Pay with Dict8

[juju1507]

I have been working s/e with Dict8 for 3 years now and my payment by cheques are arriving later and later. My last cheque arrived 8 days after it was issued and I noticed they are now sending cheques second class. Does anyone else work for Dict8 on here and, if so, are you finding that your cheque is arriving much later than it used to? I have direct debits set up deliberately for the middle of the month in order that my cheque would have cleared in time but now I am worrying that even by 15th of each month the cheque will not have cleared. Sorry for the ramble but just curious if others have noticed this.

[misstoots]

I too work for Dict8, and I was wondering why there have been no newsletters.
Regarding work coming in, it has been like a famine since the beginning of the year. I seem to spend my day hitting the refresh button in the slender hope that a letter might get through. I am wondering if it is to do with the large volume of clinics and operations being cancelled across UK hospitals before Christmas to cope with the winter crisis in hospitals. When I first saw this in the news I thought there would be a drought on letters, but surely it would have ended by now.

I was so used to getting full clinics of 18 letters or more in my speciality before this drought, but now all that comes through are letters that are 1-2 minutes long and almost always the dictation is poor. It now takes me two months to earn what I used to earn in a month.

[MymbleClement]

I've noticed the lack of newsletters and wondered what was going on, and also the dwindling amount of work. Up until about November I always had enough work. I'm getting a bit worried!

[Partyfops]

How much does it work out at per audio minute that you get with Dict8?

[misstoots]

Partyfops - You don't get paid for audio minutes but how many characters you type, i,e. 8pence per line. Dict8 works the lines out at 67 characters per line, (if I remember rightly).

I know the pay is not great but I like the versatility of working for them, unlike others where you have to commit to how many hours you are prepared to work in a day. With Dict8 you can work as much or as little as you want - unfortunately lately it seems to be the latter as work coming in has decreased, however I suppose it depends on what specialty you work in.

[MymbleClement]

I wonder if the lack of work reflects the fact we are close to the end of the financial year...

[Partyfops]

Thanks.

I'm an inventory clerk and currently pay my typist 40p per audio minute. I'm not sure how that equates. That is what she charges me by the way, not a rate I set.

Inventory clerks are always looking for good typists. Me included.

[LMW1990]

Hi @partyfops I'm just in the process of going freelance again and I'm looking for clients. My specialities are legal and inventory. Where do Inventory clerks advertise for typists?

Other than Dict8 and Accuro, can anyone recommend any other decent companies to do work for?

[Gally123]

What currently concerns me more at the moment is the number of doctors who now appear to be typing their own letters, which may be one reason for the dwindling amount of work on offer (as well as hospitals like Epsom and St Helier - who used to dictate the nice clinics - not seeming to be using the system since the upgrade last year and more recently Nobles stopped sometime before Christmas).

It used to be just one or two doctors dictating the patient's name and whom the letter is to and then giving instructions such as "copy my letter from CIS/Mosaic dated 11 March 2018 timed 14.22 06 from diagnosis down to yours sincerely." However, last week I had several doctors dictate in this fashion, all sounding rather smug and pleased with themselves that they had done this; and unfortunately leaving such notes does not come under our pay remit; we only get paid for lines per letter. However, with complicated instructions you can end up spending quite some time writing a "voluntary" note for a just few pennies.

If more doctors do this, and I am not sure why, whether they have time on their hands in clinic with patients not turning up, or have had poorly typed letters with mistakes or whether it is due to the fact that hospitals now do not use hard copy case notes and so doctors notes are typed online meaning that their notes can be used as the basis of letters, we, the typists can soon be surplus to requirements.

[MymbleClement]

I have noticed the same Gally - a particularly tricky doctor has started doing this and I wondered whether it was because those of us unfortunate enough to get his dictation can't make head nor tail of it (very strong accent along with poor English and a lot of mumbling!)

I do feel sympathy for the patients some of them see as they seem barely able to strung a sentence together

[MymbleClement]

STRING - Neither can I apparently

[MymbleClement]

PS Has anyone tried Accuro or another company? Thinking of giving them a go.

[Gally123]

Has anyone noticed the changes this morning - slightly different layout? Also the spell check only seems to work 50% of the time, the system is a bit slower and the sounds seems a bit tinny They seem to have sorted the dictation stopping at 1 min 8 sec, however my foot pedal now seems to react by returning to the beginning of the dictation every time I take my foot off it! Getting a bit annoying now. If it is not one problem it is something else! (Of course it could just be my foot pedal playing up, never too sure as bought it second hand although was supposed to be new/unused and seemed okay to start with....)

[Anna505]

Yes I think some hospitals have gone to India to get there letters typed rather than dict8 as it is a lot cheaper. As you say, probably we will not be needed if word recognition gets improved as it obviously will.

