weird new rule...

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I was informed today that the office manager, who only comes in about 3 times a week, wants our desks to be void of paper. I am not sure what exactly she means by that. I transcribe, I have piles of paper charts beside me as I type. I have the occasional pile beside me, things I am waiting for information for, things that I have to remember. I took great pains to organize my desk so it was efficient, and there is really very little mess on it. I do as much as humanly possible on the computer, and I really don't think its going to get any better from here without a new paperless electronic file system. Really, I haven't been that offended by my co-workers and their desks either.

So, I asked the other receptionist what they mean, but I have yet to get an answer. What a strange rule to invoke in an office that runs on paperwork. I also feel a tad insulted, that there *has* been made a rule. I wonder if someone complained or something. IF they did, that will annoy me a lot more than the rule, when we all make sure our desks are clean at the end of the day. The doctors desks are far more messy than ours. They won't enforce a lot of things (the one employee that seems to put down 8 hours a day work, yet gets there after I do, and leaves before I do when she is supposed to be there about 1/2 after I leave, and takes a full lunch too, or clamp down on the personal calls/cell phone calls, or bloody well get my bosses to learn the new dictation system without me having to bully them into it, etc) but this they do, and it is just useless micromanaging.

Kind of ranting a bit tonight, like I say, I am feeling slightly insulted and it just needs to come out or I will brood about it.

Sounds to me like you might want to take pre-emptive action by putting some clear lables on each of your stacks (waiting for information, etc.) Then at least your office manager will know why the papers are there. Also, maybe you can get a clarification. Maybe the rule is "clear of paper at the end of the day." Maybe someone's had a problem with the night cleaning crew messing up stuff and papers getting lost that way.

Sounds like one of two things.

1) The paperless office - a longtime dream of management, computers were supposed to end that, but actually produced paper faster


2) (and I'm not making this up). Some of the Intelligence agencies in Washington have a rule like this, to prevent espionage. They actually lock up things in safes at the end of the day, and you can get canned for leaving a post-it note out.

It's odd the amount of productivity that will be lost; about 5 minutes every morning where people will be taking things out of their file cabinets, and another 5 in the evening when everyone has to go home. Look at the bright side; they've cut your workday by 10 minutes.

I do sympathize, I'd be gone the first day... If management didn't do boneheaded things like this IRL, Dilbert wouldn't be nearly as funny...

Those are good ideas. I will get a clarification - could be it isn't aimed at me too, although sometimes this lady just likes things to be "neat", which is wonderful but its going to be hard to achieve. I know the cleaners are rough with stuff - I have to check to make sure they haven't cranked the volume on my transcriber in the night (with dusting, and for some reason, they attack my work station with great zeal), and there have been incidents where my expensive and hard to replace headset was damaged, and my not finished tapes have been thrown away, which is why I am pretty careful to make sure everything is put away anyway. Could be someone is worried about privacy issues too - although for me at least, I keep things in file folders, but unless they supply me with a locked cabinet (for both my desk and for where they keep my pending work), I am not sure how they could stop someone from looking when I am not there to say "hands off" . I have gotten better at tossing things out when they are useless so all paper I have has a purpose (in the beginning, I kept every piece of paper, but that was a long time ago) We will see what comes with this all. I am feeling a bit better about things this morning anyway.

Yes, the mystical fantastical paperless office. Gosh, even e-mails get printed up in our office. I try to tell the person in charge of the office e-mail that if I get one that needs an answer, to leave it on the system, I will access and deal with it there (if there is an answer to be done, at least I don't have to re-put in an email address, risking typos and missents). Instead, she prints it up and leaves it on my desk to answer. Usually when I get an e-mail anyway, its just a simple answer to a question that I have. Defeats the purpose.





I can see that, given the lack of manners of just the general public in our office, it could be a lot worse if a malicious person were to get ahold of the wrong information. I wish I had a safe or someway to be more private - our office is quite open, and I feel quite exposed, and it really upsets me that sometimes the other girls just let patients wander around to the file room to sharpen a pencil, or use a phone, or use my garbage can when I am involved in some of the more critical things that are private (because I am writing about people's lives, as per the doctor's dictations) and that is something they shouldn't be looking at. Come to think of it, I need a cubicle.

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I agree, LOL!

I used to get allergy shots at a clinic. After the shots, I would have to wait in the inner work area (not the regular waiting room) for twenty minutes so they could make sure I didn't have a bad reaction. While I sat there, the doctors would got to little cubbies along the wall with dictation equipment and dictate, out loud, the name and all the details about the person they just examined. I could hear every word about so-and-so's hemerroids, Mrs. J's tipped uterus, etc. And I wasn't the only patient just sitting there waiting, and this was a small town. I kept thinking, whatever happened to having a private offices where the doctors can take care of this stuff? It's one of the reasons I quit going to that clinic. I found it so horrendously ironic that the patients themselves would not hear the dictation nor ever read what was put in their file, but everyone else in town was going to find out what was wrong with them. That seems to be the rule: the only person in the county who does not have the right to know what's in your medical files is you. For everyone else it's an open book.

