Accentus Inc. review: Mistreatment of employees 65

Where did you take your medical transcription course and have you found new employment since?

I had a similar experience with this company. When I first contacted Accentus they were quite understanding of the fact that I did not have a lot of transcription experience, but had just graduated from an online medical transcription class, so they knew I was not an expert. They promised plenty of work but I needed to upgrade my computer so I spent $200 on upgrades. I was only available for them part-time but they put me on an account that would have taken a full-time transcriptionist plenty of overtime jut to learn all the ins and outs of that particular hospital. I printed off a 3 inch binder of instructions that were sent to me. Every single report I transcribed was placed in a below average level. Even if I spent a lot of time and thought I had the report perfect the leader found picky, picky errors. I soon lost all hope in ever becoming a medical transcriptionist as I knew I would never be able to get up to their standards. When I called the lead and asked if I could be put on an entry level contract I was told they did not have such a thing. I quit before my gating period was up as my self-esteem had been pushed down the tubes and I was very discouraged. Thank You to for the above message. I feel better knowing I am not the only one that is discouraged with Accentus.

I too had some very unprofessional treatment. Overall, I think most of the company is okay, but they do have some Team Leads sitting on their haunches who need to be booted out or paid by the minute. You will email them, ask good questions, make suggestions, etc. and yet all they do is ignore you. I worked there for over 2 1/2 years. When I asked the policy for a raise, I was ignored. They pay the same rate as they were paying back in 2002. Don't the other staff get regular raises? Why not the MTs. Without them, they don't have a company. The Team Leads, QAs can be terrible. They tell you to follow the Book of Style and yet mark you wrong when you do. This results in not getting your bonus. If you inquire, you are ignored or considered a troublemaker. VERY unprofessional.

I was on an account and worked very hard at it for over 2 years. It was constantly running out of work because they overstaffed it when they were busy (duh, plan ahead folks). When companies do this you know they only want to please the client, not the MT. There is no communication at all from the Team Leads, QA people, etc. I am not sure what they get paid for. They moved me to the worst account I have ever had. The program to access the account was never working and there were a dozen screens to log into before you could type. I worked for 3 days on this without pay. When I called to ask for another account, I was told to wait it out. I don't see any of the office people working for free. It is unconscionable.

I think it's time the Government was involved. You can't say someone is a subcontractor and yet tell them what you will pay them and they have the right to choose what work they will do. It's against Government policy. These companies get away with murder by not hiring you as an employee. In the end, it is the subcontractor who loses. That needs to change. When I quit the account and asked for a new one, no one contacted me. Can you imagine, here I am still having the confidential hospital programs on my computer, some foot pedals, and still not a peep from them.

The minimum wage in Canada is $10. Everyone should make at least $10 an hour. If Accentus cannot provide the work, they should pay you $10 for sitting around and waiting for the system to come up again. As well, you are an independent contractor. You work when you damn well please - not when they tell you to work. If you sign a contract to work a minimum of 200 minutes a week, then they should sign a contract promising you $10 an hour to cover those minutes. They cannot expect you to work for ages on a tiny report because the audio is complete crap, and work 7 days a week for less than minimum wage. It's a scam. Work at home MTs need to be unionized. That way, everyone gets a fair shake. Don't worry, it will change eventually, and companies like Accentus will probably go belly up because they don't make the huge profits anymore on MTs backs who sit at home like sweat shop workers in the third world.

Accentus can't have it all ways. Either you are an employee (where they pay you a decent wage and compensate you when their system is down and you are unable to work) or you are an independent contractor (where they do NOT tell you how many minutes you must achieve). Independent contractors work by their own rules. Also, they ask you to do tons of jobs for which you do not get paid. You only get paid by production. So they have to stop expecting you to do freebie extras (for which THEY bill the client but for which YOU get nada!)

Nevermind, they are in the process of being investigated (under the rug) by people in authority. These people send plants to get themselves hired and check out all the malpractice that is going on with these companies. It's only a matter of time before they are stopped in their exploitation of home workers who are only trying to make a living wage like everyone else (hospital union employees included).

Oh and by the way, not only do you NOT get a raise, but the rate of pay has actually gone DOWN from what it was a couple of years ago. They actually pay LESS than they used to!

The way I am trying to see it is they are a stepping stone towards working for a better company. I put in my time and in two years, apply somewhere better. Their IT department sucks. Their team leads suck. They pay amazingly low which results in a low quality of work. I have tried with this company for almost two years now to make it work. It only seems to get worse. Oh, and be ready for my all time favorite, "It's so busy we need everyone to work right now all the time to make our TATs". Then when there is no work, which I have experienced for almost three weeks now, "Sorry, I cannot predict when there will be work." But you better believe they still charge you their fee for a foot pedal every month even if they cannot provide you with enough work. I am beyond fuming with this company. I cannot wait to quit.

