Anybody who is new to the field of medical transcription or any medical transcription career aspirant or any businessman who wants to set up a medical transcription business who goes through the posts Start a medical-transcription-at-home career or pros and cons of medical transcription career or medical transcriptionist job at home has an immediate question bubbling in his/her mind - How much lines a medical transcriptionist can type/transcribe and how much can a medical transcriptionist earn? After all the job of transcribing is pure human labor with complete coordination from the prime sensory organs and brain being compulsory (we are still at the dawn of automation by voice recognition softwares), it’s obvious to have curiosity of knowing the risk/reward ratio. You may come across a lot of hyped/exaggerated answers for these questions over the internet until you come across anyone who is really into this field, who’s near and dear to you to answer all your queries patiently. It is simple mathematics, come let’s work out those numbers. There is no hard and fast rule to arrive and remain consistent in those numbers. There are several factors that influence the answer of these questions before anyone can come out with a clear-cut answer for these questions. Few of them are:

• Typing speed of the transcriptionist.
• Experience of the transcriptionist.
• Listening comprehension skills of the transcriptionist.
• Word expanders used.
• Type of reports involved, say for eg., operative reports, history and physical, discharge summaries, clinic notes etc.
• How much macros and normal reports involved.
• Accessibility to reference materials.
• Frequency of accessing reference materials.
• Work atmosphere and surrounding disturbances/distractions if any.
• Clarity of the audio.
• Accent of the doctor.
• Repetitive nature of the reports.
• Overall mood of the transcriptionist.
• Speed of the computer, server, network/internet.
• And a few more, I might have missed!

Take my case, I am very much interested in human anatomy (read About) and stuck to radiology which requires minimal hunt for reference and usually has a lot of negative or normal reports for which a transcriptionist has to run macros of normal reports or just copy/paste standard formats while that may not be the case with outpatient consultation notes, history and physical, discharge summaries or operative reports as each patient may have his/her own course of problems, treatments, procedures and medications.

I’m into this field for almost 10 years now. On an average day, I pick up and type about 100 to 150 reports or 60 to 80 minutes of dictation to keep me occupied for about 6 to 8 hours a day. Assume roughly a report has 10 lines which equates to around 1000 to 1500 lines a day. On an average, an MT can churn out around 15 to 20 reports of 10 lines each an hour or 150 to 200 lines an hour. Equating that to 8 hours comes around 1200 to 1600 lines a day. This is a usual day’s chore. I have even at times produced 4000+ lines a day, for months, due to the easy nature of the work involved. So nothing is static, the more you’re involved, the more you produce and the more you earn. A standard line is considered as 64 keystrokes or 64 characters including spaces. To my knowledge, the rates vary from 7 cents to 21 cents per line depending on the difficulty involved though the higher pay per line is becoming a distant dream nowadays. Correlate these numbers to pay per line or pay per report and you get those numbers a transcriptionist can earn in an arena where the transcriptionist procured the contract directly from a doctor, hospital, clinic or lab in his locality and that the transcriptionist’s job returns back directly to the desk of the dictating doctor without any intermediaries.

In the setup of a medical transcription company, the situation is entirely different. There you have editors, proofreaders, moderators, quality controllers, team leaders, accountants, clerks, administrator/s etc., etc., depending on the reputation and strength of the company. The earnings of a first level medical transcriptionist are diluted by the expenses paid to these hierarchic cadres and a job/contract procured from a transcription company by a transcriptionist will yield only such results.

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