Monday, September 7, 2009

Immmm Baaccckkk

After taking a small hiatus from the net, I'm back. I've got quite a bit of things to catch up on. It's been a year of learning more about myself and doing my best to understand others.

I'll separate all the story's with different blog subtitles but I'll give the gist of it here.

In November, we were blessed with the birth of our 3rd (and final) little boy. Keevan Russell was born on Thanksgiving Day at 9:29 in the morning. He truly is a wonderful little boy. Most of the time he is all smiles. Our older two boys were just the opposite. When they were awake, they were usually throwing some sort of fit. Thank God they finally grew out of that stage. Keevan usually only wakes up once throughout the night and when he does wake up, he's usually cheerful and happy. He is truly a pleasure to come home too.

One of the biggest blessings for the year so far was the ability of my wife and I to seriously work on our marriage. I'll leave the details for a later post, but all I can say is that marriage truly takes the work of two people. Two people giving 100% to each other. At the beginning of 2009, i wasn't so sure if that was possible. I'm so glad and thankful that it's all worked out for the best.

As far as stress and work are concerned, running the business hit an all time high level of stress this year. Starting in 2009, Medicare required all DME companies to begin the accreditation process. If a company wants to keep their billing privileges, they must be accreditated by September of 2009.

Preparing for Accreditation became the focus of most of our work. Everyday for about 6 months, my staff poured through policy and procedures making sure we were compliant in all areas.

Once the policy and procedures are complete, then comes the surprise inspection/survey. We all knew that sometime between February 1 and September 1, we would be greeted by an accreditation surveyor.

It's this persons job to go through your company and find things that need to be improved on. My staff and I were all walking on eggshells just waiting for the surveyor to walk throught the door. Finally our day came in April.

I was a nervous wreck. We had all worked so hard to be compliant in all areas. They went through our charts, all of the products that we carry, the policies which we had worked so hard to develop and the procedures we follow to stay in line with those written policies.

Employee performance was very impressive. Everyone had a job to do and they each did their assigned jobs perfectly. The hard work and the stress paid off. One month later, our Certificate of Accreditation arrived via mail. Wow!! We had done it. The following day, you could sense the peace and relaxation in the air.

It's now time for us to get back to running the business. Our patients were taken care of but, those that send us the patients haven't seen us for a while. It's time for me to get my butt in gear and start visiting and thanking those that send us the work.

So for now, I'm going to sign off and get work. Hope you have a great day.
Thanks

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