I have been researching on-line MT schools for quite some time and I cannot decide which one to go with. Could someone please give me some info as to which schools offer the best training. Thanks.

I've said this so many times, people are going to think I'm paid to say it, but the Andrews School is best as far as I'm concerned. It took me 11 months to finish their course, and I had a job 2 weeks later. I was fully prepared to "hit the ground running." My new boss then hired every Andrews grad who applied until the company was fully staffed. She said the new grads from Andrews did better work than many experienced MTs who tested. Since it's so hard to get an MT job without experience, your school's reputation may make all the difference. Check the big companies' web sites (MedQuist, etc.) and see if they test new graduates of any school you're considering. Good Luck!

Hi,

I'm in the process of looking for a good school too. I'm trying to decide between meditec and careerstep. I'm leaning toward careerstep because I have found out that several national companies will hire graduates from careerstep because of their reputation. Meditec doesn't seem to be as well known, or at least I don't find much on the net about them and not anyone who recommends them like careerstep. Meditec, on the other hand, offers a earn as you learn program for their graduates (you pay 500 dollars for it), but it's a way to get your foot in the door after you graduate. I'm having a hard time staying with one choice, but I'm going to enroll Monday, so I have to make up my mind. Have you heard anything about meditec?

I don't know anything about either Careerstep or Meditec, I'm just making an observation based on my years on the planet and having been in the transcription world for 12 years. This sentence in your post caught my eye:

I'm just wondering how you are earning as you learn if you are paying $500. That seems suspect to me, as a consumer and an MT.

Also, I went to the Meditec site and saw the price of the course as $949. That seems really low to me. There are schools in my area that charge in that range. I know of a couple of people who took one of them. One of them has never worked in the field and the other I heard just got a position after 3 years. I have to wonder how she is doing because I'm thinking of things that have changed as far as style goes since they have taken the course. That being said, most clients wouldn't even know what the proper style would be anyway.

I have heard of people who went to Careerstep and got work.

I would tend to agree with Grandma Ruthie--Andrews does have a good reputation. I know they are also 4 times more expensive than Meditec. That seems like a big discrepancy in price. I know that's a lot of money, but the potential is there to make 10 times that investment within a few years.

The other school with a good reputation that I hear about a lot is M-Tec. They are also considerably more expensive than Meditec.

I just don't want to see you throw your money away.

And just so you know--I saw on the site that Meditic is a member of AAMT. All they have to do to say that is pay their corporate membership dues. It doesn't mean they are in any way sanctioned by AAMT. In fact, AAMT doesn't sanction any schools at all, which is a shame because maybe some of the fly-by-night ones could be exposed.

I'm giving you this information because I would want someone to give it to me if I were in your shoes.

Good luck, whatever you decide!

Hello kkb, kschuler, and sharon04:

kkb:

First, you know how much we value your ongoing contribution to the MT Gab, but I would like to discuss a few points you mentioned, especially on Meditech's Earn and Learn program. You said: "I'm just wondering how you are earning as you learn if you are paying $500. That seems suspect to me, as a consumer and an MT." It's good to be suspicious, especially about programs that appear to promise jobs. However, the Earn and Learn program is legitimate and risk free, and you do "earn and learn" which is to say you are working and therefore as a new MT, you are also learning, as we all are all the time, regardless of number of years as an MT. Also, the "Earn and Learn" term is unfortunate, and is now being referred to as "Job Placement" although that too seems to carry a stigma these days. You may see the program being referred to using both phrases, and even sometimes "Internship." You will realize when you read the details of the program found through the link near the end of this message that the program is really very good and offers a great opportunity to those MTs completing the course and fulfilling the requirement to enter the program. I'm sure it was unintentional, but by making a couple of comments your message may lead members and/or readers to believe that Meditech has a suspicious job placement program and they only paid AAMT dues to look good, and followed that with a comment about fly-by-night companies. I don't think you meant Meditech was a fly-by-night company, but on the heels of your comments such an inference could be mistakenly made by a reader.