I feel relieved knowing that it's not only me who just got the same maltreatment by this company, Accentus. In a normal MT world, MTs are given enought timeframe where they will get the chance to familiarize with the doctors, their accents, styles, etc., and yet this company expects you to know all of them in a matter of a very short time and will make you feel that you are such an idiot and cannot comprehend. I agree with one of the comments that subcontractors should get unionized so we will be treated fairly. It was such a pain being with this company with so much pressure and stress but not being well compensated. Since their dictations are getting harder each day, I end up sitting in my computer for hours after my full-time work just to deliver the best transcript ever to the best of my ability and hence getting paid so much less. So, I decided to quit just even before getting pulled out before they said that my errors are terrible and made me feel such an idiot where in fact when they do corrections, they are also committing mistakes. I'd rather spend my time with my family rather than earning cents. Thank God, I'm spared of the more stress.

Accentus used to pay $1.17/min? Now it's $1/15. what's up with that? I have 4 years of experience working as a transcriptionist in a hospital, and decided to give Accentus a try. Almost everything said above is true. They expect way too much too soon (and I myself have the experience and I can still say that). They took me out of gating after only 3 weeks (was supposed to be 10 weeks of gating, instead of the usual 6 weeks, because apparently it was a challenging account with lots of rules and too many people were quitting on them, so they made it 10 weeks of gating). Well I got told I was out of gating after 3 weeks, and then got an email from project manager asking me to type more than the standard 200 minutes that week if possible because they were behind because some people had called in sick. So I resigned. I was just out of gating for crying out loud, still getting used to all the stupid rules (the transcription part was easy), so I sent human resources a resignation by email, and within the hour that same project manager whipped me back two emails that were, in my opinion, abusive. I eneded up blocking her from emailing me and asking Humans Resources to stop her from emailing me. After all the work I put into that job learning the rules (which is time you don't get paid for), I hardly made any money off them but put so much time into it and that is how I get treated. I am so glad I quit when I did. Their team lead was excellent. The project manager is a mental case. I will NEVER go back to them EVER.

I began working for Accentus at the beginning of the year. They rushed me through gating in just 2 weeks, and put me on this giant account, with so many different specifics that I don't know how anyone (experienced or nay) could be able to handle it: 3 spaces here, indent there - but always different. My TL ran so hot and cold I didn't know what was going on. I was very quickly put back into gating, where they do not have to pay you the training fee any longer. I am fairly certain I was rushed out of gating only to save money, with Accentus having every intention of sending me back. I was failed on reports for infractions as small as missing a period. Now, I wouldn't have minded slowing down on the account if I was getting paid more than peanuts, but at .70 per minute of transcription it just wasn't viable. Not to mention the amount of administrative work that you are forced to do, without any compensation. For instance, every time there is a no dictation file, YOU must log it for them and remove it from the system to get another job in your queue. After waiting upwards of an hour to get the next report in the server, it is more than frustrating to find that the report you were assigned was a 'no dictation' file, and not a report at all. One minute your TL will tell you to do things one way (ie: searching through others' (often incorrect) reports to see what to do), and then very quickly after tell you that you were wrong, you need to do it a different way (ie: no! don't search through others' reports - that's wrong!) I smelled a scam when I first started, but being so eager and having spent so much on my education, I gave it my best. If you're with Accentus and having trouble, or considering starting with them, please heed the comments given here by myself and others and save yourself the money, time and self-esteem. Accentus is just shifty enough to be legitimate.

Wow, I guess I'm one of the lucky ones. I started with them in November (well, tried to)...that's when I signed the contract, anyway. After that I didn't hear anything for a few weeks, but I figured that was probably because of Christmas. At the start of January they sent me the foot pedal, assigned me to an account, and set up my computer. Since then, there's been nothing but absolute silence from them. I emailed once a month for a couple of months and was last told I'd be getting trained "in a couple of weeks". That was the last I heard from them, about 10 weeks ago. As the weeks have passed, I too have been feeling more and more that they must be shady. I mean, really, what kind of company says they're taking you on as a worker and then refuses to communicate with you in any way?

Anyway, thanks for the posts, everyone. Sounds like I need to count my blessings!

Well it's been about two months since I resigned from them and they still have not contacted me to delete all the programs that they installed on my computer. Isn't that a security risk, though I am sure they disabled my passwords (I have not tried it, I am too scared of them accusing me of trying to access medical records illegally). I should not have programs on my computer that would enable me to access all the medical records at the hospital I was typing for. And apomixis, the same thing happened to me. Apparently that is quite normal for Accentus. They hire you but don't expect to actually start working for them for a month or two. I got hired just before Christmas last year and didn't start till February. It's a really good thing I still had my hospital job and didn't rely on them for my income. Otherwise I would be lining up for the food bank. I am so happy I never quit my hospital job for them, which was my plan if it worked out. It didn't.

