Interview with Don Self
FMSL (former McVey Seminar Leader), CSS, BFMA
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What is your name?
Geezer, formerly known as “stud muffin” or Don Self
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Where are you from?
Born near Olympia , WA at Ft Lewis Army base – but relocated to Dallas Texas at less than six months old (as soon as I realized what Texas was).
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What is your favorite activity?
Sex with my wife is first, then flying, then work.
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Do you have any hobbies?
See number 3.
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What credentials do you hold?
FMSL (former McVey Seminar Leader), CSS, BFMA.
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What organizations do you belong to and how have they helped your career?
AAPC (it gets CEUs for members), PAHCOM (Ditto), PAHCS (I like these folks), AMBA (I like entreprenueral spirit).
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How did you get into the field of medical billing and coding?
I used to sell Control-o-fax one-write (pegboard) systems and superbills to doctors and started advising doctors what to put on the superbill to the point I was more of a consultant than a salesperson – although I was number one in the country out of more than 500 superbill salespeople.
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What is your current position?
Semi-vertical – also the CEO of Don Self & Associates and a partner of PMCA (Practice Management Consultants of America – with Trish Bukauskas-Vollmer, CPC).
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What is one of your accomplishments in this field that you are most proud of?
I’ve helped a lot of doctors stop drawing from their savings to make the practice profitable, while enabling the physicians to be able to offer services to their patients that are helping the patients – where other physicians have given up on the patients.
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What do you find most exciting about this field?
It used to be making doctors an extra $100K a year got to me. No more. Now – I’m able to introduce different services to physicians to help their patients get out of pain for the first time in 20 years or change the patient’s lives.
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What do you find most frustrating?
Physicians who think they know it all – yet through their own ignorant pride persist in treating patients with drugs to cover up symptoms – unsuccessfully instead of learning something new.
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What do you feel the future holds for this field?
I believe patients will someday cause an upheaval with mangled care (what others call managed care) so that patients and physicians can once again determine what the patients need – but that will only happen when the silent majority (physicians) start educating their patients to the dangers of mangled care.
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What would you tell someone just starting out in this field?
Always give more to your clients in service than you receive in compensation.
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If there was one thing you could change about this field what would it be?
To awaken physicians to the fact they do not have to be slaves to the mangled care industry.
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Who do you consider a mentor?
Terry McVey of McVey Seminars.
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What is your favorite billing or coding product?
Unicor Easy Coder (which I always thought should be called “Coding For Dummys”.
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What is your affiliation with the CRN and how has that helped you?
I have probably learned more from CRN than all of the other listservs combined.
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Provide any contact information you are comfortable with:
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xxx can be reached at… (unless your fingers are cold) whatever you can reach.
1-888-DONSELF or donself@donself.com Please visit www.donself.com – which is second only to the codingandreimbursement.net website.