I do want to stress again kkb, that I believe your commentary and opinion were innocent and were not designed to be harmful. I also believe that you certainly did not expect that such few words would unleash my lengthy, and arguably verbose, answer below. In fact, I believe your intention was to be helpful to a fellow member and that helpful attitude, which you in particular demonstrate almost daily, is to be applauded and makes it that much harder for me to have to involve myself in this topic. MT Gab is here for discussion and help and you are one of the elite group of members who selflessly offer your own time to help others on a consistent and regular basis. You have posted messages over 500 times, and for that amount of participation I thank you personally, as I have done in the past. Your unfailing commitment to help other MT Gab members whenever possible is much appreciated. Unfortunately, your comments cast a shadow on the Medword.com's veracity when recommending courses. Since we are an authorized reseller of Meditech courses, and Medword.com has a reputation to uphold, I have no choice but to interject. My response may seem like an overreaction, but thousands of people visit the MT Gab every day, not always as members, but unregistered readers also. Although this topic only contains four posts as of this writing, the subject matter for this page has attracted some interest and the reader rate for this page has been extremely high - into the thousands.

As MT Gab Administrator I normally stay out of conversations as much as possible, maintaining a position of observer/moderator rather than participant.

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kschuler and sharon04:

Here's my own personal opinion and some general information and facts on what to look for in a medical transcription course and in particular, the Meditech medical transcription courses Medword.com sells. There is a great link at near the end of this message that will allow you to compare medical transcription courses against some of the other main course providers.

Medword is aware of Meditech because we have had a business relationship with them for over six years. When Medword.com started on the web in 1996 (We've been in business since 1989) we slowly started getting requests from visitors asking where they could find a good transcription course. It got to the point where we realized that in order to help people we would have to start looking into what MT courses were available. We started regularly searching the Web for MT course offerings and have not stopped since. The one ever-present observation we make is there is no apparent correlation between course price and the ultimate goal of most courses - to prepare a person for a career in medical transcription. We believe this observation is as true today as it was in 1996. More expensive does not necessarily mean better. Less expensive does not necessarily mean less real value. Many points must be considered. Let's consider first some of what it takes, I believe, to be a medical transcriptionist.

Completing a course and becoming a good medical transcriptionist ("Medical Language Specialist"), in my opinion, requires a person have a few very important core character traits:

• self-discipline;
• an ability and desire to continually educate oneself in the field of medical language and medicine;
• the ability to accept responsibility for one's own failures and errors;
• an understanding that one must be in control of life-changing decisions, whenever possible, so that goals set may be reached;
• a willingness to accept that reaching a career goal often involves the concept of "delayed reward", i.e., working hard now for little reward with the expectation of obtaining greater reward later, usually based on refinement of skills through experience gained;
• the self-fortitude to stay with something until one masters it, especially by way of constant practice and learning from prior mistakes;
• an ability to view oneself objectively in most all aspects of personal life and work environment;
• a positive attitude or belief in oneself that, if determined to learn a new task or skill (appropriate to one's capabilities, of course) that one will eventually learn and master that skill.

So, how does a person decide on an MT course, especially offered over the Internet?

You can start by looking at the company offering the course(s). How long have they been in business? (For instance, Medword is starting its 15th year in business as a medical transcription company and its 9th year on the web - about seven as Medword.com.com - and that's a very long time in the Internet world. Meditech has been in business for over 33 years performing medical transcription, medical coding, and medical billing, and authoring the courses related to those areas.)

Are they members of various well-known and well respected associations, clubs, institutes?

While kkb is right in saying that being a corporate member of AAMT does not sanction Meditech or their courses, it could also be a reflection of their interest, investment, and involvement as a company in the area of medical transcription. By becoming a corporate member, Meditech's dues help support the AAMT, and that could be construed as self-serving but also could demonstrate their desire to ensure that the AAMT stays financially solvent as the association is important to medical transcriptionists and the area of medical transcription. A link below leads to AAMT's membership brochure where you may read what benefits corporate members enjoy.

Medword.com is a member of a number of associations. For instance, Medword.com is a member of the Better Business Bureau of Lower Mainland British Columbia and was one of the first couple of hundred companies on the Web to be accepted as a participant in the BBBOnLine Reliability and BBBOnLine Privacy Programs. While these associations do not ensure a student or customer that a course or product will be as advertised, it does mean that Medword.com cares enough to go through the process of joining these programs which is a lengthy one. This involves in-depth checks of our company incorporation papers, verification of company principals' identity, accounting practices, privacy controls, business practices, etc. When applying for BBB membership years ago, a BBB representative was required to visit our premises to ensure that we were a real, ongoing business. They also visually verified that we held all the proper licenses and other legal paperwork required by law to operate a business. By Medword.com being a member of BBB, it affords our visitors an avenue of mediation should they feel their complaint has gone unanswered. Just maintaining annual membership in these programs is a significant financial investment that we do not take lightly. We feel it is worth it though, because we care about our customers and their concerns about sources of objective authorities for remedial action when dealing with a small business. While certain associations and memberships do only mean that the company paid to join, as kbb said, you should know that this is not common and the importance of such membership can usually easily be assessed by an individual simply visiting that association's web site.

