Manager trying to undermine my performance after I helped bring in more than $1 million for the company

Question

I started at this job 5 months ago and was hired permanently full time about a month and a half later. It's a medical billing department apart of a non-profit healthcare organization that manages multiple health centers.

Their A/R (accounts receivables) was at 62 days when I started. I was told by the director that it was stuck in the 60s for more than two years. He gave me some excuse about them having a problem collecting from a certain provider class (insurance) and blamed them among other things, for not paying on time. Most of these claims were denied and are between 1-2 years old, totalling about two million dollars. According to the director, they made a deal with them that would allow them to resubmit them for payment on the condition that it would be resubmitted quickly and accurately. I was hired as a temp to help resubmit more than two thousand claims to this insurance company. I basically had to do someone elses work (their own that financial class)

Long story short, the A/R is currently at 49 days as of today. Around the time they decided to officially hire me full time, the A/R was at 55 days and they had a small celebration which included catered Chinese food.

During this whole time I could sense some sort of resentment from my supervisor (not director), almost as if I've done my job too well. She then started to micromanage my time once they A/R fell below 50.

I admit, I came in late some days but nothing more than five minutes. My situation is complex; I broke my leg earlier this year in January in a bike accident and after four months I needed to get back to work (funds save ran low and this job is close to my home), so I took whatever I could get as fast as possible.

The supervisor wrote me up a few weeks ago because of lateness and included some lies about my performance. Thing is, when the A/R started to drop, about a month after I started, they introduced a 7 minute grace period policy meaning that you can clock in seven minutes before or after and not get dinged. I walk everyday to work and they know I occasionally have pain bouts and have to slow down my pace, which resulted in me coming in a few minutes late. I also kept the grace period in mind each day.

So she writes me up and includes other lies about my performance. Mind you, the A/r was stuck at over 60 days for more than two years before I started, and is now at 49 days only after a couple of months. I've seen other managers in different departments get promoted, more employee engagement activities, more potlucks and more events created by HR, because the money was flowing in FAST. Everyone in the office even got new monitors except for me (yes, office politics) and some even got more on their annual raise (I only got 20 cents and didn't get a meeting about it; had to go to payroll to find out).

The lies she included about my performance where based on other employees work assigned to me. She claimed that I couldn't grasp to work fast enough, even though some of those employees purposely sabotaged me when training me. Giving me false information or leaving out important details or not answering any of my questions that seem to detailed for them. Basically its bullshit, and I believe shes trying to start a paper trail to get me out. My belief is that because I submitted all of those claims very fast and even finishing other assignments quickly, she felt insulted and decided to undermine all the hard work I put in.

Should I just leave and let them deal with increasing A/R themselves?

Answer 1

Should I just leave and let them deal with increasing A/R themselves?

Clearly you aren't happy here and have no confidence in your boss, your colleagues, or the company. The word you are using ("undermine", "sabotage", "lies", "office politics", "only got 20 cents", etc) indicate that you don't want to be at your current job

Of course this is something you must decide for yourself. But I believe you should find a new job, give the appropriate notice and leave.

Answer 2

If the manager sees you as a threat because you are actually making things happen when she and previous workers under her have not, then you may or may not be able to salvage this job. If it's a decent job other than this manager, it's probably worth a try to salvage it.

You need to make sure that she has NOTHING more that she can use against you. Don't be even 30 seconds late (and leave earlier if need be). Always be pleasant to her, and especially be pleasant to others around you. Make sure people like you, if you have an opportunity to say hi to people above her, make sure they see you as a pleasant and hard worker.

That way, when she makes an accusation against you, you'll have the time clock on your side, and other people will be confused, because they see your great work, they see your great attitude. If she makes up things, it will be obvious it's from her, not you. You want to be so perfect that anything against you just sounds crazy.

If done right and if management above her is halfway competent, she will be demoted or replaced. (Unfortunately, my experience with bad management means a bad manager above that allows it, and often it's seagulls all the way up.)

Answer 3

You sound very unhappy there, conditions are unlikely to change, and leaving is the most direct solution.

I've worked in a hospital and closely with hospital financial offices, and what you describe is not unusual. Especially at a large hospital, individual departments can be run like fiefs with people in charge making decisions based on personal relationships more than anything else with little accountability (outside of a colossal screw-up).

There are a few things I'll mention about hospitals that are relevant to the situation. I suspect you know them already, but future visitors to the site might not have the relevant hospital experience to know the context:

• Having a "bad" stat, like a high A/R, isn't usually something that hospitals want. But it is usually something they can usually handle. I'm sure they were delighted to see the A/R below 60, but they operated for years with it above 60. This isn't a good leverage point for you.
• Hospitals see enormous flows of money. A million dollars sounds like, and is, a lot, but it's almost certainly far less significant to the hospital. As above, this is not a very good leverage point for you.
• Hospitals can describe outstanding bills in terms of charges, expected payments, and contracted reimbursement rates, and are often unclear in which term they're using for internal discussions. If they were describing one million dollars in charges, then the money the hospital actually received is almost certainly quite a bit less than that. Clearing $1,000,000 from the ledger is not the same as bringing $1,000,000 in cash into the hospital.
• The tardiness is a problem. Many roles in hospitals require constant staffing, and so timeclock rules can be very strict, even in roles where shift timing is not so critical. (This described my hospital role as well, and I too had some tardiness issues for similar reasons). If they care about clocking in on time, then no excuse or explanation for repeated tardiness will be accepted. They will always say you should have left for work earlier.
• I can appreciate that the $0.20 raise was disappointing, but you've been at this job for less than six months; it would not have surprised me to find out that you were not eligible for a raise at all due to that. Also, many hospital departments are pretty constrained in what budget they have for raises, and what conditions they can offer raises under. It's possible that your manager had no discretion in setting your raise (especially if the workforce at your hospital is unionized).

None of that is meant to denigrate your work, at all. Hospitals can be intense, high-stress work environments dealing with a never-ending avalanche of complicated work. But it is important to remember that people at the hospital, especially in management, will probably have a very different perspective on how things unfolded than you do, and they are less likely to be moved by your story.

As written, the question pretty clearly transmits an attitude that you, personally and by yourself, were responsible for $1,000,000 in cash rolling into the hospital. And that that excellent performance entitles you to some extra leeway and consideration. And even though that performance resulted in more money and better working conditions for everyone, there are still quite a few people out to actively sabotage you.

All of those things can be true, but it's a less than compelling case to simply hear without a great deal of specific evidence backing each item. And even if you had such evidence, it's far from guaranteed that you can force the department to change how it operates.

It sounds like you're unhappy with the work environment and the pay you receive, and it also sounds like neither of those is likely to change in ways you want. If that's so, then of course you should leave. Why would you want to remain? But don't expect the hospital to collapse behind you. The high A/R is their normal state.