Charging rental fees especially when they don't provide work. OMG!

I got hired fairly recently, about 4 weeks after I applied online. It took 2 weeks for them to get me started from the time my contract was signed. I have to say that MadMT's experience is what I'm going thru.

I'm an MT newbie but feel very rushed. My team leads are both so busy that my training was rushed. The manual they gave me to print out and read (in my free time, unpaid) is poorly written. Not just spelling mistakes but it's so vague as to be useless. I wonder about the accuracy of the reports on my account, because when I look up previous reports to help me transcribe whichever job I'm doing, I still find spelling errors, bad grammar, inconsistent spacing/upper caps/punctuation/bolds. My impression's that they expect waaaaaaay too much out of new hires too soon. My TL's so picky that I spend much too long editing. I make as much now on an hourly basis as I did working fast food when I was 16! To cap it off, I've been failed for following my TL's orders. She tells me not to correct the doctors' poor grammar or switching of tenses, then I fail my QA because I transcribed the report as dictated with poor grammar and flip-flopping of tenses. Huh? The pay is low, not enough to live off of. Also IT takes AGES to get back to you! I spent an entire day doing transcription with no foot pedal and made about $12.

I was so looking fwd to a new career! It's disappointing for sure. I'm hanging onto the job for now while I look for something else, either as MT at a hospital or even going back to my old field because Accentus isn't working out.

I wish I had come across this board BEFORE accepting a job with Accentus! My experience was unpleasant. I was a new grad, so I was excited to launch into my new career. Oh boy was it rough. The Team Lead who did my training spent flew by everything in not enough time, and when I asked for clarification, she was as ambiguous as she was the first time to the point that I had to teach myself how to use the word processor. I was e-mailed three huge Word files to print off and read in my spare time, and let me tell you, the manuals and style guidelines must have been written by a 10-year-old based on how badly it was written. However, I continued on thinking that perhaps I would get the hang of it. My account had so many nitpicky guidelines that I spent ages flipping through the manual and searching past transcribed reports, many of which were wildly inconsistent from each other in style and spelling that I did not know what to follow! My QAs to begin with were 92% to 96%, my Team Lead's gating feedback was nil or negative, and she took around 15 to 20 minutes to get back to me whenever I asked her a question. I'm not going to waste time and throw away income waiting, and maybe I'm at fault for never passing a single day in gating, because I submitted reports and made notes of my blanks and questions with the submission. When I was in gating all of these advanced reports kept showing up in my job box that I wasn't allowed to do because they were assigned to the experienced MTs, and it took my Team Lead on average 15 mins. to clear them from my uploads box. During this time, I couldn't work because there weren't any "regular" files in my job box, so I sat around and did nil and made nil. By the end I was so uptight and my self-esteem crushed by the negativity that I was spending seriously up to 20 minutes on 3 minute dictation or voice recognition file so I could re-listen and edit, edit, edit, edit. My final paycheques averaged to $7.95/hour. I thought I was underpaid in my previous job but not so apparently! The accountant was even stunned to find out how little MTs at Accentus made.

I would like to say that the IT men are great. They are wonderful people and helpful! But they do take time to get back to an open ticket. My virtual machine crashed constantly and it kept kicking me out of the system, and then it was unable to read input from my foot pedal. I lost 1.5 paid days waiting for IT to get back to me and correct the problem.

All I have to say is that my time at Accentus was horrible. The training sucked. My Team Lead was alright, but I did have the impression she was overworked so I didn't see why the account couldn't have had about 3 Team Leads. When I quit I e-mailed HR, then faxed a resignation letter, which were never acknowledged. Nobody asked me about de-installing the software. I assume my passwords and usernames were de-activated. I still want to make a career of MT though, so I'm applying to hospitals around me and not letting Accentus put of off this job entirely.

Hi, I'm an ex MT. I got directed here because of all things my niece (disappointed_mt) told me about this site. She Like her I was thrilled to be hired by Accentus soon after graduation from MT school in 2010 in a new career because I was laid off from my job teaching ESL students. My "training" was 15 minutes with a motormouth team lead online, and then she emailed me multiple docs to study in my spare time because she didn't have time to go over it with me. The main guide for my account is outdated. It isn't even helpful, it is so badly written. My team lead runs hot-cold to the point I hesitate to ask for help because she'll either be nice or snap at me. My gating feedback is so contradictory, on one report it's something like "no comma needed if only two independent clauses are in a sentence" and another report for the same day is "You forgot commas in your sentences with two independent clauses". I was rushed out of gating and told to boost up my production because the account wasn't meeting the TAT then told within days to not do so much work because of my errors. At first I did no more than 30 minutes a day because I was so nitpicky about my work, re-listening to files several times and being 1000% positive I had no missed words, but then to find my team lead called me sloppy and careless and slow in feedback was the final straw.