What is one of the most important things to assess when buying a course?

A person looking for a medical transcription, medical coding, medical billing, or other medical-related course should be concerned with course content. This can be difficult to discover easily because course providers have differing opinions on how much of their course outline or content should be shown. From a business point of view, if they give too much detail they could be, in effect, offering a template or outline for from which someone may more easily build their own course, which would result in a situation where they may be hurting their own business. Should they give too little information on course outlines or content, the course provider risks losing a student enrollment because the prospective student cannot fairly evaluate all that will be available to them should they take the course. The amount of detail a course provider shows on the web may also, more simply, just come down to how long it takes for pages to load for the visitor. If a page contains too much information and takes too long to load, people are going to go elsewhere - this is a well known and documented fact. I think this is a very important point that should not be overlooked. Some of the most expensive courses we have seen offer the least course content information. Some of the course pages on the Medword.com site can take a long time to load, because we display as much information about each course as the provider for whom we sell the course will allow.

Most medical transcription, medical coding, medical billing and other similar courses all start with the same objective: design a course that will give the student the basic knowledge they will need - a foundation if you will - so they may build upon that foundation after completion, either through direct work experience, gaining more education through more courses or self-education, or just by practicing their new transcription skills.

The manner in which companies attract students varies widely, as does some of the course content. That said, you should find that every course at least has enough information to give you a foundation to build upon, as mentioned earlier. There are many courses that come with a lot of superficial or extraneous information that, while adding to the bulk of what the student is actually going to be shipped, does not have true importance in regard to building the required foundation of knowledge. This can include overly-expensive packaging or book binding, colorful covers, non-optional reference books available elsewhere at lower cost, non-optional equipment that is available elsewhere at lower cost, and more. The bottom line is that you are buying the content - the information you need to learn.

In medical transcription, typical areas required to lay a good foundation of knowledge for performing medical transcription would be: the understanding of, and how to build medical words using mostly Latin, Greek, and English prefixes and suffixes; English rules of spelling and grammar; basic human anatomy and physiology; major and minor body systems; mechanical aspects of the human anatomy; lab reports, values, abbreviations, acronyms, etc.; drugs in general with discussion of the most-prescribed 200; medical specialties and other areas in which physicians specialize; real physician dictation for practicing transcription. Most MT courses should at least cover the aforementioned areas in a greater or lesser degree. If you are a certain type of person, you may only need this basic content in conjunction with practice transcription to get you a job performing medical transcription for a general physician whose practice has an average cross-section of patients. If you need everything to be fleshed-out (no pun intended) you may need a course that includes an extremely extensive content, but you risk paying for a lot of information you would have come across while performing transcription after taking a course with basic content. You are the only one who can decide, on the information available about the course, if it will serve your needs or not. Remember, your real learning only starts once you have completed the course and started working.

Is some type of course refund offered?

Many courses do not offer any kind of refund should a person decide that the course in which they have enrolled has to be returned. This is why Medword.com made sure that all the courses we recommend come with some kind of refund policy whether limited, complete or pro-rated. Offering course refunds is a very difficult decision for a company to make. When a company sends course materials to a student, there is nothing but the student's own conscience preventing them from copying text and duplicating CDs or tapes. For this reason, it is rare that a company will simply refund a student's total tuition. What you should look for in a refund is a short period when one can return a course with minimal penalty, and/or possibly a pro-rated system of refunding, based on how many materials have been sent to the student or how long they have had the course materials in their possession. A person buying a course via the Web must recognize, understand, and accept that a company's willingness to give refunds on courses are usually a good reflection of the course provider's integrity, but there sometimes must be limitations in order to protect their business interest.

