Pet Peve # whatever
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One of the many, many reasons I hate that the schools now bill Medicaid for services -- over and above the fact that we do it at all -- is stupid little irritation called "Random Moment Sampling", in which we have to report on what we were doing at 'x' moment on 'y' day. (I've complained about this before.)
My beef this time is the stupidity of question #3. The first two would be expected:
1) Who were you with?
2) What were you doing?
Now, there's a lot of ways this one could be answered --
conducting speech therapy,
testing for new speech placement,
testing to evaluate speech progress,
consulting with teachers,
consulting with parents,
attending IEP meeting,
updating therapy notes and/or records
attending workshop about new techniques
etc, etc, etc. But here's the kicker:
3. Why were you performing this activity?
I just... doesn't the activity make the 'why' obvious? Most of those can be answered with, "Because it's part of the job requirements, duh!" Unfortunately, that is not an acceptable answer, even if I leave off the 'duh'.
My 'explanation' today was: "To comply with mandated school and federal requirements." (For 'updating notes and records'. Note: again, I wasn't with a student or students. If the time sample had been a mere 8 minutes later, I would have been. Sheesh!)
True, it's not hard, and it doesn't take long... but I have to formulate that government-speak response, and someone on the other end has to read it, and file it, and whatever. Then I have to print out the confirmation report, sign it, take it to the Special Ed secretary, and she has to file it for... somebody in the future checking up to see that we've crossed all our 'T's and dotted our 'I's. That's a helluvan expenditure -- in work-hours, which translates to paychecks and extra bureaucracy -- that's that could easily be cut from 'excess government spending'. But, no -- assuming that the schools are doing their best to follow regs and that, even if they do make a mistake, the money is going for the benefit of the students anyway (in our district, it's used to hire an extra two nurses) -- would deny the paper-pushers of all their fun. Grrr...
.
Comment at Dreamwidth by Name, Anonymous, or Open Id -
One of the many, many reasons I hate that the schools now bill Medicaid for services -- over and above the fact that we do it at all -- is stupid little irritation called "Random Moment Sampling", in which we have to report on what we were doing at 'x' moment on 'y' day. (I've complained about this before.)
My beef this time is the stupidity of question #3. The first two would be expected:
1) Who were you with?
2) What were you doing?
Now, there's a lot of ways this one could be answered --
conducting speech therapy,
testing for new speech placement,
testing to evaluate speech progress,
consulting with teachers,
consulting with parents,
attending IEP meeting,
updating therapy notes and/or records
attending workshop about new techniques
etc, etc, etc. But here's the kicker:
3. Why were you performing this activity?
I just... doesn't the activity make the 'why' obvious? Most of those can be answered with, "Because it's part of the job requirements, duh!" Unfortunately, that is not an acceptable answer, even if I leave off the 'duh'.
My 'explanation' today was: "To comply with mandated school and federal requirements." (For 'updating notes and records'. Note: again, I wasn't with a student or students. If the time sample had been a mere 8 minutes later, I would have been. Sheesh!)
True, it's not hard, and it doesn't take long... but I have to formulate that government-speak response, and someone on the other end has to read it, and file it, and whatever. Then I have to print out the confirmation report, sign it, take it to the Special Ed secretary, and she has to file it for... somebody in the future checking up to see that we've crossed all our 'T's and dotted our 'I's. That's a helluvan expenditure -- in work-hours, which translates to paychecks and extra bureaucracy -- that's that could easily be cut from 'excess government spending'. But, no -- assuming that the schools are doing their best to follow regs and that, even if they do make a mistake, the money is going for the benefit of the students anyway (in our district, it's used to hire an extra two nurses) -- would deny the paper-pushers of all their fun. Grrr...
.
Comment at Dreamwidth by Name, Anonymous, or Open Id -