From City Streets to Billing Sheets: Mastering the Art of Taming Chaos

I am in downtown Dallas this week for our OPIE Billing seminar. Yesterday I had a little time to walk around town.  I am a country boy and I am not a big fan of cities…sure, there’s cool stuff to do, but there are WAAY to many people here! And the traffic!  Crazy.  The hotel we are in is very near Dealey Plaza, so I walked over there.  If you are not familiar with the plaza, it was made infamous as the spot where John F. Kennedy was assassinated.  And though that event was before my time, it was a profound event in American History, and I felt the urge to go see it.  The first thing I saw as I was walking over there was the Texas Schoolbook Depository Building, the spot where, on the sixth floor and according to the “official” reports, Lee Harvey Oswald fired two shots at President Kennedy.  Then you see two big X’s painted on Elm Street marking the locations where Kennedy was as each shot was fired.  Elm Street is still an active road in downtown Dallas.  The traffic is heavy.  From rice burners to buses, VWs to Tesla trucks, all kinds of vehicles whiz by.  In spite of all of the bustle, the site is eerily somber. There was a couple from Wisconsin and their young boy who were on the same trek as I.  So we spoke a bit and kept ending up in the same spaces, reading the signs and imagining the scene.  The traffic disappeared as we took turns talking about what it must have been like to be there and experience the tragedy.  Walking back, the X’s on the road evoked an almost visceral reaction.  Strange. 

The experience reminds me that even though we are surrounded by frenetic activity, there is a calm sereneness in the middle of it all.  We just have to find it.  Just like so many other things in life, there is always chaos to be found.  It is easy to see, easy to get caught up in, and may even be a little exciting.  But as I get older, and hopefully a little wiser, I find some comfort in the calm.  Early in my professional career, an older man whom I knew would remind us that we should take time to smell the coffee.  Taming the chaos, I have found, can be more exciting than living in it.  I encourage you to occasionally step back from whatever you are doing and just smell your coffee.   

Here in Dallas, we are focusing on taming the billing beast through process.  What seems chaotic, random, and impossible to control can actually be predictable and even mastered with a bit of planning and organization. We have people whose average DSO exceeds 65 days, and others who get paid on average, within 14 days of claim submission (yes, even Medicare and private payers).  It comes down to the processes they have created and follow.