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Sep. 6th, 2002
Crafty Ladies!
Sep. 6th, 2002 09:53 amThis Sunday I'm planning on leaving my house around 1:00 for the Wayside Inn Craft Fair (so be at ThaHood by then if you'd like to go). The fair is from 9:30 to 4:30 and costs $5 to get in (but I have some $1 off coupons). From there we could even still head to Attleboro for shopping - we could pick up 495 down the street and take that south to 95 (not too long before the exit for The Emerald Square Mall). Here's some info on the fair: http://www.joycescraftshows.com/2002_show_schedule.htm
So if you're up for crafty goodness and window shopping (or real shopping, if you have some of that crazy cash stuff) let me know - and be at my house on Sunday around 1:00 :)
The guys can frag each other all they want - we'll be having more fun (and we can meet up with them for foody-goodness later on)!
So if you're up for crafty goodness and window shopping (or real shopping, if you have some of that crazy cash stuff) let me know - and be at my house on Sunday around 1:00 :)
The guys can frag each other all they want - we'll be having more fun (and we can meet up with them for foody-goodness later on)!
Coding Humor
Sep. 6th, 2002 03:31 pmSome of you may know that one of my large projects at work has been my involvement with our Encounter Data http://www.cms.gov/healthplans/encounter/ project. Basically, we are paid for our Medicare Eligible members by Medicare (the members choose us as a health plan provider rather then Medicare - we offer more than Medicare does by managing care and negotiating discounts with providers) and our payment is based on members' past medical history and some demographic information. This administrative nightmare comes to you lovingly from the 1997 Balanced Budget Act (BBA) - or was it 98? :)
There is a huge and convoluted process of pulling this claims data. Initially the IS Department pulled data and did a brief QC before sending it to Medicare. We came to find out that they weren't doing a very good check - they were sending only 1-day inpatient stay data when we were only supposed to send GREATER than 1-day stay information (hence our revenue was millions of dollars short). It was a big mess to fix it all (of course) and Senior Management decided that more work and attention was needed on this project. Hence a whole department was formed that just deals with Encounter Data issues. My department was asked to assist with doing a detailed QC of the files after IS did their weeny QC at first, then we were to be building an application in order for the Encounter Data Department to check the files on their own and we would make methodology/code changes to the process when necessary (and yours truly was the one to do the early QC and the later application development).
After most health plans in the country complained to Medicare about the huge administrative headaches in pulling data in their requested format, submitting tons of variables that Medicare didn't really even need to base our payments on (they just figured "hey, we're getting some data anyway - lets ask them for the world so we can get an idea of how they are doing things in their neck of the woods"). Many companies were even unable to send ANY data due to the nightmare that it was (I am proud to say that we pulled it off and according to Medicare, did a better job than many other plans in our area and other parts of the country). In response Medicare simplified requirements and called for a whole new process. This is good in concept - but it meant that all work we had done already had to be scrapped and new checking methods, tools and later an application would need to be built.
****
I've checked our first test files for this new format/process with new code that I wrote and all was OK (we will send Inpatient, Physician and Outpatient data now rather than just Inpatient as before). I'm in the process of cleaning up documentation and code and getting it into a user-friendly application format for the Encounter Data Department to use. Since our time on this project is limited however, and our department has other priorities outside of Encounter Data (gee, you think we wood? with over 1 million members and only 100K of them in this product line?) I've moved to a less-time consuming consultant role on the project. As such an analyst in the Encounter Data Department is in the process of taking my past code used for checking (in SPSS and one of the silly SQL-like programs that we use, "Forest and Trees") and is trying to tweak it to perform additional checking purposes. Bill is the guy for the job - he's the only technically minded person over there and he's picked up SPSS on his own pretty much from looking at my code. He's a cool guy, he's a big scooby doo fan and we joke all of the time about ditching Encounter Data meetings and heading to the Dunkin Donuts up Mt. Auburn Street a few blocks from the building.
So I'm reviewing his code - my role this time is to be tech support and to check his (i.e. my tweaked) code and to run it and make sure it works. I've done this to two of the three files and sent back my suggestions. I just received the third and final file to check with these changes incorporated (in addition to new versions of files 1 and 2 to check again).
Hee hee - he made a serious typo error when adding in some comments to the code. He typed "Ass the files together and save out as an Excel File".
****
Rather than including that finding in my 'official' e-mail noting all checking results (that my boss and his will be copied on) I decided to give him a call to fix it. Somehow I was able to stop laughing and spit out what I found for him - and we proceeded to laugh on the phone together for about 5 minutes before he thanked me excitedly and then we discussed weekend plans.
What a way to be ending a Friday :)
There is a huge and convoluted process of pulling this claims data. Initially the IS Department pulled data and did a brief QC before sending it to Medicare. We came to find out that they weren't doing a very good check - they were sending only 1-day inpatient stay data when we were only supposed to send GREATER than 1-day stay information (hence our revenue was millions of dollars short). It was a big mess to fix it all (of course) and Senior Management decided that more work and attention was needed on this project. Hence a whole department was formed that just deals with Encounter Data issues. My department was asked to assist with doing a detailed QC of the files after IS did their weeny QC at first, then we were to be building an application in order for the Encounter Data Department to check the files on their own and we would make methodology/code changes to the process when necessary (and yours truly was the one to do the early QC and the later application development).
After most health plans in the country complained to Medicare about the huge administrative headaches in pulling data in their requested format, submitting tons of variables that Medicare didn't really even need to base our payments on (they just figured "hey, we're getting some data anyway - lets ask them for the world so we can get an idea of how they are doing things in their neck of the woods"). Many companies were even unable to send ANY data due to the nightmare that it was (I am proud to say that we pulled it off and according to Medicare, did a better job than many other plans in our area and other parts of the country). In response Medicare simplified requirements and called for a whole new process. This is good in concept - but it meant that all work we had done already had to be scrapped and new checking methods, tools and later an application would need to be built.
****
I've checked our first test files for this new format/process with new code that I wrote and all was OK (we will send Inpatient, Physician and Outpatient data now rather than just Inpatient as before). I'm in the process of cleaning up documentation and code and getting it into a user-friendly application format for the Encounter Data Department to use. Since our time on this project is limited however, and our department has other priorities outside of Encounter Data (gee, you think we wood? with over 1 million members and only 100K of them in this product line?) I've moved to a less-time consuming consultant role on the project. As such an analyst in the Encounter Data Department is in the process of taking my past code used for checking (in SPSS and one of the silly SQL-like programs that we use, "Forest and Trees") and is trying to tweak it to perform additional checking purposes. Bill is the guy for the job - he's the only technically minded person over there and he's picked up SPSS on his own pretty much from looking at my code. He's a cool guy, he's a big scooby doo fan and we joke all of the time about ditching Encounter Data meetings and heading to the Dunkin Donuts up Mt. Auburn Street a few blocks from the building.
So I'm reviewing his code - my role this time is to be tech support and to check his (i.e. my tweaked) code and to run it and make sure it works. I've done this to two of the three files and sent back my suggestions. I just received the third and final file to check with these changes incorporated (in addition to new versions of files 1 and 2 to check again).
Hee hee - he made a serious typo error when adding in some comments to the code. He typed "Ass the files together and save out as an Excel File".
****
Rather than including that finding in my 'official' e-mail noting all checking results (that my boss and his will be copied on) I decided to give him a call to fix it. Somehow I was able to stop laughing and spit out what I found for him - and we proceeded to laugh on the phone together for about 5 minutes before he thanked me excitedly and then we discussed weekend plans.
What a way to be ending a Friday :)