Because of her job.
This is a "Tales from Work" not from me, but for my wife.
It's the first one I have done in quite a while.
My wonderful wife, (Gawd bless her), has worked at the same medical clinic office for 18 years. In a previous post, I discussed how she went on vacation and came back to find thousands of dollars of patient account money missing from patient accounts, by her "backup", (a person that multi-tasks "fast" but not "quality or accurate".); and was told by said person, "Well you're back now, you can figure it out.", and was told by her boss. "I don't care. Fix it."; AND to top it off when she did find the missing money, (over 5K), erroneously placed in other accounts, instead of being told "Thanks" or "Congratulations", she was told the next day that they were "moving her to medical records" and putting the person that misplaced the money in her position.
Yeah…that company.
So…Here's the latest fiasco.
She works in the main office for a major medical practice here in Indiana. They have over 25 clinics in the state handling thousands of patients.
My wifes job is to enter patient data into the system as it is sent to them from the Doctor office.
In theory, it goes like this.
1: Patient arrives.
2: Front desk hands them the patient info forms, and has them fill them out.
3: Patient then fills out forms and hands back to front desk.
4: Front desk looks over patient forms, and then autofaxes them to main office where info is then dropped into the database and then sent to the person handling that doctor.
5: Person handling the doctor then enters the patient info into the records and billing systems.
In reality…
1: Patient shows up.
2: Front desk hands them the patient info forms to have them fill out.
3: Patient doesn't completely fill out form, leaving numerous blanks which then need to be filled in, leaving out major information, putting in wrong addresses, phone #'s, etc, false locations, etc, so as not to get a bill. WHen asked for medications used, they put in "Heart pills", "Blood pills", instead of the name of the medication. This causes EMR folks to literally have to look up info on the patients medication and see what they are taking. Many times the forms say: "Are you on medication?" They will answer with "Yes", When the form says "What type?" they will answer with "Don't know."
Sigh.
3: Patient then hands back incomplete paperwork to front desk. Front desk doesn't check form as required but puts it in autofax box "To be faxed later".
4: Front desk person goes to lunch, or is "too busy" to send records as she is busy checking messages on her iphone.
5: Records that are supposed to be immeidately sent, get bundle autofaxed as one big drop at 4:00 pm in the afternoon, (if even then), or sometimes not till 1-2 days later, and then only coming across when the dr starts asking about the record.
6: Records are now backed up as EMR folks are required by laws to make sure that all info is entered. This means having to look up google street addresses (only to find out that their "house" is actually an empty parking lot), and any and all medication, and enter all of this data on the two systems.
7: What should be a 10-15 minute process per record is now 45 mins to 1 1/2 hours depending on how extensive these forms are. (Old people have lots of meds and surgeries that have to be entered)…
Sigh…
That my friends is the background of my wifes job.
And here's the new crap in the mix.
Her job has a high turnover rate.
There is little to no real "training". Their idea of training is for you to "Sit next to someone and try to pick up what they are doing while they are doing it."
There is no training room, no training program, no training specialist.
You are literally a seat filler and thrown to the wolves.
For years they had the HR and the Comptroller as the same person. So technically speaking if you had an issue with the comptroller you couldn't discuss it with HR because it was the same person.
(which technically speaking is illegal, but we'll leave that there…)
Every quarter they have a quarterly meeting, and the idea of a training room is brought up, and the execs say "Yeah that's a great idea! Now, let's talk about the company golf match."
This is the company that told people that "they weren't getting any pay raises for the year." But then turned around and gave the managers a bonus, AND then one of the doctors actually came in and started bragging about "How much money he spent to get VIP season box seats for all Colts home games."
Yeah.
So…
Here's the main issue now.
The two main systems that my wife works on (We will call them "L" and "R") do not play well together, or at all most of the time.
