MID - NIGHT

29 October 2001

I'm writing this at midnight--well, 12:30 a.m., to be more accurate.

There is nothing unusual about my writing a journal entry at this time of night. I do it quite often, in fact. The unusual thing about my doing it tonight is that I have just awakened. I fell asleep somewhere around 6 p.m. and have been sleeping for six hours.

Now the question is--since I've slept longer than I do most nights, does this mean I am up for the day?

I haven't a clue what Walt did about dinner.

I don't know if the dog got fed.

I didn't do the work I was planning to do.

I've had a lovely sleep. If I weren't a working woman now, this wouldn't really bother me. I could just take a nap during the day. But I have a job to go to tomorrow. A job I'm going to have to be alert to do. Who knows what will happen?

I don't know what my body thinks. It got confused right off by the return to standard time, and then going to work on a Sunday.

I met D at the office yesterday. We decided on Friday that trying to figure out what F had done for the last 3 months, and deal with Dr. G and patients as well was well-nigh impossible, so D agreed to give me a couple of hours on Sunday. It was probably the most valuable 2 hours of training I've had.

I discovered, first of all, that everything F told me was just kind of half-information. D took me through all the back office procedures, with hands-on opportunity (I've now scrubbed my first speculum). I now understand it in a way I never did with F's offhand instructions. (Or it feels like I do--haven't put it into practice yet!)

Then we tackled the mess on my desk. Honestly, I don't know how anybody could leave a job in this manner. Especially if she were planning on staying around. F is still going to be in the office 2 days a week, working for the nurse practitioner who rents office space from Dr. G.

As we started going through everything, each folder would bring a gasp from D and a "check for such-and-such." I'd look for the such-and-such folder and discover that hadn't been done either. It appears that my predecessor really did hardly anything in her three months here.

There is undone billing back to the first of October. No wonder Dr. G is finding some of his checks bouncing! He thought he had lots of money--and, if the billing had actually been done, he obviously would have. But there sit all the tags waiting to be processed. How can someone walk away from a job like that, knowing for certain that she will be discovered!

There was much too much for D and I to get it done. It's going to involve my going back and checking every patient's chart from the time F took over and see what has been done.

We can't find any evidence that any co-pays were collected, for example. Patients are going to start being billed for them.

The thing is that the way D had set up the system, it's almost impossible to screw up. She set up the perfect set of checks and balances that even a math idiot like me can follow it. How F didn't is an enigma. But it's also a Gordian knot that I'm going to have to untie over the next few weeks.

There are several good thing about this for me.

• When/if I'm able to get it all straightened out, I'll be the office heroine (D left shaking her head, saying "Oh, Bev, what a mess you have to sort out!"),
• If I screw up it can be chalked up to F's incompetence prior to my taking the job, and
• By the time it's all brought up to date and all the I's have been dotted and T's crossed, I will definitely know what I'm doing.

It's like reinventing the wheel, but in this case, it will definitely work to my advantage.

I don't know if I can get it all sorted out while doing the day to day stuff as well, so this will involve a lot of overtime for me--it may, for awhile, become a real full time job. But that's OK too. A bigger salary.

One Year Ago:
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