby or for networking.  How about using social media networking, especially Twitter, to find your dream job?  In this article we were trying to take advantage of social media networking to our advantage in finding a job with the precedence we saw in other fields.

Free Auto Text Word Expander Softwares For Medical Transcription
Speed, speed, speed!  The mantra of increasing productivity for medical transcriptionists.  So if you have free text expanders for that purpose, it is double joy.  In this post, we tried to find some of the free text expander softwares available on the Internet.

Tips & Techniques To Minimize Distractions In Home Transcription
Umpteen distractions creep in while we work at home.  How to tackle or minimize those distractions?  While trying to find answers for those troubles, we got some new ideas from readers too!

Which Medical Transcription Educational Course Should I Join?
Troubling question for anybody willing to get into medical transcription career, whether to join an online course or a course conducted at a school and so on.  In this article, we were trying to get answer for all such questions.

Free Voice File Player Downloads Compatible With All Foot Pedals
In our endeavor in trying to find a list of free voice file players that could be used for medical transcription, we were able to find a few.  Check out if any of those could be useful for you and worth adding to your kitty of medical transcription software.

Everything You Wanted To Know About Medical Transcription Career
A complete guide with answers for all the common questions a medical transcription career aspirant wants to know before foraying into medical transcription.

HIPAA Compliance Guidelines & Tips For Medical Transcriptionists
With HIPAA getting more powers with the enactment of HITECH, it is better to brush up our knowledge on HIPAA and our duties with relation to HIPAA.

Though posts like SiCKO got good response, they are not included here being off topic.

With that we come to the end of 2009.  I wish the readers of MT Herald a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

• Medical Transcription Forum @ MT Herald. Online Community Of MTs
• HIPAA Compliance In Medical Transcription. A Revisit Post HITECH

Millions of businesses are taking place daily online.  Fiddling the keyboard, we medical transcriptionists are ignorant about what’s happening around us on the Internet.  People are making money with ease, just like that, after some initial hard work with just home-based businesses.  Whatever we medical transcriptionists and medical transcription business owners struggle to make a month, online business magnates are making it in a matter of hours!  Moreover, Internet based businesses are recession proof businesses!  Hey, how would be the idea if we could attract a few of those people by opening up a business forum to join our conversations and share their business ideas, the ideas that turned out to be successes?  To enact this thought, I opened up a Business Forum for the conversations to take place under our nose so that we too get benefited from those business dialogues.  There are a few business forums online but why do you need a separate business forum for this?  Google keyword tool reports a global monthly search volume of 90,500 for the term “business forum.”  However, if you do a Google search for business forum, the first one is a regional business forum, which is UK based.  Whatever other sites that surface up are either not online business forums or not global/international business forums suiting our taste, hence this venture.

Apart from this, this is going to be another trial effort of building an online asset.  My initial online investment was $9.95 for the domain MT Herald and hosting charges of $6.99 a month!  Now my online portfolio brings in a revenue averaging $600 a month for the past three months out of which I’m investing three-fourths of a month’s income, $404, on this forum.  The split-up would be like this:

Domain name:                         9.95

vBulletin forum software:    195.00

vBSEO:                                149.00

Template customization:       50.00

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Total                                  $403.95

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The expenses per month would be only hosting charges of $8.49.  If you evaluate Business Forumz with website evaluation tools, all of them would currently evaluate Business Forumz to be a big zero.

The site is currently blank with no contents inside with tinkering work still going on from behind.  I will be dedicating only my free time to post contents on the site.  Everything else will be left to the crowd reaching through search engines. Only basic search engine optimization will be made and no paid promotions will be made.  Ads will be displayed to earn revenue and I will be reporting the revenue made exactly one year from now onwards.

Let’s see how this $404 performs by the same time next year, hence stay tuned.  Let your business dreams too come true! Benefit from the discussions that may be happening, come on, join the business forum.

1 Comments

• At January 17, 2010, gspal wrote:

  The business forum idea here seems a good idea. I have been always skeptical of these internet based business ideas that sent a well designed HTML email of earning like $14,000 a day for zero investment. The only investment would be to buy the book to how to go about it which, I think, was just crap. Most of these were noreply emails. The others I replied by redirecting them to MTStars where members were crying hoarse for fall in earnings due to outsourcing. In India we had our own Rupeemail to read advertisements via email. It has been over a year since I became a member and have yet to reach $2 (Rs.100) being the minimum amount to get payment. As I like to write on just about anything, I also started a blog at Google under a pseudonym not so much for Adsense revenue (which has been nil so far) but to post my own. Before that I was working as an agent for a healthcare product. Made nothing out of it other than consuming the same myself!

This is a guest article by Michele Miller, Simplistic Solutions, a multi-talented home transcriptionist from Florida.  She was the first to do a guest post, Start A Medical-Transcription-At-Home Career, on MT Herald.  You too can do guest posts here, check out the guest posting guidelines.

Couple of weeks back when I happened to contact her, she was in busy preparation for launching an online medical transcription course, which gave me the chance to invite her again to do a guest post on the title “How to find a reliable online medical transcription course?”  She instantly agreed amidst her busy prelaunch schedule.  Now here she goes:

Online home study courses have allowed many people to study for a new career in the comfort of their own home, and the amount of training programs available is quite extensive, compared to several years ago, when such technology wasn’t available.

Nowadays, a lot of people choose this route for the flexibility it allows.  No longer do you have to sit in a classroom on a specified day at a specified time.  Online home study courses allow you the freedom to study when it suits you.

It is a personal choice whether you want to go to college or get your education on the Internet with an online course, but a lot of people choose the online method because it is a more flexible solution to suit a busy lifestyle.

