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I received the information about the Medquist settlement today, and went online to see what was available. I have some very serious problems with the way this is being handled.
1. Stop calling them complimentary memberships, subscriptions or educational opportunities. They are not complimentary. I have paid for them over and over and over.
2. In the 10 months I worked for Medquist, my paycheck was cumulatively $1,000 short. I do not see $1,000 worth of "complimentary" anything being offered to me.
Over the years (I attended my first meeting in 1984) I have seen the Association for Healthcare Documentation Integrity (AHDI) slowly become an organization that really represents the medical transcription service organizations (MTSOs) and not the individual transcriptionist. There are still a few token offerings for the transcriptionist, but face it, that's only because without us, none of your organizations would even exist. From my vantage point, it certainly looks like Medquist gave the settlement to itself or at least to the organization from which they would be most likely to get it all back.
A just settlement would have been to reimburse all those transcriptionists for the money taken out of their checks, and to pay back all the hospitals the amounts they were overcharged. But what is legal is not always just, is it? And with big organizations like AHDI to back it up, Medquist came out smelling like a rose.
Cynthia L. Keech, RHIT
Via e-mail
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