[ElleBee56]

Just reading through this thread again and noticed the comments about there being less work. I've been with Dict8 for about 12 years and have been typing for another company as well for the past 4 years. Recently we were told by the management at that company that there was less work coming in due to the fact that the hospital they deal with was bringing in voice recognition systems. The available work has become less over the weeks and this week we have been told there won't be any more work from next month. A friend who works at the hospital I used to work at has confirmed that the hospital where she works is also bringing in the VR system. As a lot of dictation is extremely poor I just dread to think what the letters will be like and how much time will be taken up by secretaries having to proof read and edit them. Thankfully there still seems to be a fair amount of work on Dict8 so at least not working for the other company I should be able to make up what I'll be losing. It's worrying though that if voice recognition is brought in by more Trusts we could all end up on the scrap heap!

[Gally123]

ElleBee56 - the hospital I used to work for five years ago was making moves to voice recognition, which was one of the reasons I decided to leave as I had not trained as a medical secretary to work checking etc. Various companies were looked at and one was 'bought.' The doctors were not happy as they were told they would have to check all letters (not the secretaries!) - nothing could go out 'dictated not signed' anymore! Then it was discovered that more money needed to be spent to purchase equipment previously overlooked and this money saving exercise was not looking so good. The person in charge quietly changed jobs to another department (managers are rarely sacked even if they do a poor job). This was about the time I left and staff were about to begin training, however I do not know what happened as voice recognition was never used and all the money spent was wasted. The last I heard was that the typing was being done in India instead.

As a thought on typing done overseas, doctors used to moan about typing done in India when they were on their Southampton rotation but I typed letters just these week which sounded like they were from Southampton so perhaps not all is done in India or perhaps this has now stopped.

As DICT8 is owned by I think St George's Hospital I don't think it will move to voice recognition so I think we are safe for a little while.

[ElleBee56]

Gally123 - It's about time the way money is wasted in the NHS was looked into. It's all too easy for management to spend money on things that turn out to be not fit for purpose when it doesn't come out of their own pockets. I agree with what you said about managers rarely being sacked. I've known managers who have been moved up the ladder from jobs they were incompetent at, one of whom was the catalyst for me leaving the hospital I'd worked in for 26 years.

What you said about doctors having to check their letters, I don't know how the powers that be can think that a doctor who has dictated a letter that is grammatically incorrect would actually change anything that was wrong. From my own experience, when I worked in a hospital, I've changed letters so that they made sense and when the doctors checked them they asked me to change them back to what they had originally dictated. This was a rare occurrence but it did happen on occasions. I dread to think what letters will look like from voice recognition! Hopefully they will be seen to be not fit for purpose and will die a death sooner rather than later.

[wirethorn]

Replacement by voice recognition systems could explain why the work on offer now is largely unclear dictation with bad grammar. VR can’t cope well with that kind of rubbish.

Gally123 said ‘DICT8 is owned by I think St George's Hospital’. Where did you get that from, Gally123?

James Fellowes is the CEO of DICT8 Limited. Michael Urdang is the cofounder. He and James Fellowes are also involved with My Patient Path
www.mypatientpath.com/new-page/

Info on DICT8 from Companies House
beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/04781165/filing-history

Here’s a photo of the new offices DICT8 moved to some time ago:
www.movehut.co.uk/property/249749-1a-st-mary-abbots-place-kensington-london-w8-6ls/

They seem to have done very nicely out of slave labour...

[Gally123]

Wirethorn - I mentioned that I thought DICT8 was owned by St George's because there was a brief period when that name appeared in the https box whenever I was typing so I did not think it was the hospital from where that particular task of dictation had originated, especially as I was aware that DICT8 was the result of two doctors who got fed up with the typing situation where they were working.

I agree about the present quality of work being rejected by voice recognition due to poor sound quality and grasp of the English language. Every time I think a person is the worst dictator ever someone else comes along and proves me wrong!

Has anyone filled in their tax returns yet? I get confused every year. Do people include the cost of the phone line and internet connection and if so how much? Up until now I have only made a nominal deduction in expenses for these but reading about how people with cars they use as both business and pleasure can charge 50% of the cost/petrol to expenses does this mean I can charge 50% of the cost of my phone line and internet fees?

[skatergirl222]

I wonder where the proof readers are hiding. I haven't had an e-mail from them for months now.

[MymbleClement]

I had one a few weeks ago.

I also had an email last week asking if I knew anyone who would be interested in working for them!

[wirethorn]

Perhaps the combination of rudeness as regards proofreading and the predominance of lousy dictation has driven a lot of transcribers away, so the management now has to recruit new ones and has also told the proofreaders not to enrage those who are left. As for introducing new ones to them, they must think we’re mad. Why should we help them to spread the work over a larger number of workers when there’s now so little that’s worth doing and we’re so badly paid?

[skatergirl222]

Still no joy in downloading the dict8 foot pedal software. I had already installed express scribe, which works, and now I am wondering if the express scribe is blocking the dict8 foot pedal software. Has anyone installed both in windows 10?

[Gally123]

skatergirl222 - what type of pedal have you got? I could not get my old one to work on chrome with windows 10 but it did work on internet explorer. However, a few months ago it broke and I bought a new pedal - Phillips ACC2330 - that does not need any extra software and it works on both Chrome (which I hate) and internet explorer so I still use that. (With my old foot pedal my niece downloaded some software from Olympus to help).