Some Very Lazy People Out There

To begin with, I'd like to open with a joke that came out of no where on a recent day. I've overtold this one in the Queen's presence to the point that she's tired of it, but each new audience likes it. It so happened one day that Optimus and I were talking about nothing in particular and at the end of this pointless ramble, I said, "Sure, I understand. But what would I do with a monkey and a phone jack?" Optimus replied, without batting an eye, "Start a call center."

If you've ever worked in a call center, you'll laugh about twice as hard as not. Anyway...

I've talked about the Medicare Direct Data Entry system before and my involvement with it, and today I had someone that just exemplifies the level of effort that some people want to put into their work. Everything I did for this person was well within their realm of access, so it wouldn't been too complicated.

You see, they'd been getting an error at random on their claims coming back from this DDE system stating that one of their hospital identifier numbers was not valid. I had explained that this error typically means that the login being used is not authorized to use the number they're trying to send or access. It's pretty simple. So they called up Medicare to see what the deal was, and there are no problems with their numbers. Well, I never said their numbers had a problem. I said their LOGIN had a problem.

So they did it all over again, and again, big surprise, their numbers are fine. Yeah, they are. Never said they weren't. This time, however, I got some examples to look at and compare. Well, since it's a login problem, my first (really, my only) inclination was to find the job that sent (or attempted to send) the claim, and see what login it used. They can see this from their side of ePremis, and they don't need my super-wide access to do it. It's a simple matter of comparison.

Find number on claim; find job from that date and time with that number on it. See login.

Fifteen minutes later, my suspicion was confirmed. One login was giving them fits. I told her which one, and she told me that they don't have a login for that out there. I assured her they do and offered to fix it, but she wanted to run this by her boss and get back to me. Um, ok.

The point of all this was that using some basic comparison skills, I was able to solve a problem with information she had at her disposal. A mountain was made out of a molehill because they didn't listen to a word I said and went under their own assumptions over what they thought I said. I fully anticipate their calling back because they "did what I said and it didn't work."

If you did what I said, it would work. Clearly, it means you weren't listening, but hey, there's a precedent for that.