Got a recruitment email from them today titled "Accentus STAR Team - Apply Today". Funny stuff, considering it's been 6 months and they still haven't gotten my password set up yet (not that I will ever work for them now anyway, given what I know). Here's the email:

"Accentus is now recruiting for our Accentus Star Team. The Accentus Star Team will be used to implement all new clients and assist with production on accounts where turnaround times become issues.

To be a member of this team you will need to have comfort learning new clients (processes, style and dictators) and high commitment levels for production (producing >400 mins per week consistently).

The Star team will have access to premium rates, priority access to weekly dictation volume and variety of clients. To qualify MTs and team lead candidates must have a proven track record with Accentus, on multiple client accounts working on full acute care report types, including Operative Notes."

In addition to my previous posted Accentus problems, keep track of ALL your records for invoicing. There were problems with being underpaid every pay cycle, sometimes it was off by $5.00, the most was $57. BTW I'm happily working as an MT in a hospital now making $20+/hr, better team leads than at Accentus. I think it's interesting that the hospital I now work at has managers who are steadfast in not outsourcing extra work to Accentus because they have claimed that the quality is poor with too many spelling errors, wrong formatting, and the like. Despite not having been an Accentus IC for almost a year, I also go the star team e-mail! I also had my computer technician nephew wipe out the Accentus software from my computer as nobody from Accentus did.

I have been working as a transcriptionist since 1984 and used to be paid $20/hr working in a hospital. I now work for a U.S. company that was recently bought by Accentus and have been making 1/2 that amount. I do not work as a subcontractor but have experienced much of what is cited in this long list of complaints against Accentus. I am wondering if Accentus will soon change our status to subcontractors so that they won't have give us any medical benefits. We have about the same rights as farm workers before Caesar Chavez. The medical benefits we do have come with $100 co-pay for visits to anyone except a primary care provider. That is no benefit at all. In these times of high unemployment, I am fortunate to have a job but I am aware on a daily basis that I am being taken advantage of and being paid less than minimum wage for the time I spend on this job. They can get away with this by citing that their contract with us says that we are paid solely for the lines we produce. What appears to me to be illegal is that there is a long list of things that are considered part of our job but don't produce lines and for which we are not compensated. When I listed for myself all the things I do that are part of my job but which don't produce lines, it showed that I spend, AT THE VERY LEAST, 30 minutes a day without being compensated for my time. The company's software frequently fails, and we are expected to use our vacation time or work on weekends or outside our scheduled hours to make up for that. I love this work, but we are no longer compensated adequately for what was once a profession at which a person could make a decent living.

Fear not, I have it on good authority that a legal firm has agreed to take on a class action against Accentus. What Accentus is doing is not legal. It is all a one-way street, FOR THEM! If you work for Accentus or have worked for them in the past, you will soon be getting an e-mail from a legal firm asking if you would like to be included in the class action. Say yes. It's time to stop scamming home MTs. If a hospital can pay $20 per hour, Accentus can pay at least somewhere near that amount. Afterall, we are doing the same work as the hospital MTs. There is finally light at the end of the tunnel! The times they are a changing!

A few years ago I worked for Accentus and while I didn't experience any real abuse or anything of that nature, I did feel that my work was being nitpicked etc by them but I thought what the hell I am new to this whole thing. I had to produce alot of typing and in the end made very little money. The contract ended and so did my work with them. At that time I had approximately 1 year experience as a MT in a hospital setting. Fastword it approximately 4 years. I was looking for ways to supplement my income so I applied again. I got hired straight away but then I got an email destined to another person. I made appts to have software installed but never received email that I had to download a huge file. I am now having computer problems as I don't have space. It will cost me approximately $100.00 to have the memory put on my computer. The gentleman doing this for me can't understand any program needing that much memory. I signed contract but never did one bit of typing yet as I don't have money to fix computer now etc. I just came across this my accident and it is making me very nervous.

Accentus is having big problems in their Head Office. Trust me. They have fired the good people who actually cared about the MTs and hired overpaid henchmen to dish out the dirt to the MTs (who they know full well are being scammed) and then turn around and try to make the MTs feel like everything is their fault. There are 2 great people at least who have been axed from the Head Office because they tried to treat the MTs fairly and that didn't sit too well with the bottomline axemen!

