14:10 @capearce81 I wanted to see Idiocracy, but haven't yet. Worth it? #
14:12 just got my first check at work -- woot! And they gave me a key to the place' I can come and go as I please. Things are going so well! #

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(please me)

finally, an update	06:57 pm

Well, apparently some of you are curious about my job. And in this first-real-entry-in-a-while, I'll tell you about it.

It's a small office, set up in an apartment. There's three people there, plus one part timer. I'm doing stuff I've never done before -- namely working with medical records. This doctor moved here from Louisiana, after Katrina hit. He had a lot of records, a lot of equipment; he was the head of one of those practices called "Fixy McFixalot, MD & Associates."

Not only did Katrina put a crimp in his practice, but in the last year or two he was in business, he outsourced his billing to a company that did a terrible job. They missed at least one claim in three. If the claim was never submitted, then it was never paid by Medicare or Medicaid or whatever insurance company the patient might have had. So the doctor has tens of thousands of dollars that live in a few thousand feet of shelved patient files.

One of the things I'm doing is helping him audit these records -- going through them and cross referencing the work that was done on a patient versus the work that was actually paid for. It's different; I've never really had a head for columns of figures or dense tables, much less poor photocopies of charts and cryptic handwritten notes. But it's kind of fun at the same time. It's kind of like a treasure hunt, only without the pretty jewelry at the end.

The other thing I'm doing is high-level conceptual work. The doctor has lots of great ideas, one of which is somehow making this business of data mining viable and extensible to others. In other words, this billing company screwed up on him, so it stands to reason that other practices also have money languishing in similar files. I'm trying to help make this happen for him. He's got most of the tools in place, like computers, a good database program, and a high speed scanner. He said that he's willing to purchase the other necessary tools\, like Adobe Acrobat Professional (he's been turning scanned files into Portable Document Format, but we need something better than the free Reader) and some optical character recognition software (to turn the PDF images into searchable text). He also wants to know at a glance what procedures were done on which patients, and the database is the ticket to doing that.

So it's all new territory for me. I've never worked with medical records, and I haven't worked with databases since college. They seem to like me, they seem to trust me, and I hope I can do right by them.

I'm happy to say that for once, I was at the right place at the right time. I've needed a job like this for some time -- challenging, low stress, not working for The Man in some way. It's all 1099 work, meaning I have to pay my own taxes, but beggahs canna be choosahs, right?

All in all, it's a good gig, and I'm happy I have it. The doctor is a smart man, crazy with ideas, and a lot like me. The person who I'm assisting is a sweetheart, too.

Tunes: the world going by while outside

Tags: update, work

(4 pleasures | please me)

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