Roosevelt Roads
Puerto Rico
18.14.018N
65.37.582W

We received two e-mails from Gerry & Nicky today; the most important was that they were looking to make a straight transit here from Salinas starting tomorrow morning. That should put them in this area on Wednesday sometime.

We dropped by St. Christopher and told Tom & Jordan the news. I had promised them that I would make a cover for their isinglass before we left, so I went over to measure the area and discuss how she wanted to attach the cover. She has the canvas, I have the sewing machine and thread, but after thinking about it for a while, I hope she has some large grommets to run the line through like she wants.

About mid-morning we finally received our wayward mail. It took us a couple of hours to go through, organize and respond to. Most matters I’ve made arrangements to do on-line. One issue I haven’t been able to take care of on-line is something I’ve been addressing since we left Jacksonville. It involves an x-ray, the doctor who ordered the x-ray, the facility who took the x-ray and the insurance that covered the x-ray.

The whole thing started when the insurance carrier wanted a statement from the doctor reflecting why the x-ray was necessary and bounced the bill back to the x-ray facility, who sent a copy of the rejection to me. I made my first series of telephone calls to all of the parties because none of them can conduct business of this type via e-mail, or among themselves. The insurance company doesn’t like talking with me, the doctor’s office says they can’t deal directly with the insurance regarding the x-ray facility’s bill and the x-ray facility says that they’ve sent everything they have in their files but they can’t get paid. I call all 3 from various parts of the world to pay mediator. The doctor says fine; the x-ray facility says they’ll resubmit; the insurance company says they’ll pay. But 6 months later, it pops back up and I have to make the series of calls again to find out what the problem is this time. In each instance, I remind all parties that I’m out of the country and only receive my mail about once every 6 weeks. I’m told by all parties that there’s no problem and that everything will be taken care of but 6 months later, I’ll get another notice that it wasn’t.

One problem that came to light was that the doctor’s office was trying to send me all of the information so that I could forward it back to the various parties but they didn’t have my current address updated in their computer system. They did have it in their physical file but I was actually told in my last call to them that they couldn’t update the change in my address on the computer unless I physically came into the office. These are intelligent people; I‘ve met them. They freely admit they have the correct address in correspondence from me regarding this issue in their hard file. Now I ask you, what difference does it make to the computer whether I’m standing in front of someone, calling them on the telephone or mailing them the correct address? It still has to be entered by a human.

At this point, the doctor’s office as agreed to fax the statement to the x-ray facility and they have agreed to resubmit the invoice to the insurance company. The insurance company says that’s all they’re waiting for. I’m going to call again before we leave Puerto Rico while I still have good telephone service just to be sure.

Dale reminded me that this was a prime example of why we felt the need to take our sabbatical in the first place.