Shoot Not to Kill by Daniel L Stephenson

Author:Daniel L Stephenson [Stephenson, Daniel L]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780595847006
Published: 2020-06-15T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 22

Diamond Miner Gets a New Chair

“Hey, Michelle, this is Whistler, yeah, yeah, the miner. Hey what are you doing now? I haven’t seen you for months. Need to talk with you. No shit, I mean, sorry Michelle, no fooling, you a badge-carrying cop now. God save us all. You got time to come over. You’re here now? I guess wonders will never cease for you. Yeah, whenever, bye,” Marvin Whistler said as he hung up the phone.

It was an hour later that Michelle popped in.

“Marvin, what are you doing these days?” Michelle asked.

“That’s a question I should be putting to you. What made you go to the force?” Marvin asked as he started brining up his computer.

“Needed a break. I can only calibrate the lab so many times before I go nuts, so now I’m working in the field. What do you have for me?” Michelle asked as she noticed her old yellow chair under Whistler’s butt. “Nice chair.”

Marvin did not look up, “Got it from a geek that left here a few months ago. Big deal sneaking it down the stairs. I didn’t know the damn thing was hot. I’m still doing some searching, and Michelle, I’ve found something in an unusual place. The medical system in America is a statistical nightmare, truly the computer gone wild. You can code everything. When you do there are numbers that go into the insurance companies, and they have to share the data with an agency that monitors the quality of care that is received in hospitals. Well, this agency is connected to the government, which is connected to the FBI, which is connected to the Los Angeles Police Department, which happens to be my boss. So, I started wondering around in this computer, and I’ve learned a thing or three. Did you know that if you have a baby and the little snot throws up in Bismarck, North Dakota, that will code your baby for a payment of twice that of a baby anywhere else in the country? Something strange there, but anyway, I ran some codes that are called “Diagnostic Related Groups.” Each hospital has banks of these scriveners that pour over the charts and decide what to code it. Then it gets put into one of these DRG things. I backtracked the DRG of 332, which included gunshot wounds to the chest. There’s a pattern to those groupings that have changed remarkably over time, and Mr. Acozil is right in the middle of the latest peak.”

Michelle sat stunned for a moment. Marvin sensed her dismay when she started rubbing her head and studied Marvin’s face. “OK, Michelle, come over here and watch this program do something that is really scary. It has two codes, one for the DRG, and the other for the hospital. The beginning covers every hospital that has had a DRG 332, then the hospitals start dropping out.”

Michelle stood over Marvin’s shoulder. There were twenty hospitals with flags when he started the program. A wheelbarrow

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