For Your Information

The courses available through Medword are all written by well-established companies that have shown they offer Medword.com visitors true value for their money; have a reputation for treating students-customers fairly, honestly, and with respect; have a return policy (that actually means something); have a demonstrable commitment to student support; have a known and respected record within the business community; have a vested interest in customers who are medical transcriptionists, and; have given Medword.com a commitment to stand behind the courses we market on their behalf. All the course providers with whom Medword.com is associated and is an authorized reseller such as Meditech, The Association of Registered Medical Professionals, and MedTrans, meet all these requirements.

We have been selling the Meditech courses for, I believe, about six years. Over this time, we have built a relationship with the people that author and provide the courses - but a relationship that always has our visitor's satisfaction at its center. Once enrolled with Meditech, or any other provider for whom we resell courses, our visitor becomes their student - not our customer. Meditech, in our long experience with the company, has a stable staff who we have found to be thoughtful, honest, hard-working, caring people who want everyone who enrolls to be successful in their career choice. They do all they can to ensure that a student is successful, including free support after completing the course. We know their commitment to their students is complete as proven by the number of students who have enrolled in their courses through Medword.com alone. Their courses are generally less expensive because they are more focussed on course content - the words alone - not the look of the packaging. The Complete MT course comes with dictation on CDs or tapes to practice your transcription and the option of buying a less expensive foot pedal transcription system for digital dictation. (This is not the WAVpedal foot pedal and software Medword.com sells, which we believe is of superior quality and know it handles more audio formats.)

All the Meditech courses are inexpensive, complete, and will give you all the skills you need to start a career in medical transcription. The key is to keep practicing your transcription until you do get work. "Earn and Learn" or "Job Placement" is an option available with the complete medical transcription course that, for a fee and a 90% pass on your exam, will allow you to obtain an entry job as an MT, performing work for a well-known company. If your final course marks are such that you do not qualify, your 500 USD is refunded. It's a great option for any student hoping to get a job upon completing the course. See the link below for more information on this.

You should try to find out what the need for medical transcriptionists is in your area. Even if you complete a course you may live somewhere where the market is saturated with transcriptionists. In this situation you wouldn't expect a person could get a job right after course completion. There is no doubt that MTs are needed in both the U.S. and Canada, however, especially as noted by the U.S. Department of Labor. (See link below.)

With the technological advancements in medical transcription, communications, software, and computers, you can actually get work sent to you from companies and perform transcription at home for them. There are a number of companies that contract-out their work to home transcriptionists or actually hire them as employees. These companies vary widely in their standards for accepting medical transcriptionists, what remuneration they offer, the level of accuracy and work output required daily to keep your position, and a number of other variables.

Again, if you have the core traits I first mentioned above, you will not put all your hope in someone else finding you a job, unless, like the Job Placement program, the placement procedure is clearly spelled out without ambiguity. If you have the traits mentioned above, you will, from the start, have the attitude that it is your responsibility to check the need in your area for MTs before enrolling in a course and then expect to work hard at getting employment.

If you are looking to work for someone else, selling yourself to the employer is the same as it would be with any job. Medword.com has some excellent links on job-seeking plans, writing resumes, and how to have a successful interview. (See link below.) Like any job search, you will have to go out every day in order to maximize your chance of gaining employment.

If you are going to work from home, you will have to learn how to start and operate a business as well as try to build a list of medical transcription clients. There are many ways that MTs find new clients and you can read or join discussions on this topic right here at MT Gab by using the search feature found through a link at the top of most of the pages. Medword.com also has links to both Canadian and U.S. Government Small Business sites where self-employed workers can find many, many helpful resources for starting and maintaining a business.

Links to some of the information mentioned in the above message:

Compare course offerings by clicking on the link below. This chart compares the Complete MT Course that Medword offers, against Career Step, M-Tec, Andrews, HPI, and Medi-Trans.
Course Comparison Chart

General Links:
Medical Transcription Course (Study-at-Home)
Medical Transcription Course (On-Line)
MT Job Placement Option
Course Provider Profile
Ten Things You Need For a Home Business
The Job of Medical Transcriptionist Defined
"Must-Have" Medical Books and Software
Course Confusion?
Getting Hired
MT Surveys

Business Links:
Click Here to reach these links:

CANADA Business Service Centres
B.C. Small Business Workshop - Starting a Business
U.S. Small Business Administration
Small Business Administration - Starting a Business

Outside Link To AAMT:
AAMT Home Page
AAMT Membership Brochure

As a further point of interest for those members who may not be aware of Medword:

