Canscribe gets people to sign up and pay for their on-line course on medical transcription. If you do not pass their requirements in enough time, you'll have to pay more fees. They make promises of guaranteed jobs, but don't describe the realities of the business - pay, hours, problems, etc. It appears that Canscribe is linked with Accentus - a transcription outsourcer owned by Nuance. Nuance owns Dragon speech recognition software as well.
Accentus gets the worker to pay for all the expenses that would normally be covered by the company one works for. The worker operates in solitude and has to supply their office space, utilities, furniture, computer, hardware peripherals, computer software, maintenance, internet hook-up costs, etc. Accentus Nuance gets the worker to pay for all taxes. So, if one hopes to charge HST to Accentus they won’t pay it. The slave has to build it into his/her own costs. The same goes for Employment Insurance. In 2015, for every $100 you earn, you will need to contribute $1.88.
Accentus pays by the audio minute and makes people sign contracts to do 300 audio minutes per week, but do not commit to any dollar amount. Interestingly, Accentus 2014 performance manual describes 250 minutes as typical. Accentus pay is based on the type of dictation. The most common rate involves dications haveing voice recognition and speech understanding (i.e. the dictator used Nuance Dragon software). This rate is at about $ 0.575. On the other end of the scale, a rate of $1.15/min is used for regular transcription. Just how long does it take to transcribe 250 minutes? Accentus won't tell that to its contractors, but they do indicate in their production records that it expects the work to involve about 20 hours. So, for 20 hours work, the contractor grosses about $6.88 per hour or $137.50 per week. From this, the contractor will have to pay for the equipment, utilities, taxes, etc.
Accentus wants the transcription to be perfect for its clients, and to try and achieve this they threaten to penalise the slave contractor for any errors in the transcriptions. They want their slaves to put in even more hours to make sure it is perfect, or they start deducting fees. Bonuses - yes they do mention such opportunity. For example, one can get a $40 bonus if one can do transcribe 750 audio minutes in a two week period. Well, if it takes about 0.8hr to transcribe one minute, that means about 60 hours of work will be needed to do 750 minutes and so the pay will likely be about $412.80. With a $40 bonus, the pay for 60 hours work is then $452.80. In other words, the gross pay is $7.55 from which the contractor must then deduct all expenses. In Ontario, for 2014 the minimum hourly wage for an adult worker is $11.00.
Accentus indicates one can work flexible hours, but they control when you can and cannot work. They've been shutting down on weekends and have shut down at 10:00 pm at night so for those trying to make a few bucks on the side - forget it. One would have to give up mainstream time to meet with Accentus’ contract requirements. The contractors have no advanced notice as to when they can and cannot log in. The work is ultimately so limited so that one may not even be able to get 250 audio minutes in per week.
At Accentus, a transcriptionist contractor is simply a slave. Accentus does nothing to encourage good moral and comradery, and the ultimate pay to transcriptionists is far below minimum wages. Once they've sucked a contractor dry financially and morally, the contractor leaves, but Accentus has others available. They advertise their positions all over the place.
There are various complaint boards about Accentus. Interestingly, some of these sites have comments talking about what a great place it is to work for and how negative commenters are wrong. To read through the positive "comments" leaves one with the impression they were likely "planted" by Accentus, and that makes them even more scrupulous.
Accentus can offer low cost transcription services to hospitals and others in need of transcription services, but the lower costs are achieved by its slave labour practice. Unfortunately, Accentus' outsourcing can lead to a loss of jobs for those people already employed in hospitals and medical offices. They may themselves become contractors for Accentus. Whether Accentus’ practice is legal is questionable - it is certainly not ethical. Accentus tells its contractors that provincial minimum salaries do not apply to contractors, but the relationship has the earmarks of an employer/employee relationship. Unfortunately, hospital businesses may be acceptive of such practice by focussing on lower costs and keeping a blind eye as to how it is being achieved.
If you are contemplating medical transcription - think twice - it could be a waste of time and money and may harm your self-esteem. Can groups like Labour Canada intervene? Certainly it is the squeaky wheel that gets the oil.
Here is one article that sounds very familiar. https://www.stthomastimesjournal.com/2013/04/09/quality-of-hospital-transcription-services-suffers-with-outsourcing-worker
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