It is no secret that the largest employers of medical transcriptionists are hospitals. In fact, 40% of the medical transcriptionists employed are employed by hospitals. However, hospitals are not the best payers in the industry.

It is true that hospitals pay medical transcriptionists a fair wage. If you are employed by a hospital then you can expect to make about $16.58 per hour, or $34,480 per year. These numbers represent the mean earnings of medical transcriptionists in a hospital setting. Depending on the part of the country in which you are employed, your skills and your experience, you earnings could be more or less.

But who pays more?

Medical and diagnostic libraries, in May 2009, paid medical transcriptionists $18.60 per hour mean salary and $38,680 annual salary.

These salary figures are an increase over the May 2008 means of $15.88 per hour for MTs in a hospital setting and $17.26 mean hourly wage for medical transcriptionists in a medical and diagnostic library setting.

Just as well, medical transcriptionists are the second highest paid healthcare support occupation in a medical and diagnostic library setting. Only physical therapy assistants make more. Medical assistants and medical equipment preparers fall below in average yearly and hourly salary.

It is clear that the medical transcription profession is growing. The demand for qualified medical transcriptionists is driving salaries upward and this will likely be the case at least a few good years into the future.

Working from home is so great, isn’t it? Yes, it is. And we are talking about medical transcription in particular. Home-based medical transcription suits us for many reasons.

First, you get to be at home. Imagine the level of comfort you feel when you are home. Working from home is convenient and you get to make yur office space the way you like. However, remember, that home-based work does not imply casual work.

Second, you get to save money. You no longer need to commute to work. Also, you don’t need to invest in office wear.

Third, you get to save a lot of time. You no longer need to spend hours commuting to your workplace. This helps you get time for other important things in your life like your family and friends.

Fourth, you save yourself from the harassment of driving through traffic or waiting for public transport. You save yourself from getting exhausted.

If these reasons were not enough for you to opt for home-based work, let’s talk about a flexibility that only medical transcription can offer. You get to choose your work timings. Not only that. You get to choose the number of hours you want to work. And, yeah, you get to say ‘no’. You can refuse work that does not interest you or when you have your hands full. Need I say more?

Home-based medical transcription is definitely lucrative. But, yes, it has its share of challenges. It is important that you find out if you can handle its challenges before you commit to it.

One of the hardest things to do when you work from home as a medical transcriptionists is staying motivated. When you have a job away from home, motivation may not be there, but routine is. You get up and travel to work. That travel time is often spent mentally planning your day. The trip home is often spent filing everything away and planning your home time.

When you work from home, you don’t have that ‘thinking, planning, motivating’ time. You roll out of bed, have breakfast, then …. what? There is a motivational vacuum there.

There are several things you can do to help with you motivation. A simple one is to take a walk – effectively, walk your way to work. Use that time to mentally work your way through what you are going to achieve today. You are replacing your trip to work with a walk around the block. Yes – you do end up back where you started from, but if you think of it as traveling to work,  you see things differently.

Other tactics that work include regimenting your day. Once you walk through your home office door, you are ‘at work’, no longer at home. You need to think and act like you were in the work place. This can be difficult if you have other people in the house, particularly children.

The third tactic combines a little of the above. Treat your office as a work place. Once you enter that office, shut the door, sit down, close your eyes, and mentally ‘travel to work’. In other words, plan your day in your head. It won’t be perfect – far from it, but it will put your mind in the place it needs to be – at work.