The Accentus contract is a one-way street. The MTs have to promise to do 200 minutes a week, but the company does NOT have to promise to PROVIDE 200 minutes a week. (By the way, with the bad quality of many of the reports and the extra work you have to do (for no pay), 200 minutes can take all week to achieve (including weekends). You stop going out. You stop socializing. You snap at your loved ones because you are always working and stressing and editing and checking and checking and checking. You need quiet so they end of creeping around so you can concentrate. Everyone around you suffers. And for all this you end up making less than minimum wage!)

When the work runs out, tough luck. You're supposed to sit by your computer all day, for no money, checking your e-mails every 20 minutes to find out if you can work yet. When you do get to work, you then have to check your e-mails every 20 minutes in case 'the client wants you to log off immediately' because the work is running out again!

When the company screws up, the MTs have to suck it up and the company, again, turns it back on the MT as though it is their fault. No matter how high you jump, it is never high enough! That's the way they keep you second guessing yourself so you lose your confidence and start to believe you're actually lucky to have the job! You start to believe you're not good enough to work anywhere else! They break your spirit.

Show me the Lawyer! Show me the Union! Show me someone, anyone, who has the guts and caring to jump in and do something about this situation of abuse and unfair treatment of trained employees who hold an integral role in a patient's care. We are supposed to pick up clinical/pharmacological/dosage mistakes that the doctors make! Now we are doctors as well? I'll bet doctors don't get paid $6 an hour. We are transcriptionists, not doctors! We don't get paid enough to carry that level of stress and responsibility!

Where is the Labour Board of Canada? Where are you people! Do you really think the hospital MTs would put up with it for a second before walking out and marching into the union office with grievances? Seriously? Is this still Canada?

Wake up and smell the coffee Accentus! No MTs, no lucrative contracts for you so you can sit in your Head Office executive chairs and tell yourselves what a huge success you are and pat yourselves on the back because this week 'the client is very happy'! No MTS, no Hospital Contracts, no Accentus! Get that through your thick heads and start treating your MTs better (starting with a pay increase and graduating on to consideration and respect and, dare I say it, GRATITUDE for all the hard work they put in for you for the DISGRACEFUL WAGES and NO BENEFITS!)!

Accentus was my first MT job upon graduating from college. I have endured almost every complaint previous posters have written about. Being a new MT, I did not expect to make much money at first but after six months I was making, on average, $5.50/hour for a ten-hour day - and yes, this was after giving up my social life to sit in front of my computer all that time waiting for jobs to filter in. On some days, I had plenty of work. On many others, I was lucky to get 20 minutes of dictations to transcribe. But since my account was mainly voice recognition, the pay rate for these dictations was $0.70/minute so I was making $14 total over the course of eight to ten hours on these slow days. My team lead gave me different answers each time I asked a question; one week I was told to capitalize drug allergy sensitivities, the next week she called me out the "stupid error" of doing so because the hospital guidelines state that drug allergy sensitivities aren't supposed to be capitalized.

My account had some very difficult dictators who barely spoke English and I would submit these to QA with blanks, and the team lead would be angry at me not putting the effort and time into figuring out what the physician was saying (and then a week later, the problem report was still left with blanks because even she could not figure out what was being said). My favourite "feedback" was that I was making "too many stupid errors" but the team lead refused to give me feedback and ignored me.

Upon keeping track of all the things I do unpaid for Accentus over the course of a week - reviewing prior documents, asking for feedback from the team lead, reading the (outdated) manual, looking up names and drugs, logging no dictation files, correcting physicians who made all sorts of mistakes like entering in the wrong patient or worktype, amongst other things - I realized that I spent a minimum of 45 minutes of unpaid work per day. The virtual machine crashed every month and the helpdesk guy took two or three days to get back to me, meaning lost wages.

I actually made more money working part-time during college on a monthly basis than full-time (and more) with Accentus. In short, if you enjoy being paid less than minimum wage, stressing over finances, having no social life, being chained to your computer, computer problems, dealing with useless and mean-spirited supervisors and long hours, Accentus is just your thing. Otherwise, AVOID like the plague.

As an addendum to the above posting, I should mention that it was NOT written by me (nyclim) but by a former classmate who messaged that to members of an online MT forum asking about working at Accentus, but I thought that I should post her e-mail as a warning.

My training was 10 mins and then the team lead told me to contact her if I needed any help, so I do that and she just gets mad at me for not taking notes or being a bad listener. I'm asking for clarification for something I'm confused with, or it's something we didn't discuss during training. You don't even make minimum wage, unless it's minimum wage in 1981 not 2011. My team lead routinely sent me insulting emails questioning my knowledge of anatomy and drugs. She refused to let me transcribe more than 10 mins per day bc she said I needed to review all her critiques and then she'd let me transcribe more. Her critiques were pointless and contradictory, ie on one report the doctor mumbled, I left blanks. The critique was I was too lazy to figure out what he said. The finished transcription has blanks too bc the team lead didn't know what she said too! Also I'm new to MT, graduated in the spring from an online course looking for career change. I work hard and do my best. I've never had a job where a supervisor's been so mean spirited and rude. I never was rude back to her and did my job to the best of my ability. I found it appaling that there were so many errors in old reports. It is also criminal to demand that your employees survive on $11.50 a day, then dock them rental fees for equipment! I told my team lead I would be looking for parttime work so I could pay my bills but that I would still transcribe, then she called me to scream at me that I couldn't improve on my transcription if I did it parttime!

