I had two interviews scheduled for the same day, the first with the Reimbursement Manager (who later became the Reimbursement Director after which I became the Reimbursement Manager). Apparently, my interview with him went well because he then referred me to the Director of Human Resources who interviewed me for approximately 1.5 hours. The discussion with the Reimbursement Manager lasted approximately one hour, but rather than focussing on me, who would vouch for me and their relationship with me (she spoke with each of them ~ 45 minutes to an hour on the phone according to the references who let me know about her interviews with each of them). the first interview discussed the reason the job was created and how it was not truly a reimbursement (and pricing) supervisor position; rather it was more a Federal Healthcare Policy Compliance Supervisor position due to an OIG investigation of SRM's earlier incarnation, LifeChem, also a the American lab division of Fresenius Medical Care -- N.A. (AKA FMCNA). The Reimbursement Mgr and I had another connection -- we both had worked at Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield. We discussed our positions there, which were very different and how we felt about healthcare fraud. I had created and taught a course teaching healthcare claims examiners how ti recognize and report fraudulent claims submitted for payment.
The Human Resources Director discussed with me my philosophy regarding supervising and evaluating employees, how I would handle an underperforming employee.. She asked me how I handled such situations in the past. I discussed how i dealt with such situations in the past. She asked me for my most challenging situations I had ever dealt with as a supervisor, and I discussed two: one which occurred while I was on maternity leave. My supervisees told the supervisor who was supervising them while I was out that an issue had come up only "Deborah could handle." Of course that was untrue, but my fellow supervisor and I had a lunch date, and she begged me to come in, even though I was carrying my 5-week old along with me. My fellow supervisor was one of my best friends, and I couldn't say no to such a good friend. This issue had to do with one employee having issue with another's sexuality although it was paranoid perception on the gay employee. Another issue had to do with an poorly trained, under-performing employee, who should not have been in the position she had been placed in. I made sure she was neither terminated nor demoted but moved to a more appropriate position. She asked me about my various assignments, and I explained my assignments to her, how I had been given the most difficult assignments regarding personnel in my department. I was assigned a deaf woman who had never been assigned complex and diverse policy before. She was extremely rigid in her daily schedule, and I had to teach her the flexibility necessary for the policy she now had to code via the data entry she was now expected to do as her job. At the same time I was assigned a group of temp employees, one of whom was my next door neighbor whose son had been stealing packages of baseball cards left at our door while we were at work. I dealt with it, as I explained during my interview, I never brought it up and treated him as I did every other employee, temp or permanent. Work is work, and our private lives are just that . . . our private lives. Another difficult personnel issue to which I was assigned was matep-mother-inlaw/step-daughter-in-law combination where the son-in-law seriously resented his step-mother. I'm not sure why I was assigned these difficult personnel issues, but I was also assigned difficult presentations of complex material, several times with less than a half hour's notice, but until I got ill (I went through a period during wich, in 2.5 years time, I hd over 10 major knee surgeries, causing my performance to get worse. It's been a long time since then, and I am ready to return to work. I could have been dishonest here, but I refuse to be. I had breast cancer twice since 2009. I;m okay now, and in any interview, would blow you and any of your clients away. I'm brilliant and up to any challenge, as the interviews I've just described illustrate.