Medword.com does not conceal the fact that we earn a fee on products and courses we sell for others - but selling courses and products is not why we are on the Web. We do this for two reasons. One is the simple truth that if we want visitors to continue to enjoy MTGab.com, MedwordList.com, and Medword.com.com we have to pay for it somehow. Secondly, and more important in our opinion, is that we have a duty to our fellow MTs and friends in the medical field to offer products and courses that we know will be a good buy for them. Except for the many models of digital voice recorders and transcribe machines, we have used, or currently use in our office, almost all the products we offer for sale in our store. We use the WAVpedal system in transcription. We use both Spellex and MediSpell dictionaries integrated with WordPerfect and/or MS Word. We loan to our clients various digital recorders including the Olympus DS-3000, the Olympus Digital Recorder DS-330, the Sony ICD-MS515 and ICD-ST10. We have a large reference library, including all the products on our "must-have" page. There are many others also. The point is, if we are going to recommend a product as worth buying, we want to know firsthand that it is.

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A general reminder to all members: Please be very careful if you decide to mention schools or companies by name in conjunction with statements about their products or services. While members are certainly entitled to their opinion, and in fact are zealously requested by MT Gab to offer it, members must be aware that certain comments can be damaging to companies, especially if those companies are not present to defend themselves. We don't want any company, including Medword.com, to suffer financial loss or loss of reputation by inaccurate statements, innuendo, rumor, or gossip in our forum(s). That's why MT Gab is not like other medical transcription bulletin boards. We do moderate what our members are saying publicly. Also however, and unlike most other MT boards, we do allow members the option of using our private message feature, so you can still say whatever you want to other members, but privately.

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For first-time visitor-readers: Please note that while we do not allow members to promote their own company, product, or services, we reserve the right to promote our own company and the products or services we sell because we are hosting this site at our own expense. This is mentioned in the membership agreement that all members acknowledge during registration.

Above comments copyright ANSO Consulting Inc. and Medword.com Medical Transcription

SOMara,

I'm not offended at all by your post. I didn't even read about Meditech program, but the quote she gave was highly suspect, and in this business we've all seen the fly-by-night companies that want to make a fast buck. The wording she quoted certainly was suspect. I was basing my opinion solely on the premise that I don't know anything about the company but have heard plenty of things about companies who have programs where one must pay to work. I've never heard anything one way or another about Meditech as I have some other programs.

As I said, the wording of that program name would lead one to think one has to pay to work, which many disreputable companies do.

So, in summary, I don't personally know anything about Meditech, I just found that phrase suspicious and didn't want anyone to be taken. I would think that any company that's been around as long as that isn't going around taking advantage of people.

I didn't mean to step on toes!

Maybe Meditech should consider changing the name of the program, or calling it an internship?

kkb:

I know you didn't mean to step on any toes. The problem is though, as the old adage goes, "you can't unring the bell." People sometimes just remember the association of a company name with something disreputable, even if that was not was intended, and the damage is done.

I do agree the term "Earn and Learn" is probably not the best phrase to describe the program, since one can only understand the term after reading what the program entails. Of course I agree that making a new MT buy specific types of equipment as a requirement to work for a company, is simply not right.

The fee for this optional "Earn and Learn" feature, as I understand it, is to cover the cost of the advisor who works with the new MT, when needed, providing support and guidance during their first three months of work. The MT is paid a little lower than normal rate by the course provider while they are working. So, you see, it is not really incorrect to say that the MT is earning and learning, since they are being paid for their work, while they are being monitored, critiqued, and given additional help, if required.

I wish I could unring the bell!

Are there some Meditech graduates who can sing their praises here on the board? I don't remember anyone posting that who went through that program.

Thanks for your responses. I hope I didn't open up a can of worms!!! I am trying to take into account what everyone said, but it is such a difficult decision (I don't want to pay a lot of money and end up with a course that is not of high quality). I have been debating between M-Tech and Meditech and one major difference that I have noticed is the M-Tec offers a lot more reference materials with their course (maybe that is why they are about $1500 more??). Are all those reference materials really needed at this time or would I be better off accumulating them after I complete the course? Thanks so much for your time in answering my questions! I really want to decide and get started!!

Just one more quick question --
Has anyone ever heard of the Virtual Learning Center for MT on-line training. I have been doing some more research and this course sounded interesting. I would appreciate any information that I can get. THANKS!!