We left home around the 13th of September after spending a month pulling up laminate flooring, yanking up carpeting and the tacky strips around the edges (my fingers are just now healing), painting walls, pulling down walls, repairing walls, scraping popcorn off the ceiling (not the kind you get in movies), replacing doors, tiling floors (I'm getting pretty darn good at laying them on the diagonal too), repairing roofs, and more.  Yes - I very much enjoy doing that kind of work.  Don't misunderstand, as I'm not giving up my consulting job because it's not really work to me and I love doing it - but once in a while, it is FUN to destroy a house and rebuild it.  Here are some photos of what we were doing.


There used to be a wall between the game room and the living room.   There isn't now.  You'll also notice that there are sliding doors on the back - but those are gone now too and french doors are in there.   Oh yeah - the floor is gone as well and has been replaced by wood flooring.  We haven't seen the french doors or wood flooring as those were put in after we left for Florida for a convention and we're looking forward to seeing them when we get home.   One more thing.  If you'll look out the door in the back, to the right side, you'll barely see windows in our master bedroom.  Those windows are gone now and french doors are in there as well - which we still haven't seen in person yet.

OK - we left home and went to Florida and stopped on the way to Tampa for the Florida Osteopathic Medical Association at a multiple physician Geriatric practice.   We're increasing that practice's net monthly income more than $15,000 per month by putting in a few diagnostics to help them help their patients.   When we got to Tampa, I spoke at the convention and had a great turnout.  

After my speaking, as usual, we had 6 different physicians schedule one hour meetings with Keith and I, where we discussed their practice's needs and made arrangements to help 4 of the 6 increase income in their practices by more than $100,000 per year (which is our guarantee).   One of the doctors will be changing practices in the next couple of months and then we'll help her.   The last was a bit different and Keith and I both agree that we will not work with him.   Yes - we are picky about which doctors that we'll help increase their income.  The nice thing about us owning our businesses is that we do not have to deal with morons or jerks if we don't want to.  This doc fell into both categories.   For instance, we were talking about how often he orders a CBC on his long term med patients and he said "I never order them because a CBC doesn't tell me anything about a patient that I don't already know".   I promise I am not making this up.   I asked him about PFTs and he said the same thing.     Folks - Gregory House, MD is not a real person.   He is fictional and only found on television.  There are NOT doctors in the world that can tell by looking at a patient what their real diagnosis is without running clinical lab.  Heck - even on the tv show House, he is always telling his colleagues to run this lab test, that lab test, etc... as anyone with half a brain knows that you need those to really diagnose a patient and to be able to tell the effectiveness of the treatment or therapy.   This doctor could not do that - in spite of his arrogant statements.   Keith and I decided long ago that we are not going to help crooks, people wanting to do services on patients for money first and clinical care second.   We're not going to help jerks and people like that doctor - so we're now working with 4 of the 6 clinics from that convention.

From Florida - we headed north to Washington, DC where we spent about 5 days.  That is an amazing city.    We stayed at an RV park about 20 miles east and it is a beautiful area - full of trees, hills, and everything was beautiful and green.   We took the metro train into DC and walked around.  For those who have never been there - you should schedule a visit.  The only city in DC is Washington.  DC encompasses 68 square miles.    To give you some comparison, Arlington, Texas is about 94 square miles.   DFW airport is 30 square miles.    Chicago is about 227 square miles.   Waco, TX is about 92 square miles.      There are flowers everywhere.  Everything is green and clean and we didn't see even one homeless person.  We were not approached even once by someone asking for money and it was the cleanest city we have ever seen.  It was even cleaner than our hometown of Whitehouse, TX.

While in DC, we visited the memorials (Vietnam, WWI, Korea), the Lincoln Monument, Jefferson Monument, Washington Monument and Arlington Cemetery.   There are between 310,000 and 340,000 men and women in that cemetery and the grounds were phenomenal.   I stood next to the Audie Murphy grave, as you see below - and to think of what has been sacrificed willingly by men and women so that we have the right to live in Americanm, the right to fly our flag, the right to disagree with our government and more is sobering.    Here is a proud veteran standing next to a war hero's grave (Audie Murphy).


Next to the Korean Memorial was a granite wall and inscribed in it was the saying "FREEDOM WAS NOT FREE"

WOW.

From DC, we drove over to Edison, New Jersey were I taught a 7 hour seminar to office managers, physicians and staff.  We spent a couple of days there - picked up 5 more new clinics to work with and then we drove up to New York to spend 5 days with Angie's sister and her family in Washingtonville, NY.    It is always great to see them and while there we took a train into NYC.