I lost a job offer bc of my team lead this summer, I quit Accentus bc I was frustrated. Applied for an inhouse MT job and after three interviews and testing, I was offered a casual position on the condition 3 references were positive. They also had to be former supervisors from the last 3 jobs I held. Two were no problem, I left on very good terms. The hospital HR woman said she needed an Accentus supervisor, I had told her that there were personality conflicts between thet eam lead and me. I had to contact the team lead. I said I understood we had our differences and I was sorry for it but did appreciate that she gave me a chance to work as a newbie, but I was a candidate for an MT job, they needed a reference from her. The team lead said OK. My job offer from the hospital was rescinded because of a questionable reference (I know who this is, my two other refs called to tell me they vouched for me). My ex team lead had said negative things about me. I am beyond furious with Accentus.

Wow! Thank you so much ladies for saying how it is with this terrible company! I am so sorry you all went through that living hell with them! I had applied with them and i am so happy they turned me down! I just finished a course with my school and the school i went to has just informed me that they ( i had posted something negative, but very true about them, on another site) will no longer offer me any kind of assitance, i may not use them or anyone in the school as a reference, and that my name will be 'blacklisted' to all companies, should any of them call about my having studied there. So, i am not out by about 10k, give or take, and to be honest with everyone here, i think by the looks of it, Medical Transcription is not an industry i would call personally rewarding! I think any other type of work would be more fruitful, life is just too short to keep banging your head on the wall over idiots since hey, they aren't exactly going to give a hoot about you.
From what i'm reading here as well, it seems that them going overboard on the 'nitpicking' is so they can get 'free' work out of everyone, when indeed, your work is above par. They just want to make easy money by 'using' people and that just makes me sick to my stomach! It's a bloody shame that so far that it seems that any type of work from the home almost seems as if it's all a scam, , It's just not right at all! I hope all of you get nothing but the best in your futures, life is hard and difficult enough. One thing i have always believed in my life, is that, if you keep trying and no matter what you keep finding the doors closed and the windows bolted down, step back, and wait and do something else. Usually it's because something is trying to tell you that it's not meant to be, there's something much better for you out there! Good luck to all!

If you're still with Accentus, get out now! Major clients are not renewing their contracts with Accentue because of the bad reputation they have in the industry and the terrible way they treat their MTs. Even though hospitals get their transcription done cheaply through companies like Accentus, they still have integrity and scruples and I guess all this bad press is starting to make them think twice about whether they are doing the right thing by propping up a company who shafts it's own employees. Let's face it, the clients would never treat their own employees that way. (At least, the union wouldn't let them get away with it!)

There are many great companies out there who will treat you with respect, pay you decently and, most likely, steal the contracts away from Accentus. Don't leave it until you get the generic e-mail message saying, "You're out of work. Thanks for all the money you've made us so far, hope you have a great Christmas!"

Hi, I too had similar grievances with Accentus this year. I was hired with little medical transcribing experience, but my two team leads were understanding of that. However, my training too was very brief and the reference files e-mailed to me had not been updated for quite some time. Team lead A and Team lead B told me different things. A would tell me about bolds, spacing and the like, but B would tell me different guidelines than A did. Team lead A told me different things on different days. As an example, she insisted I ignore a doctor who transcribed exactly where he wanted periods, commas, colons and semicolons to be because he was incorrect; then she told me that I must transcribe exactly what this doctor wanted and I have no authority or business to correct the doctor's work.

The nitpicking that other people have referred to was abysmal on my account. My QA scores were routinely 98-100%, yet most of my correspondences from one team lead was for her to pick me apart for poor research skills and not ignoring what she had told me about formatting. It's true about computers crashing and waiting upwards of a full 48 hours for the help desk; I too spent much time on unpaid labour like removing "No Dictation" files. I too was accused of laziness when sending documents to QA with blanks (there were three physicians on the account that all MTs had trouble with, so I don't know if I am the only one singled out for ineptitude) when in fact in an effort to better my skills, and at the expense of a paycheck, I re-listened at different speeds and compared the hard dictation to previous (and often incorrect) past transcribed reports.

