Deep thoughts...

Today at work I was hit smack in the face by an emergency of the fiscal kind right when I walked in the door. That, of course, gave me the head ache from hell.

First, let me say, I am a social worker. I do social work. If I wanted to be an accountant I would have paid more attention to Mrs. Law in math class. I didn't so I am a social worker. The agency I work for is contracted to do social work by a large Care Management Organization which has an enormous fiscal department that should be able to handle the fiscal end of things. We have contracted with this CMO since last February and so far every single fiscal fiasco that happens somehow ends up in my lap to fix. The fact that they are relying on me for this should scare the crap out of them. What I do is supervise case management. The fiscal activity for that involves us doing our jobs and submitting a bill to them - the end. Last month, my case management unit billed $120,000 worth of case management revenue for the agency. Today we got our payment from the CMO. They paid only $39,000. They listed case by case those hours they denied payment for and sent it to my boss. So, of course, he brought it to me. I spent all morning checking the billing system and none of the reasons they gave made any sense. I then spent the next two hours on the phone with someone in the fiscal office trying to make sense of it. She couldn't make sense of it either. I then took it to her supervisor who also failed to make sense of it. By three o'clock I had spent the entire day immersed in numbers - adding, subtracting, multiplying, and tearing my hair out. In the end, all that was agreed was that there was a problem somewhere. I could have told them that in the first ten minutes and saved myself the migraine.

I am a social worker. I just want to do social work. And it's getting the point where the more of this fiscal crap I have to deal with the more I want to just walk away.

I am a social worker. That's all.