Taking your training online is a great way to study to become a medical transcriptionist.  The problem is, which course is best for you, which should you choose?

With so many scams out there, how do you know you are going to get the best education possible, for a reasonable price?  How can you know who to trust?

I am going to give you a few guidelines here to help you avoid getting ripped off, and to also give you some food for thought before you choose a medical transcription online course.

First of all, what makes me qualified to help you not get scammed and to help you choose a suitable medical transcription training course?

Therefore, I will tell you a little about myself, and why I feel I am qualified to tell you this.  My name is Michele Miller.  I am British by birth, and I have lived in Florida since 1993 when my American husband and I, and our daughter moved here.  I went to our local community college to get my MT education ~ back then we didn’t have home study courses!  Within a year, I started my own medical transcription service, and I haven’t looked back.  My passion for medical transcription comes across in so many ways.  I love teaching and helping people.  My college instructor was so impressed with my success she asked me to come and talk to the students at the college, which I did.  Shortly after that, I was asked if I would take students from the college for their Internship programs, and I did.  I helped students where school leaves off; I taught them productivity short-cuts they never would have learned, and I offered free ongoing mentorship to them.  I have continued to do this over the years, although I have had to cut back on the amount of interns I can take due to time constraints, but I actively help just as I did before.

Jumping ahead, so as not to make this too long, I decided it would be easier to put all the information and help that I was giving to these students into an ebook, so that I didn’t have to keep writing things out and making copies.  That is how my original website came about in 2004, Medical Transcription At Home.

After that, things progressed and I have devoted a lot of time to helping people become successful medical transcriptionists.  And more recently, after two years of interviewing over 17 different companies, I finally put together my own training site, which includes a lot of my own study materials, and I’m very proud to say we have lots of students enrolled in the course, and I feel it is a very comprehensive course.

However, every situation and person is different, and I don’t want to toot my own horn here.  I just needed to explain why I think I’m qualified to help you not get scammed when it comes to your transcription training!

Here are some things I think you should consider asking about before you sign up with any online medical transcription training course:

• Anybody can put up a website and take your money and not deliver.  Unfortunately, I know of one such site, but I cannot mention it publicly.  If the website is authentic, they will allow you to contact some of their past and current students!  Ask to be put in contact with some of the students, and better yet, get a phone number for each person.  After all, anyone can be sitting behind a dozen different email addresses, and you wouldn’t know any different!
• Check to see if they are listed with the offline and online Better Business Bureau.  This is a great way to save yourself money and heartache before you get scammed.  Most reputable training courses will be listed with them, and you should have access to any complaints.  Any reputable company will list the BBB logo on their website so you can get immediate access to their consumer rating.
• Before you sign up with any course, check their cancelation fee!  I have been astounded to find out that many courses charge you a huge fee for canceling your course.  Life happens, and sometimes you are not able to complete a course in the time frame allowed, or maybe you find out this is not the career for you; why should you be penalized for this?  The company takes your money and you get next to nothing, because of the fine print and the clauses.  Do due diligent research about this before enrolling with any company.  Remember to find out if you can cancel at anytime, or if you have to pay for the whole course up-front!
• Check to see if the person that is going to be your instructor has ever actually been working in the medical transcription field or merely “teaches” the course.  There is a night and day difference between an instructor and an actual experienced medical transcriptionist.  Experienced medical transcriptionists will be able to give you “real world” advice and help that some instructors may not be able to give.
• Before making any payments, be sure to call and speak to a representative of the company.  Ask a lot of questions, and see how receptive they are to giving you advice and being there for you in the long term, as well as the short term.
• Ask for a course syllabus so you can see exactly what you will be doing and how extensive the course work really is.

I’m sure there are other important questions you can and should ask, but I hope this article helps you think ahead so that people cannot take advantage of you or your wallet!

A medical transcription course gives very detailed instruction on medical terminology, anatomy and physiology, language skills, the ability to listen and other various components of day-to-day transcribing. The courses are not simple, but they are laid out in an easy step-by-step fashion so that you do not end up getting lost during your study.  Instructors will give you lessons to follow on the Internet and will also be available for one-on-one guidance when necessary.  A good course instructor will also provide a phone number in case a student needs specific help that cannot be handled by e-mail.  Internet courses provide the same training as off-line courses, but the methods used are different.

If you are looking for an online medical transcription course you should be looking for one that not only teaches you how to become an MT, but one that will teach you about your different employment options once you have completed the course.  It should also give instructions on job searching and the different places that hire medical transcriptionists.  You should also be able to talk to the instructor about opening your own business at home and how to get it set up properly.

Finding a good medical transcription training course on the Internet is important if you’re serious about this career.  You should check out the course thoroughly and make sure it is not too costly.  An expensive course does not mean that it is any better than a less expensive one, and your money is valuable to you.  Better yet, you should look for a course that offers a payment plan.  If you find out that medical transcribing is not your cup of tea, then you should be able to cancel without a penalty.

I hope this helps you decide which course is best for you.  Remember, you are the most important factor in this equation, so don’t let anybody talk you into signing up with them without getting the information you need first!

Michele is admitting international students too to enroll and has got quite a few offshore students also enrolled recently.  Hence if you are looking for a career in medical transcription with a medical transcription course online, get trained in four months with Michele Miller’s BBB accredited Affordable Course and Easy Payment Plan.

2 Comments

• At November 17, 2009, Yogesh wrote:

  A well-written article. Really liked the way she writes. Thanks, Raj.

• At December 21, 2009, Brandon wrote:

  Health IT has not been hit in the recession like most industries. There are many charged political debates on healthcare reform right now, but there is near universal agreement on the need for more automation and electronic records

  Brandon

  transcription voice recognition

• Medical Transcription Courses And Training Programs
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