What rates to charge your medical transcription clients?Are you wondering what rate you should charge new doctors or medical transcription services when they become your clients? One thing to understand is that most doctors expect to pay by the character line. In most cases, 65 characters are considered a character line.
Researching medical transcription rates can be tricky. The reason for this is because rates may be different from state to state. You may call doctors or medical transcription services in your area and they may pay 12 cents per line. Yet, a doctor or MT service 500 miles away may charge 15 cents or even as low as 9 cents per line. This can also be different depending on the medical specialty that you are transcribing in.
So where do you start your research? You can call companies in your area and as to speak to the person in charge of hiring. Be very professional and polite and let them know you are a new MT that is trying to find out what the going rate is. Some people may not want to give out that information; others might surprise you on what all they will tell you.
How to charge your new client: Most medical transcriptionists will charge by the character line. Very few charge by the page. There is line counting programs that you can use that will count your lines for you and even help you out by printing your invoices.
You can bill your clients weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly. Most MT will bill them bi-weekly or every 30 days. Make sure you have a contract that states how often you bill and when you expect payment. Payment can be due upon receipt of the invoice or within 14 or 30 days. That will be a decision you will have to make for your business.
If you are working directly for a doctor instead of as a “business” the doctor may already have set terms of how often he/she pays the MTs that work for their office.
Keep in mind that you should charge a little extra for unexpected transcription work that requires a very fast turnaround. You can also do this for doctors that are very hard to understand because of an accent. Just make sure this is in your contract.
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