That is bad! That is a good case against open concept areas and badly designed spaces in privacy important offices. I wish they would "cage" us in with plexiglass, but that isn't going to happen (I think that would solve a lot of problems - first it would preserve any conversation we need to have about a patient or with a patient, two, I think the patients would be less likely to take as many liberties as they do and three, the noise levels would be cut. At least our doctors each have their own offices, so there is privacy in that respect. They were supposed to, at one point, cut through the one offices on the other side of the reception and make a private reception area, so the doctors didn't even have to go out to the waiting room to give orders, although again I think that there were backroom decisions made and practicality gave away to pointy-hair boss syndrome with said space dedicated as a private office instead.

You have had trouble getting your records? I know here (Canada) the records are considered the property of the doctors, but a patient can request anything out of them (with a direct request to the doctor) and the doctor generally will let the patient have a copy (at least I haven't seen a request refused in our office) - sometimes for a nominal photocopy fee, depending on how much the patient wants (although if you are asking for Dr. Smith's records, he can't also give you Dr. Jone's records that are in the same file, because Dr. Jone's has to give permission as well, and so on and so forth). They can't just hand over originals, however. Insurance companies and lawyers can request documents, but there has to be a signed consent from the patient first, or nothing moves out of our offices (although if something is ordered by the court, then it has to go either way, I believe, although usually if the documents are ordered, so goes the doctor to court too, and both sides of the case get equal access to the paperwork requested - they never get more than they have asked for).

That is how it works up here, anyway - records in other places, I don't know about.

I believe that here in the US the records are also considered the property of the doctors, and if you request a copy of anything, the request must come from another doctor and they send it directly to that other doctor's office (by fax, which is then read by any clerk in the other doctor's office -- again, the only one who can't see it is you.) As far as I can tell, patients are not to ever be allowed to see their own files.

But I've had doctors who have had trouble getting my records from other doctors. I don't think it was the doctors' fault, it was snippy little office girls playing games with my health. (I live in an ethnically diverse community, and the ethnicities don't always like each other -- though we keep trying... ) I requested that my records be sent from an office in City A to an office in City B. They never arrived. I requested again. No luck. After the fourth time I was told the records never arrived, I drove to City A and told them I would hand carry the records back to City B. The records clerk there, very nice and professional, told me my records had already been sent quite some time ago. So I went back to City B to the office and told the girls there to look a little harder for my records. A couple of them sort of poked around a little while I watched, but couldn't find anything. So I told them that I was not going to leave that building until they produced my records. Well the one little clerk told me I had to sit down while I was waiting so I would be in anyone's way (no one else was waiting at the window at that time). But to show that I was not being belligerent, I sat down. I heard a desk drawer open and close, and then the clerk came to the window. They had found my records! So I made an appointment to see the nurse practitioner. Appointment time came, and the NP walked in the examining room with my file. It had been reduced to about ten sheets of paper, and half of them were duplicates of the other papers (mind you, I had been going to the other doctor for over 15 years, and I knew my file in that office was a good two inches thick.) Then the NP started asking me routine questions about my health history, and she was skeptical when I told her I had a heart murmur. I told her about the holter monitor, the echo-cardiogram, all of it -- but she could find no mention of it in the file she had. Some months later I had to have surgery on my hand (carpal tunnel) and they put me under general anethesia. But first the anethesiologist looked at my chart and then looked at me (thankfully) and said "You can't weigh that much! You don't weigh over 95 pounds!" (He was off by a few pounds, but not much.) Evidently my chart had me at well over 120 pounds. Now how did that mistake get there? And what would have happened if he didn't catch it? My conclusion: someone in that office was trying to kill me.

Sigh, I do have to admit, some of my colleagues aren't up to the task (laziness, lack of critical thinking, straight incompetence, newbie status or whatever). Generally if the doctor finds out that there is a piece of information he doesn't have, then he will send us to track it down - I have been in a position where I have asked for a particular test result and was told at the other end that the patient's file was huge. I don't expect the GP girl to know exactly what a "specific to our office" test may look like (even if I can identify a test result paper from across the room just from the shapes on the paper, but I may be unique in that, LOL!) , and I know they are busy, but telling me that the chart is too big so they aren't even going to look isn't getting the result I seek, and its just a waste of time (I have resorted to going around such staff, writing directly to the doctor with my request. I may not be so very popular , but they also know I am not going to play around either) . Its always good for a patient to advocate for themselves, as you did - not only with the front staff, but also with respect to the doctor (and I have had doctors who I know to be great examples of what a doctor should be, tell me to remember, not everyone graduated at the top of their class).

Its frustrating to hear stories like yours - I just want things to work properly, for people to think a little or even care what they are doing - I ask a lot, I know, sigh I am happy that the error in your weight was caught - probably what happened at one point is someone wrote a number in the wrong column, and it became a transcription carry over error, but a very critical error indeed. Hopefully the office you have now has better staff and doctors.

Supposedly (at least in the US), they're going to try to standardize records-keeping to make this whole thing a lot easier.

Just thought of a 3rd possibility

Your boss is an insecure obsequious person who was told by his boss "this place is messy. Have it cleaned up"