Healthcare finance and humor are not two things you’d think would go together, but the Medical Group Management Association is out to prove you wrong. The organization is bringing in healthcare humorist David Glickman as part of its Financial Management and Payer Contracting Conference held Feb. 26 to 28 in Scottsdale, Ariz.
Glickman shared with Healthcare Finance News his secrets of finding the funny in healthcare finance.
HFN: Your website said you tailor your presentation. Have you covered on stage healthcare finance before and if you have, what’s been your process?
DG: Well, I get most of my (material from) Healthcare Finance News.
HFN: Excellent!
DG: I say that in jest, but actually, for a humorist, really just reading publications that aren’t meant to be humorous – you find the funny. … There’s a lot of stuff in finance that people don’t see it as funny, they see it as stressful. But I can make reimbursements seem funny. … It can be something as simple as say, practice managers have challenges sometimes with their physicians – generating reports and the physician not being financially savvy, necessarily, has trouble reading the reports. (Their) challenge is to make the report readable for the doc. I just simplify something like that. I’ll say ‘How much more simple can you make it? Here’s one line that’s blue, here’s one line that’s yellow. This is what came in and this is what came out. And the doctor’s still going, well, wait, is the blue significant? Did you pick yellow for a reason?’ It’s just taking the most, sometimes, really simple observations. … If you can step back from it for a moment and look at how absurd this process is, if you can laugh at it, you can get through it and your day becomes a whole lot more palatable.
HFN: Everybody’s so incredibly stressed. Can folks that are in it like that really find the humor?
DG: They can. They have to be reminded of it, though. I give little tips in my program of how to keep thinking about it. I show props that I suggest they keep in their office. Part of my program is … I’ll show some funny book covers, parody books of books that are in the industry…. I’ll suggest that the practice manager actually dummy up one or two of those fake books, keep them in the desk drawer and when the billing manager is coming to them because the payer just doesn’t get it, you pull out – one of the funny books I use is ‘Eat Pray Negotiate: The Guide to Establishing Payer Contracts.’ And all of a sudden it breaks that tension for the moment because you’ve pulled out this book. You both laugh at it in the moment and for that moment you’ve been able to say, ‘Yeah, you’re right. I can deal with this.’
HFN: To say to folks, ‘use humor in your office,’ would you say that also strengthens the bonds among coworkers?
DG: Oh yeah. Humor is a tool. It’s a tool and it can be used in so many different ways. Even when there’s stress, not just even with coworkers, but with patients and with physicians, too. It can be used to diffuse some tension.
HFN: Do you find that certain sectors of healthcare lend themselves to humor more than others?
DG: Good question. I will tell you that physicians are a more difficult audience until they get loosened up. … (Nurses) are the most receptive audiences for healthcare humor.
HFN: How about financial managers?
DG: I love them. They’re great. … With financial professionals, you just have to talk their language and as long as they know that you know what they do, then they love it. … I’m confident I’m going to connect with them. … (One) of the books I’m doing is ‘Harry Potter and the Mystery of the Revenue Cycle.’ Those are the kind of things they know about – the revenue cycle. Those are just going to be fun. I have another one: ‘If You Give a Moose a Cookie, How Do You Code It?’
HFN: You’ve performed for general and corporate audiences. Are the audiences different?
DG: I’ll put it to you this way. In a corporate audience, I’ve never had a beer bottle thrown at me. I’ve never had someone come on stage and pull my mic out of my hand and tossed it into the audience. I’ve never had ice thrown at me. None of those things have happened since I’ve left the comedy club world, so yes, they are different. … Now that being said, MGMA is doing my particular program at this conference with a bar set up. I might have to go back to my old training.
HFN: Do you think humor is the way to save healthcare?
DG: I do. Not only save healthcare, but save the world. … (Humor) humanizes people. … humor is the only thing left to save healthcare. We’ve tried everything else. I have found that after folks hear a new way to look at the things that are stressing them out, they come back refreshed, revitalized, and they say, ‘Yes, we can handle this. We just have to look at this through a new lens.’
Follow HFN associate editor Stephanie Bouchard on Twitter @SBouchardHFN.