#Stately: Overdue Manual Returned After 14 Years

By Wanda Rowell
September 23, 2017

A long-overdue instructional manual returned to the Prescription Services technician staff after 14 years made state headlines this past week.

The volume was one of a handful of internal policy and procedure guides that was borrowed by an upper-middle management team from the State Administration of Human Services and Health Related Stuff when the Prescription Services Unit became part of that organization in 2001.

“It’s come home,” current Call Center Technician Supervisor Miles Costello said. “We’re glad to see.” He later added, jokingly, that the manual had “used a helluva lot of sick leave.”

Former Prescription Services technician Wally Dodds compiled the manual, a collection of computer screen shots and claim processing guidelines, from 2000 to 2001 as an “answer source” for people on how to handle various types of claims – including third-party insurance, Medicare, newborn and out of state – and reports that the unit handled regularly.

“As I recall, the presiding transitional management team had asked all units for operation manuals so that they might get a feel for what every section did,” Dodds said, now residing in Guam. “We knew they were going to use it for a while. We thought they would just copy it, but after six months we asked around and no one knew what we were discussing. A year or so later, we just forgot about it.”

The feelings from that period still are felt.

“What really pissed us off, well...actually only me since I was the one who put it together...was that I had put some serious time into creating it. Most all of the technician staff had given me copies of claim forms and instructions on how to do what they did. I still regret not making a copy at the time, like it was suggested, but I always assumed it would return. What the hell was SAHSHRS going to do with it anyway?”

A constant turnover of technicians between 2003 and 2005 led to a new staff that knew nothing about the book. Eight years after the manual was lost, the job description of the technician staff was changed such that the manual would have to have been rewritten anyway.

The rediscovered manual is significant because the scribbles and print screens throughout shed light on the moronic policy used during the so-called “Middle Ages” of Prescription Service, a period coming directly after the introduction of computers to assist claim processing and the eventual out-sourcing of unit operations to Rock-afire Rx. The Call Center was also established during this time and researchers are anxious to learn about the habits of employees subject to long hours on the phone, Costello explained.

SAHSHRS declined to comment as to why they kept the manual for as long as they did and refused to answer questions about what they did with during the time period, where it was kept and whether or not it was temporarily lost due to archiving.

“Ultimately it doesn’t matter where it was or who had been using it,” Costello said following a small ceremony where the papers were removed so the binder could be used for something else. “I know a manila folder in a locked cabinet in a deserted storage room in a basement of another building that is going to enjoy these classic documents about as much as me. You don’t make discoveries like this everyday. It’s a blessing, really.”