Accentus is NOT obligated to provide us, the MTs, with 200 minutes of transcriptions each week. Several days on my account I was unable to log even half an hour of dictation because work was running out. To make up for my dictation commitment, yes, I gave up my social life to park my butt in front of my computer and wait for files to upload, sometimes 12 hours a day. How come it is US that get penalized with a $3.50 penalty if we cannot do more than 200 minutes of transcription when often it is NOT our fault? At the worst, I spent up to 60 hours a week in front of the computer to make a measly $150.

It was fairly obvious to me when I looked up older transcribed reports that other MTs felt as ripped off as me. The account had a very high turnover rate. Mistakes were abundant (despite QA, which boggled my mind). I for one cannot comprehend why any hospital would outsource to Accentus when quality is so poor. You get what you pay for, buyer beware! I am glad I quit when I did and advise any potential Accentus ICs to heed warnings given by others and myself. You are better off being given to a company that will treat you with respect and pay you decent wages.

I have it on good authority that the reason the wages went down from $1.17 per minute to $1.15, is because that is the only way Accentus could keep a certain client -- by lowering the money the client has to pay them. So who gets shafted, the MTs (once again). They give the client a cheaper deal so the client won't go to a better company and the MTs take a wage cut. How long can this crap go on before someone in authority (Labour Relations, Labour Lawyers, someone in government) gets involved. This is not India. This is not Korea. This is Canada (in case Accentus has forgotten that). Glad I'm not alone in this misery. Does anyone feel like banding together and getting a lawyer to represent us. Illegal working conditions. Illegal contract. Illegal wages. Unreasonable expectations. Harrassment. Abuse. You name it. We could win!

I just had to put in a comment here after reading so much about Accentus and the absolutely horrid way they treat their MTs. I recently graduated from CanScribe, and my experience with them was none too pleasant to say the very least. They kept saying how many of us would get hired by Accentus and talked them up repeatedly as if they were the best thing out there! It looks to me as if CanScribe `grooms` their students for `slave labor`for Accentus. And THAT disgusts me on too many levels! I cannot imagine how they can feel good about themselves knowing what they know about Accentus, getting all students pumped up, working and studying their hardest only to work for a company that is exactly like a `sweatshop`factory, Shame on you CanScribe and Accentus! It must be pretty awful having to leave your conscience behind when you go to work! I hope something happens to these two sham institutions, i really hope they go down, one can only hope for retribution!

I'm really not sure what all the fuss is about. I've worked with accentus for a year and a half and this week I made just over $1500. The potential to make money is there, you just need to be fast and accurate. It takes time to learn and you really need to invest time into a word expander program to make that kind of money, but its 100% possible. If you are making less than minimum wage its likely lack of experience or ability.

p.s. I made about minimum wage when I started out. I make 25-40/hr consistently now depending on account.

Honestly, after all these posts i think my best bet is to work onsite at a hospital and then go from there. I had applied at Accentus and was turned down and i guess after reading these posts it was a real blessing in disguise! My school is going to help me with my resume so i can look for employment onsite here and i'm pretty excited!

To the person who reportedly makes $1, 500 per week, I'm not calling you a liar, but I just don't believe you! So, you make $6, 000 a month! Get serious! Re, your comment, "If you're making minimum wage it's likely due to lack of experience or ability." I have over 20 years experience in the medical field as a nurse working for a major hospital, I know exactly what I am doing, and there is no way in hell I'm EVER going to make $6, 000 per month. You're talking out of the back of your ###. You probably work for Accentus in an office capacity and they have asked you to post this as a way to discredit everyone who is complaining about the blatant unfairness of the Accentus system and the terrible wages. I doubt even the top executives in Accentus make $6, 000 per month! Experience and ability may account for some slowness on production, but on the other hand, no amount of experience and ability will get you $6, 000 a month working as an MT for Accentus. (Maybe you work 7 days a week, 15 hours a day. Who knows? Who cares? I don't believe you and, don't take this personally, but I'm sure nobody else does either!

@ disbelieving nurse I totally believe you! I think this person who posted how great Accentus is is one of their 'plants' i've seen this time and time and time again with other institutions i know of and it is just awful at the lengths they will go to in order to save face! Accentus obviously has ALLOT to answer for! She is lying, completely, i have NEVER heard of anyone ever making that amount of money no matter who they work for, unless there are some serious kickbacks involved, which in Accentus' case seems extremely likely! There are so many companies, schools, etc. that do this, i wonder, how do they get credited?! I hope Accentus dearly pays for what they are doing to their employees, and unfortunately there are some schools who i think may not be fully aware of just what is going on here (if they do, then that's just plain evil imo). I would love to see every MT get paid allot more than what they are, this is the hardest work i know of and it is the least recognized. I'm not working as of yet, but am planning on applying at the local hospital and hopefully get into an entry position if at all possible. I graduated this past October and have not found anything as of yet.

