Frustration

 

        I like being a pharmacist. I like the fact that I'm helping people. (Although there are a couple members among my in-laws who believe this is not true.) Interacting with my customers is something I enjoy. I'm amused by this because I'm also a introvert and more than a little shy. Introverts usually don't take public facing jobs like that. I've been a pharmacist for a bit over 30 years now. While I may not have always liked where I worked, I always liked what I was doing.

        Having said that there are a few things about my job that I don't like. Mostly this involves dealing with insurance companies. As I work for an independent pharmacy, we don't have a corporate office to take care of certain tasks centrally. This means that certain tasks must be shared among the staff.  One of the insurers that we deal with requires us to revalidate our information every three years. 

        The person who trained me in on this job did not mention this fact so I was caught off guard. I found the correct website and ran into problems right away. I wasn't an authorized user and none of the passwords worked. After several hours and phone calls, I managed to get into get in. It took me me another hour to get to the form to fill out. I'm sure the website was created by someone in their 20s who is very tech savvy. For someone like me who has fairly basic computer skills is was almost impossible. I found the a printed copy of the last time the form had been filled out and copied what I saw. There was some updating that needed to be done. I got the form filled out and submitted it. 

        The next step meant waiting until a site visit is scheduled. Once the visit us completed then I get a letter with a request for more information. I had no idea how long it would take. I was expecting something in the neighborhood of three months. I was wrong. It was closer to nine months when the request for information arrived. I had thirty days to get the requested documents. 

        I didn't think it would be a problem. I had the documents and I faxed them satisfied that I was done. 

        I wasn't done. Right away I got a email with a list of corrections I needed to make. I made the corrections. Another email showed up with more corrections. Almost every day I would fix something and a new problem would show up. I got down to the last week. I thought I had fixed every thing when I started getting phone calls. By then I was scrambling, I was down to 29 days and was worried my paperwork would be rejected and I'd have to start over. The person I was working with gave me a little extra time and with the help from a couple people at out main office I got it done. All I have left to do is mail some forms.

        This was the most frustrating things I have ever had to do at any job. It should not have been so hard to do this revalidation.

        Part of the problem was that I had no one to help me the first time. If I had that it would have gone much more smoothly. I also think that from the time I submitted the form to the time I got the additional information request some of the information changed. Another part was that I'm simply not tech savvy enough. Time could have been saved if I could have scanned documents and uploaded them, but I don't know how to that with the equipment at work to do it. (I can do it on my computer at home.)

    I'm glad that it's done. My plan is to make some detailed notes so that the next time I have to do it. It will be much easier.