This blog is part of a series on transcription. If you haven’t read the other blogs in this series, make sure to check out the summary page for a listing of all transcription blogs.
Is there steady work in the medical transcription field? The short answer is, it depends. The long answer is, it really depends.
Aren’t you glad we’ve had this discussion?
The truth is, for the most part, MT work is a very steady line of work, and you are generally as busy as you want to be. Sometimes busier. The biggest difference usually lies in whether you are an independent contractor or an employee, because along with that much wanted and desired flexibility of being an IC comes some rather odd workloads. If you work for a large company as an independent contractor, the workload tends to be fairly steady (please remember we’re working with generalities here) but if you work for a small MTSO (medical transcription service owner) as an IC, your workload can be all over the place. You can get large amounts of work that needs to be done ASAP all at once, and then not get anything for another week. Again, generalities. For the most part, employees have steady workloads across the board (boy do I hate generalities!)
The best advice I can give you is to go to an MT forum and do a search on the specific company that you are looking to get hired on at. See if there is a pattern of transcriptionists complaining that there is no work to be had. I can think of a large (very large) MT company that hires only employees that had a real work shortage a year or so ago, where almost no one was getting enough work. So just because you are an employee and work for a large company, doesn’t guarantee you’ll have anything to do.
For the most part though, MT work is much, much more stable than, say, general transcription work. If you get hired on as an MT and you find that you aren’t getting enough work to pay your bills because it simply isn’t there, you can look for a part time fill-in or back-up work to help make up for lost lines–many transcriptionists love to have someone they can pass their work on to when they’re sick or otherwise incapacitated, and if you’re good, accurate, and on time, you’ll soon find that you’ll have enough overflow work to keep you more than busy. In the MT field, if you want the work, it’ll be there, I promise. Just a cursory search for medical transcription jobs will turn up pages of want ads.
Not all want ads are made equal though. There is a MT scam company out there that has been around for a long time, and many newbies wonder if they’re legit. Make sure to catch my next blog, “TransScam…Oops! I mean TransAm” to find the lowdown on this worthless company!