It's Business Time
So hey, I don't think people have much of an idea what I'm doing for a living these days. I've been emailing back and forth with an old friend and she asked about it, this is what I told her:
"I'm the "Administrative Services Manager" at Washington Publishing Company, the company my dad started (wpc-edi.com, I dare you to understand anything up there). What we do is pretty complicated and esoteric. Basically we publish and sell standards that allow health care providers (doctors, hospitals) to get paid by health care payers (insurance companies, state/federal governments) computer-to-computer, all automated and without human involvement. This is the sort of thing that's pretty important, when you think about it in terms of millions of patients and billions of dollars. A lot of this stuff is still being done one claim at a time, which is tremendously inefficient and a big part of why 30 cents of every dollar spent on health care in this country is sucked up by administrative costs.
He has two partners in the company now, I primarily answer to one of the other ones.
I manage a department consisting of myself. We sell a lot of stuff through an online store, I process/answer questions about all of that. I assemble stuff other people write into proposals and agreements for our consulting wing. I do the accounts receivable and accounts payable stuff. I scan incoming mail and get it to the people who need to deal with it. I file paper, I shred paper. I manage our phone system. I'm a quasi-receptionist, although more and more I can answer help people who call get the info they need on my own. You get the idea."
So there you go! Riveting, I know.
"I'm the "Administrative Services Manager" at Washington Publishing Company, the company my dad started (wpc-edi.com, I dare you to understand anything up there). What we do is pretty complicated and esoteric. Basically we publish and sell standards that allow health care providers (doctors, hospitals) to get paid by health care payers (insurance companies, state/federal governments) computer-to-computer, all automated and without human involvement. This is the sort of thing that's pretty important, when you think about it in terms of millions of patients and billions of dollars. A lot of this stuff is still being done one claim at a time, which is tremendously inefficient and a big part of why 30 cents of every dollar spent on health care in this country is sucked up by administrative costs.
He has two partners in the company now, I primarily answer to one of the other ones.
I manage a department consisting of myself. We sell a lot of stuff through an online store, I process/answer questions about all of that. I assemble stuff other people write into proposals and agreements for our consulting wing. I do the accounts receivable and accounts payable stuff. I scan incoming mail and get it to the people who need to deal with it. I file paper, I shred paper. I manage our phone system. I'm a quasi-receptionist, although more and more I can answer help people who call get the info they need on my own. You get the idea."
So there you go! Riveting, I know.