"L" is a 30+ year old piece of software that was initially developed in the mid 80's-early 90's, for the medical industry, and the last update was over 15 years ago, when the developer sold it to an industry and moved to Costa Rica and is living the rich life. My wife's company is the only company in the entire geographical region that still uses this antiquated POS software. It simply cannot handle what has to be done today with medical records. The company that bought it from the developer stopped supporting it 10 years ago, so whenever there is a problem with it, the execs at my wife's company literally have to call the actual rich developer in CR and have him fix it (For a nice hefty fee). He's got a pretty sweet gig.
To top this off, "R" is the billing system that crashed daily 1-2 times simply because the amount of clinics it had to support overwhelms it's operational parameters and statistics.
Did I also mention that due to the age and poor functioning capability, that neither piece of software really communicates with the other one, so the EMR person has to enter the data TWICE, once in each system.
Sooooooooo…to make a long story short.
My wife's company finally realized they needed new software to handle the patient loads. 30-40 year old software wasn't handling things.
So they bought a new system to replace "R". We'll call it "EMR".
Didn't tell anyone when it was coming in, other than, "oh yeah, sometime at the beginning of the year."
Managers got sent to training for a week of actual hands on training to learn it.
Managers came back.
Email got send out Friday afternoon, saying "Hey! Good news! We're going LIVE with the new EMR system on MONDAY!!!!"
Notice none of the people that use it were trained.
So company says "Nooooooooooooo problem. Here's a bunch of links to youtube videos on the system, so you can watch these and check off the complete boxes and you'll be trained on it."
And then they say "Oh yeah and you need to have all of this done by 0800 Monday morning to work the new system as the old one is down."
Soooo..my wife spent an entire weekend watching poorly made youtube videos made by some training lady who literally took her iphone video cam and was recording her monitor screen and trying to talk through "how to do things on the EMR".
Needless to say Monday came through and it was a disaster of Titanic proportions.
This was a little over a month ago.
Now…fast forward to this week.
Sooooo….
Company came out last week and said "GREAT NEWS! We're replacing "L" with "S", (a new system with four times the amount of bills and whistles designed to make things "quicker and easier".)
Once again the supers and managers got hands on training for a week.
None of the actual EMR folks did.
So then company came out and said "Hey! We're going live on March 10th. And we're still developing the training program."
Okay so a week plus to get ready for this mess.
Company then comes out this past Friday and said "Hey! We're moving up the GO LIVE DATE to MARCH 3rd!" (Today!).
People are like "What?"
So this morning, my wife gets an email from the super that says:
1: "L is now down. You cannot use L anymore UNLESS you already have files submitted to it." My wife did due to one of the doctors.
2: "We're still building the database and adding features to the software application for S, so while we are going LIVE with it today, it's not finished or working 100%."
3: "We want EVERYONE to start using S today, even though it's not finished and up or working 100% and still being built. We need you to use it."
4: "We realize that none of you have gotten any training on this, but we need you to use it, and to help out, since there isn't any real training material involved, we're going to have a group chat open, and when you have a question about it, ask and we will try to help."
5: "Oh and we need you to get as many records done as you can."
Essentially they asked my wife, (and others) to "fly an airplane that they have never been in, never sat in the cockpit, isn't running completely and they are still trying to install the engines while they are trying to fly it.
So my wife has been struggling with trying to do this, (as has everyone else). Supers are in group chat, but selectively answering questions, or not at all. My wife just found out that she needs to have EMR permission to edit medical records to enter into the system, (This hasn't been granted to her, so she isn't able to enter records), and the basic answer out of her company is "Well….do what you can."
I watched her so upset today she broke down crying because she is worried about her job because she is behind in her records due to this crazy crap.
It took all my strength and patience NOT to directly email the office manager and request a meeting confidential in person meeting with him about this fiasco, (and there is no other word for it).
To say I am upset and angry is an understatement.
My wife should not be on the edge and worried about her job because of p*ss poor planning, leadership, management, and lack of professionalism and employee support from her supers and the company.
As you read this, I am probably cruising indeed for another job for her, that won't crush her spirit.
Thanks for reading this.
takes 
