Salary Information for At-Home Medical Transcription
People who work in medical transcription listen to audio and/or video recordings made by health care personnel such as doctors or nurses and transcribe them as documents. Many medical transcriptionists have the convenience of working from anywhere, including their own homes, although some work at the medical facilities or departments that supply the recordings. Although this occupation is associated with the health care industry, it does not yield as high of a salary as that of many other health care-affiliated professions.
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National Salaries
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According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the mean annual salary of medical transcriptionists was $33,350 in 2009. The median annual salary was $32,600, with the bottom ten percent of medical transcriptionists earning $22,430 and the top ten percent earning $45,700.
Workplace Salaries
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The BLS reports that a majority of U.S. medical transcriptionists--about 42 percent of them--work in hospitals. There, they earned a mean annual salary of $34,480 in 2009, which was slightly higher than the national mean annual salary. However, those working in physicians' offices--which accounted for the second-biggest share of medical transcriptionists in '09--made $32,410, which was slightly lower than the national numbers. The highest-paid transcriptionists were employed by medical and diagnostic laboratories, which paid a mean annual salary of $38,680.
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State Salaries
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According to the BLS, in 2009 medical transcriptionists enjoyed a mean annual salary range of $38,000 to $43,000 in Massachusetts, Alaska, California, Hawaii and New Jersey -- the five top states in the country for salaries of that profession.
The states with the five highest concentrations of medical transcriptionists -- South Dakota, North Dakota, Maine, Wisconsin and Iowa -- had a mean annual salary range of $27,000 to $34,000. Only the states with the third and fourth-highest concentrations -- Maine and Wisconsin, respectively -- had a higher mean salary than the national numbers.
Metropolitan Area Salaries
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Massachusetts -- the state with the highest mean annual salary for medical transcription in 2009 according to the BLS -- also had the top two metropolitan areas that year. They were Brockton-Bridgewater-Easton at $67,360, and Framingham at $53,990. Brockton-Bridgewater-Easton also had the fifth-highest concentration of medical transcriptionists. California, the third-highest paying state, occupied the third and fifth spots, with San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara at $48,670 and Salinas at $47,840.
Salary Outlook
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According to the BLS, medical transcriptionist salaries rose by 0.4 percent between 2008 and 2009. This was lower than the 1.5 percent job growth in the profession during the same period. The agency expects the number of medical transcriptionists to grow by 11 percent between 2008 and 2018, which is estimated to be about as large of an increase as that of the U.S. workforce as a whole. As a result, it remains uncertain whether salaries in medical transcription would experience any significant increases.
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