In NYC, we had dinner in a restaurant called Serendipity (a movie with John Cussack was shot there) and had a great lunch.   In this restaurant, where I think I was the only male customer, they serve a $1,000.00 ice cream sundae.   No - we didn't get that - but I did have a $13.00 banana split that was delicious.    From there, we walked over to a 3 story candy store (where I did get 2 pounds of jelly beans).   The last time I was in NYC, I had told myself that I wouldn't return.  The people were rude, brusk and seemed insensitive.  I had heard that 911 changed people and had doubted it.    I was wrong (put that in your calendar).  The people have changed.  Yes - there are 22 million people there (and I think most were on the streets that day) - but people were saying 'excuse me", "pardon me", "thank you", etc.   It was not the same as it was in the 90s.  The people in the stores were nicer and polite.  The taxi drivers are still nuts, though.   I don't think we saw even one that was born in this country, but they didn't seem to cuss or honk as much this time.

Speaking of taxi's, here is a little tip for a visitor to NYC.  If you are in a taxi and you think that everyone is friendly and waving hello to you - don't wave back.  They are not waving at you.  They are trying to flag a taxi and they don't know that your taxi is occupied until you get close enough to know that waving back makes you look like a fool.   

We did something different in NYC.  For the first time in my life, I've been to a Broadway Play.  After dinner, we walked about 15 blocks over to Broadway and attended Moma Mia.  It was fantastic, funny, entertaining, and worth the $67 per person ticket.    I strongly recommend you check it out if it comes near you.


While I don't recommend you drive into NYC, I do suggest you visit and take the train and subway everywhere.   The subway was clean and comfortable and not like a non New Yorker would expect.   Again - we were not approached by alot of beggers.  In fact, while we were in the sidewalk cafe next to the theater waiting for them to open the doors to Mamma Mia, I had one non speaking woman walk up holding a note asking for help for her and her kids.   I gave her $5 and she bowed to me and left without saying a word.  

You do want to visit NYC if you get a chance as it is a sight to see.  There is not enough money in the country that could convince me to live there - but it's worth a visit.   We'll definitely go back to see another show when we can.  Xanadu is playing and I would like to see that one too.  Yes - I love musicals and comedies.

Ok - we left NY a couple of days ago and we've spent 2 days here in Gettysburg, PA seeing the battlefields, cemeteries, museums, etc....   I have been depressed since I've arrived here and started walking around the memorials, graves, fields, etc...   I can't help but think about the individual stories of the 11,000 plus men that died within 3 days from July 1st - July 3rd 1863.   Angie asked me today why it was bothering me so much and I told her that the feeling closely resembled the feelings I had in 1973 when I stood on the cliffs of Normandy, France looking down at Omaha Beach.    I am not a depressed person - but I feel it here.   I'm glad we're here and we'll be here till Friday morning, but it feels very real here.  This area is supposed to be haunted by ghosts - so maybe some of those are dampening my spirits.    I don't know (Ok - I don't believe in ghosts, perse, but this does affect me).

Anyway - we're heading out in a couple of days and heading towards Texas as we need to finish up the remodeling and start buying furniture (there isn't one piece of furniture in our house except for the pool table in the game room that is mostly disassembled.   I haven't been posting as often as I should - but we've been super busy.  We have 5 more clniics that I'm doing a fee/code/charge report on, we're installing labs into 6 more clinics, we have PFTs scheduled to go into 2 more clinics within the next week, we have 2 VATs scheduled to go into clinics within the next 3 weeks, ABIs, BHTs and more we're working on.   It looks like we're about to start working closely with a clinic that has 148 physicians and another one that has 16 - within the next 2 weeks.   Business is good.  people are scared - which is bad and good.  It's bad that people are scared, but doctors realize that they have to do something different if they want to have a retirement if they had alot of stock in Wachovia, Merrill, Lehman or if they had mutuals.    That means more business for  us because some doctors wait until they're in trouble or scared before they turn to us.  If they would turn to us earlier, then we could have a faster rate of success at increasing their income by tens of thousands.   One practice that we're working with has 16 doctors.  Our guarantee to them was we will increase their net profits by at least $500,000 a year or they don't pay us a penny, while helping them help their patients - by following  PQRI.

This month, my lead story in our 8 page monthly newsletter was about PQRI and how the bonus from Medicare only averages about $17 a day while our using PQRI helps the docs increase more than $1200 per day.  People like our way better than Medicare's way - yet we are using Medicare's guides....