A Strange Day

Today was the kickoff of the really big work sessions in Cleveland. We had 240 people at our first session - 130 in person, 110 on the phone with web meeting. Then we had between 2-3 simultaneous sessions all day, with between 40-80 people in each one. It was big craziness.

Since this sort of affair is larger than the client can house, we've taken space at a community center. And we're sharing the space with other community center activities. Which led to today's horror: In the middle of the center is a huge room that can be divided into 3 medium rooms. Let's call them A, B, and C. In room A, we had 50 people discussing hospital billing. In room C, we had 80 people discussing emergency room admitting procedures.

In room B, was Bingo for Seniors. With a microphone and a big speaker.

So for 2 hours, our sessions in A and C were punctuated by regular "B5", "I22" "N36", "G58", and "072". Clear as day. It was at first jarring, then distracting, and then I settled into it and realized that this is what going insane sounds like: People dryly discussing the exact point at which an account is due to be forwarded to a collection agency, with a monotone, bass heavy voice calling out random number and letters, with the occasional "WE HAVE BINGO CALLED - DON'T CLEAR YOUR CARDS - WE NEED TO VERIFY".

When the game was finally over, and silence settled from Room B, the people in A and C were still on their guard, looking around, flinching a bit. It was a terrible terrible experience.

But almost worse was settling in after the Bingo was over, and paying closer attention to the hospital billing workflows and realizing: Oh god, what a horrible horrible thing to be caring about. I was reminded of a talk I had with one of my compatriots on the project months ago: He said "I love doing this work, but if I had to actually use this software to do these workflows I have helped them design to do the job they need to do, I'd kill myself".

I must say, he had a point. Working on clinical things (Cardiac, Imaging, Pharmacy) is so much more fun because, well, it's about directly helping people as opposed to getting PAID for helping people. Oh well!