Ah, a victim of the sense of obligation to fill out forms and return them. I am here to attest to the possibility of remaining alive after reaching the point of simply refusing to fill out any more forms. To be honest, I no longer see patients and bill for services, but that's for different reasons. Over 3 decades, I built up an incredible, but completely common, raft of memberships in this quality assurance organization, that PPO, HMO, PRO, ORP, OPR (now I'm just kidding, changing the order of letters in the "acronym"), to be sure that if any wayward soul crossed my path with some obscure source of sponsorship for their health dilemma, I could be paid for a smidgen for consulting, offering treatment and occasionally even performing an operation on their behalf. These memberships each have a term, a renewal process and a little life of their own. Here, almost 4 years after my last clinical assignment, I am still getting requests to update my clinical particulars with some of these organizations, who are apparently unable to see that I have submitted exactly zero claims in 4 years. I guess I would be responsible for sending in my own death certificate to get off their mailing list. Instead, I take the momentary pleasure of hitting the "delete" key and leaving them in their clerical confusion. I think I will go on existing in virtual reality long after my cold corpse has been laid to rest or turned to ashes, because I wasn't willing to fill out the paperwork to get OFF the list, as opposed to getting ON it. I recently found myself in a small dilemma over the requirement to renew and maintain one of the only certifications that has any personal meaning to me. I was tickled pink to hear from a person in that organization that they actually didn't care one iota about whether I had met the strict requirements of maintaining my status as long as I didn't do anything stupid and noone complained about me. REALLY? I can use my own good sense about whether I am competent to be credentialed for doing almost nothing described by the credential? Did I just drop down the rabbit hole into a parallel universe? Actually, the organization itself is dealing with the ludicrous requirements of maintaining certification and decided it is easier to only enforce the credential prerequisites "if there is a problem". I love that! it makes filling out the form to update my status so much easier! I think if I were accepting even a dime in compensation for professional services, everything would be completely different, but I'm not, so I'll happily comply with their fantasy status and do nothing, stay out of "trouble" and keep my membership card! If I ever do anything clinical again, i'll ask for supervised status until I am considered "up to date" and officially meet prerequisites for the certification. How imminently reasonable...I can hardly believe such pragmatism still exists somewhere!
Way back when I was a training department staff cog in the Federal Aviation Administration, we had a saying: No job is done until the paperwork is finished.
A sign with that saying was, on occasion, taped to the men's bathroom door. The bathroom paper "metaphor" is appropriate for most paperwork.
Every year, those of us that remained current as Journeymen (and women) Radar Air Traffic Controllers had to take a Second Class Medical Examination. Every year, upon arriving at the Doctor's office for our Medcial Examination, we were given exactly the same tedious, all encompassing, life history of whatevah ailed us, since we took our first breath, to fill out. Thankfully, there was one check mark on that form that I was fortunate enough to be able to check most years: "No Change Since Last Report".
If only the bureaucratic bean counters of today would incorporate something along those lines today, Medical Doctors might have more time to be Medical Doctors.
Ah, a victim of the sense of obligation to fill out forms and return them. I am here to attest to the possibility of remaining alive after reaching the point of simply refusing to fill out any more forms. To be honest, I no longer see patients and bill for services, but that's for different reasons. Over 3 decades, I built up an incredible, but completely common, raft of memberships in this quality assurance organization, that PPO, HMO, PRO, ORP, OPR (now I'm just kidding, changing the order of letters in the "acronym"), to be sure that if any wayward soul crossed my path with some obscure source of sponsorship for their health dilemma, I could be paid for a smidgen for consulting, offering treatment and occasionally even performing an operation on their behalf. These memberships each have a term, a renewal process and a little life of their own. Here, almost 4 years after my last clinical assignment, I am still getting requests to update my clinical particulars with some of these organizations, who are apparently unable to see that I have submitted exactly zero claims in 4 years. I guess I would be responsible for sending in my own death certificate to get off their mailing list. Instead, I take the momentary pleasure of hitting the "delete" key and leaving them in their clerical confusion. I think I will go on existing in virtual reality long after my cold corpse has been laid to rest or turned to ashes, because I wasn't willing to fill out the paperwork to get OFF the list, as opposed to getting ON it. I recently found myself in a small dilemma over the requirement to renew and maintain one of the only certifications that has any personal meaning to me. I was tickled pink to hear from a person in that organization that they actually didn't care one iota about whether I had met the strict requirements of maintaining my status as long as I didn't do anything stupid and noone complained about me. REALLY? I can use my own good sense about whether I am competent to be credentialed for doing almost nothing described by the credential? Did I just drop down the rabbit hole into a parallel universe? Actually, the organization itself is dealing with the ludicrous requirements of maintaining certification and decided it is easier to only enforce the credential prerequisites "if there is a problem". I love that! it makes filling out the form to update my status so much easier! I think if I were accepting even a dime in compensation for professional services, everything would be completely different, but I'm not, so I'll happily comply with their fantasy status and do nothing, stay out of "trouble" and keep my membership card! If I ever do anything clinical again, i'll ask for supervised status until I am considered "up to date" and officially meet prerequisites for the certification. How imminently reasonable...I can hardly believe such pragmatism still exists somewhere!
Thank you, Ed, for this glimpse into the real life of a clerical physician...Monday again!
Way back when I was a training department staff cog in the Federal Aviation Administration, we had a saying: No job is done until the paperwork is finished.
A sign with that saying was, on occasion, taped to the men's bathroom door. The bathroom paper "metaphor" is appropriate for most paperwork.
Every year, those of us that remained current as Journeymen (and women) Radar Air Traffic Controllers had to take a Second Class Medical Examination. Every year, upon arriving at the Doctor's office for our Medcial Examination, we were given exactly the same tedious, all encompassing, life history of whatevah ailed us, since we took our first breath, to fill out. Thankfully, there was one check mark on that form that I was fortunate enough to be able to check most years: "No Change Since Last Report".
If only the bureaucratic bean counters of today would incorporate something along those lines today, Medical Doctors might have more time to be Medical Doctors.