---(from 2007)

To catch you up, I work for hospitals (I used to do other stuff between working for hospitals, but back to actual hospital business office stuff).

There are lots of terms, acronyms and just odd phrases at hospitals.

One of my favorite I wrote something about a long time ago is FAP. No, it's not that. FAP stands for Financial Assistance Program. This term is used daily by old women talking about patients and charity care adjustments, all the time oblivious to the other meaning of the term.

I digress.

When you go to the hospital you probably go to what you call the Emergency Room (aka the ER). That is in fact a correct term for the name of the place. However at a hospital everything is a department. The Radiology Department, the Oncology Department or even the Pharmacy is a department.

It might be a unit, like the NICU is the Neo-Natal Intensive Care Unit, but ultimately it is considered a Department for cost center purposes. So you didn’t go to the Emergency Room, you really went to the Emergency Department, or the ED as most of us call it.

Sorry, had to explain it a little better.

So if you watch much TV, or any advertisements during any sporting event there is always some commercial about a guy that takes the magic blue pill and it solves all of this “problems”.

He smiles, he plays golf, he takes a bath in an open meadow with some hot younger chick. This magic pill cures all of his worldly ills.

He suffers from ED (Erectile Dysfunction) or has a midlife crisis and thinks that he has a problem when he really doesn't.

I get a call from a female CFO the other day, it goes kind of like this:

Her: Hi, this is Debbie, I am the CFO for {hospital} and wanted to check the status on your ED?
Me: {shocked}, Um… I’m sorry, my what ?
Her: I show you were due to present your ED findings at the next leadership meeting to all the CFO’s. Do you have your ED information ?
Me: {realizing now what she means} Yes, I have an update on the ED for all the CFO’s that have an ED {I kind of snicker to myself at the wittiness of my phrase}
Her: Great, when can we get a look at the ED reports?
Me: Well that would normally be hard to pinpoint an exact date, but we have been working overtime to correct the ED situation, so I suspect you should see that coming in your email today {again, I consider myself rather witty and extremely immature, but witty nonetheless}.
Her: Great news. I will let the other CFO’s know that your ED information will be in our email soon {I really wanted her to say “…I am glad that your ED is coming along as planned...” but wasn’t so lucky}
Me: Is there anything else I can help you with?
Her: No, thank you for working on the ED reports, this is really going to help us understand the problem better.
Me: Alright, then I will get that out to you as soon as I can. Its just good to hear that the left hand and the right hand are working together on this.
Her: I agree, have a great day.

Some days my job is fun.