The sad part is I know I have the data but cannot verify it with date, time, age of child and what thee conversation was about. Working a call is fairly simple, you either know the information the caller needs or wants and can pass that information along or you cannot. It’s the ancillary data collection where I fall down. We have software which is OK a point if you write the information in the right space—I get lazy and rarely enter the referral point from or to the same way twice—I often forget a lot of the referral pointes are already programmed in to the software and al I would need to do is drop down the options and choose this way. I can’t do it…I try and I try and I try but pretty soon I am entering all kinds names for example University Hospital, might me UOFU medical center, University of Utah medical center, university med center or just U-medical center , and so on. Then when the time comes to dump the data I get a kazillion different entries University of Utah Medical Center making have to go through the raw data dump identify and isolate all of the entries one by one totally defeating the whole reason behind having information tracking software.

I have been doing this job for ten years and the data collection has been my bane—the first couple of years I was on board logged every call on call sheets I made up which basically kept tract of such information and actually that system was really not too bad; specially since we are such a small call center. Such data collection would not work if we had thousands of call an day like some of the I&Rs do. Even when we were really busy I don’t think we ever got more then five or six thousand calls a year which breaks down to roughly 2,8 calls an hour for a forty hour week for a 52 week year, of course enter the random nature of the human animal some hours will be 4 or five calls, and some days like holiday weeks and summer vacation and the numbers will vary but 6000 calls a year would be a pretty good year and the report I ran last week was about 1200 calls for the year. I get a little sick just writing this. It’s not like I am not here. I am here almost every day—I want to answer the phone and give out great information but the phones first have to ring and they don’t. It looks as if we will get funded for another year—that gives me breathing room—I can work another year, one year closer to retirement, like I am ever going to retire but I can dream. My boss is great she is working her butt off trying to find more funding streams for my program but it is slow going, the economy is still pretty week.

So now I have to figure a way to make my data show how well I have served my funders. Excuse me while go I throw up…