$1500/wk? I for one don't believe that one bit. What a joke. One of my former college instructors was an Accentus supervisor until quitting to teach full-time and told my class she never made more than $32K/yr. That was as a full-time team lead at 40 hrs/wk and not an MT! She also said the average yearly earnings for an Accentus MT working 40 hrs/wk is rarely above $30K, usually more around the $24K to $25K range. Either you have very repetitive dictators so you're able to do autotexts for entire dictations, or you lucked out and have nothing but physicians and NPs who speak clearly with no accents of background noise, and you don't have nasty team leads picking you apart or capping your minutes. In what capacity do you work for Accentus, blizzah? HR recruiter? CEO? Because you have dragged its reputation down further than it already was. Accentus is a horrid company that doesn't value its people, and judging by the many comments on this site from people with similar bad experiences, you and your colleagues should be ashamed of yourselves!

$1, 500 per week? Seriously? 1, 500 minutes a week? $6, 000 a month? Really? And I'll bet your QA scores are always 100% as well! What should we call you? Let's see now, 'MT Impossible?' 'Superscammer?' 'Delusional Nutcase?' Well, unlike the nurse who was reluctant to call you a liar, I have absolutely no problem saying it. In fact, let's say it together folks, 'YOU ARE A LIAR!' I agree with the person who said that you have dragged the Accentus reputation down further than it already was. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that you are either an Accentus office employee who they got to write that crap, (probably dictating it over your shoulder with sickly smirks on their greedy, techy, trendy-spectacled faces) or, more than likely, you are one of the 'top dogs' (and I use the word 'dog' purposefully), who was sitting in your office one Friday afternoon before quitting for the weekend (no weekend work for you, why would you spoil your weekends? You make a decent hourly wage Monday through Friday!). You were reading this complaints board and you thought it would be a neat way to end the week by having a laugh and trying to discredit everyone who has honestly and sincerely had it up to their eyeballs with the Accentus ###! I would love to throw out a few names of the HR people in Accentus who I believe would be more than capable to pull such a ### stunt. (Does 'Super Dave' ring any bells with anyone?) Accentus, this would be disgusting if it wasn't so bloody sad! Oh, by the way, for the MTs who have worked over a year for you, when do we get our annual raise? I mean, everyone else gets an annnual raise. You're office staff get annual raises. I mean, everyone in Canada gets a raise once in a while? Love to know when ours is coming. (Oh yeah, I forgot, you actually DECREASED our wages from $1.17 a minute to $1.15 a minute. I guess that just about sums you bums up!)

Just shut it, and get to work people!

'Just shut it, and get to work people?!' Thank you sooooooo much for writing that, whoever you are in Accentus Administration! You have just demonstrated, without any shadow of a doubt, to the whole industry, what complete aresholes you are! Hope the health authorities that you are desperate to win contracts with get to read this. It might just be the spanner in the works that tilts them towards another outsourcing company. One that doesn't still live in the Dickension workhouse era. You may just have cooked your goose by that oh so illuminating and oh so Accentus-type attitude. Maybe someone should send this weblink to those people before they make the wront decision and actually choose you! I guess part of the deal is that you make it worth their while financially. Meanwhile, you get raises and we get even less! Thanks again for just being you. I knew it was only a matter of time before someone smoked you out.

Hey, Yeeeees, I do not work for Accentus.

Take heart MTs, old and new. For certain, you have worked hard and studied diligently (paid and unpaid) as a Medical Transcriptionist. Note that I use capital letters in that title. As a Professional allied health worker and an MT, I can tell you, with my experience and vast knowledge, I too have suffered the same humiliation by this company. I could (am in fact) writing a book... Good on you, for posting. It's never easy for decent people to put their deepest and saddest emotions in print. Just know that you are not alone, you are worthy and you did nothing wrong. Greed and abuse runs rampant in our society these days. Those who participate in this type of insulting behaviour, expecting others to work, so they can play, have a lot to learn.

I wasn't making anything up and I am not a CEO - I'm an MT working for Accentus, and yes I did make $1500 that weak. More typically I make around $1000/week working long hours 3 days per week. I usually make around 30/hr or slightly more. Here is a picture of one of my paystubs, http://i.imgur.com/bGsXI.jpg

I usually do at least 1200 minutes every two weeks and sometimes a lot more. The most I've done in a day is 355 minutes. It is possible if you are fast and frankly if you're making $10/hr you should probably be in another line of work. It's not the company at fault, it's you.

Get a word expander and add to it every day that you work. If you aren't typing well over 100 wpm you probably aren't going to make very good money. I type about 150 wpm and use a word expander diligently, and frankly that is how you make money as an MT.