Text for Matteo

This is for my grandson, Matteo. He just turned 4. He has severe Autism and has unlimited energy. And he's a runner. The Delaware County Sheriff's office has placed a gps monitor on his ankle so he can be found if he takes off. He's gotten out of the house several times because someone/anyone forgot to lock the 4 locks on the door to keep him in, and has covered 200 yards in the matter of minutes. He's nearly caused auto accidents from cars trying to avoid him running across a busy street near his home. There are bars on the windows of his home.

In the past year, he has improved by leaps and bounds. He talks now, and will actually look at someone and kind of engage in a conversation w/them. He still spins, has meltdowns, stays up all night, wrecks the house, and does anything he can to get out of the house to escape. The boy has no fear of anything. The county did provide a 6 ft privacy fence, so he can now go out in the back yard and play. He scanned that entire fence, trying to find a way out, and had such a look of frustration when he couldn't find any place. But, he enjoys the back yard, where he plays w/his brothers & sisters.

The above organization is helping Kelly raise the money to get Matteo a service dog. The service dog will help him interact more but what is more important, a service dog will protect him. If he takes off, the dog will stop him. The dog would be at his side 24hrs a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

Service dogs are expensive because they are being trained to do something specific for a specific individual. 13k is the cost. The organization that trains and gives the dogs homes has decided to match any funds Kelly raises to get him his dog. If Kelly can raise 8k, the organization Autism Service Dogs Of America will match it, and Matteo will begin the process of getting his own service dog. The extra money will provide the transportation cost for Kelly and Matteo to fly to Oregon for the training.

I'm asking that anyone who reads this, text the above number tomorrow August 22 and ask your friends to do the same. Times are hard for everyone these days, but, $5 isn't much if it helps the cutest kid on the planet!! (No bias here!) We're hoping that if we can get enough people to do this, Kelly can get the money needed a lot quicker.

Thank you.

So..

I guess my retirement came earlier than I first reported. THE boss called me yesterday and since I had requested vacation time for my last week of work, she gave me the rest of this week off as well. So, as of August 15, 2013....I am a retired person!!!

New Phase of Our Life Will Begin Soon

Before the month is gone, I will be retired. After almost 28 years of working for one company, I will say goodbye. I've worked at home for this company for the past 12 1/2 years. But, before that, I've watched and helped this organization change and grow.

We have gone from index cards and microfish to paperless medical records.

We have gone from one specified person taking a needed chart to the floor to the doctor being able to pull the chart up on a computer screen.

We have gone from doctors coming into a room to physically sign their charts and to dictate their reports, to electronic signatures and recording devices on every floor of the hospital.

We have gone from 13 coders in an office coding from a foldered chart to over 75 coders coding in their jammies in front of their computer at home.

I was one of those coders. Jammies, coffee, cigs and a computer. That was my world. For over 12 years that was my world. From uploading my work every morning and hand writing all the codes and faxing it into the department, to reading an already scanned chart, coding it and hitting finalize and watching it disappear, to a computer program that supposedly codes the chart for you. Yeah...a computer program that codes the chart for you...

This, I think, is the main reason I am retiring. Coding isn't enjoyable for me anymore. Spending my evenings deleting erroneous codes and rearranging good codes is not my idea of coding. Spending my evenings trying to make a chart look as if it has been coded correctly, the way I was taught, and then being criticized because my production is down is disheartening and just plain wrong.

Maybe I should explain what "coding" is: You go into a hospital to get your knee fixed or have your gallbladder taken out, or you go to an outlying facility and have an x-ray or a mammogram or you fall and go the the emergency room. When you do that, someone has to pay for it, hopefully, your insurance. In order for your insurance to pay for it, they have to know what was done. That's coding. Putting your diagnosis and procedures that were done into ICD9 & CPT codes. Those codes tell the insurance company what was done to you and they pay your bill based on those codes. In other words...I don't code it, it doesn't get paid and the hospital turns into a parking lot.

With that said, you can see how the accuracy of coding should be paramount, right? It would seem that this is not the case anymore. This computer program that codes the charts for us, is a disaster. It's function is to pick out key words and convert them to diagnosis codes and key phrases to turn them into procedure codes. Subsequently, some of it's "coding" is beyond ridiculous. Example: lady comes in w/a headache. Her neighbor had a stroke last week and the headache scared her. Diagnosis from the program? Stroke. I could go on forever, but, I'm not going to. This is what I've become, a deleter..not a coder anymore, a deleter.

I guess I delete too slowly, because for the past 3 months, my production has been down. Since it's been 3 months and I haven't improved, I was instructed that I had to come IN to the hospital to work for 2 months or until my numbers went up.

I have been home since the last century. Never any problems before. Always got good yearly reviews and my raise. Now, because of this monstrosity called ACTUS, I'm not a good enough coder anymore. So, instead of driving 50+ miles one way 5 days a week for 2 months and going out to buy a work wardrobe (jammies aren't part of the dress code at the hospital)I put in my 2 weeks notice and I will retire early.

My daughter told me I should blog now that I'm going to be a lady of leisure..ok, this is the first.