Medical Transcriptionists Sue Oklahoma Heart Hospital for Back Wages

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Four plaintiffs currently or formerly employed as medical transcriptionists by Oklahoma Heart Hospital LLC (which does business as Oklahoma Heart Hospital Physicians Group) and OHH Physicians, LLC claim in a proposed class action that they were not paid proper wages.

The plaintiffs were tasked with, among other responsibilities, translating dictated medical jargon and abbreviations into expanded forms “to ensure accuracy” of the defendants’ patient and facility records. According to the complaint, proposed class members—work-from-home employees with job duties similar to the plaintiffs—were paid based on their production at a rate of roughly 11 cents per line. At no point were the employees instructed to keep track of their hours worked, nor did the company ever request such records, the lawsuit says.

The plaintiffs allege the defendants removed the plaintiffs’ access to information about the number of lines they typed on the companies’ medical transcription platform and failed to list line counts on paystubs, instead noting only an hourly pay rate. The case argues the defendants failed to uphold their duties as employers under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) since plaintiffs and proposed class members were never paid for job duties —such as “watching for work” to come into the transcription queue, being on-call during certain hours, and attending unpaid training sessions—other than the number of lines transcribed.

Moreover, the plaintiffs claim they were expected to transcribe at least 6,000 lines per week within 40 hours of work time, and were told by the defendants that “these production expectations and standards” were critical to the companies’ success. Unfortunately, the defendants’ internal benchmarks for employee production allegedly resulted in the workers being paid improper wages.

“Based upon the lined typed exceeding what [the defendants] considered a 40-hour workweek, [the defendants] knew or should have known that [medical transcriptionists] were working in excess of 40 hours per week without overtime compensation,” the lawsuit claims.