Sunday, March 22, 2015

The Oklahoma University Conteoversy

Having graduated from Jesuit High School and seen my children graduate from Highland Park High School, even my limited experience assures me that there is no more a right wing group wanting to lynch black people than there is a left wing conspiracy to outlaw the NFL in favor of a national scrabble tournament. What we have is youths saying ‘bad words’ in response to the chanting of evidently ‘bad facts’ by others. The limited experience of the white youths did not let them see that the chanting of ‘bad facts’ was related to experiences which may have been true enough(1). But the privileged graduates also were not talking about a true behavior, lynching, that they wanted to engage in, only celebrating having equal time in saying ‘bad words.’

1. TNC article in the Atlantic

Thursday, March 19, 2015

Thoughts on Leaving Private Practice (Equipment and Business Methods)

The most surprising outrageous thing involved a Brother printer. We had trouble with a network connection; so someone called the helpline. They in turn were referred to someone else who did solve the problem but 'noticed some intrusions in our computer' and scared this HIPAA sensitive staff person who asked for authorizations of $600 and $300 to clear the matter up and 'have something placed on the computer to monitor.' A complete fraud from some outfit in India as it turned out. In printers I have appreciated the speed of the HP Officejet Pro 8600 which has some good HP support tools. The Samsung basic small rectangular box has been a reliable printer of patient notes. RxNT is an excellent eprescribing solution and has helped with qualifying for the associated 'meaningful use' parameters involving computers. The ability to link to LabCorps and Quest Laboratories for your patient results is very nice. Billing we did with Lytec and is a subject which is rewarded by reflection on possible deviations from expected. In retrospect one of the most amusing related to Medicaid. I relocated my office. Part of the process of that was informing the state office of the change of address. We continued to have Medicaid patients and to get EOBs telling us what we would get paid from Medicaid. About 2 years after we moved though the billing person noticed a footnote saying that a payment had not been sent, we had electronic funds transfer, for lack of an address. 'The left hand didn't know what the right hand was doing,' so to speak. Medicaid knew my address well enough to send us mail explaining what we would be paid but not well enough to electronically send us money for services which for proper arrival didn't depend on my office address anyway. A few polite letters and phone calls did resolve the matter. As far as I know the back pay was accounted for. One more device I found awesome is the Black & Decker shredder model BD AF7500. For my office it was heavy duty, very convenient to use. Checkmark Payroll has been a useful software for payroll, 940s, and 941s. I use QuickBooks, but, in this context it would be useful to have just a check writing software.