Talk Nerdy To Me

Let’s face facts.

If you are regular reader of Above the Law, you likely have a pretty strong nerd streak running through you. When surrounded by our legal peers, we often have no problem embracing this streak and letting our nerd flags fly during conversation. But try as we might to hide this nerd streak from our friends or non-legal colleagues, every once in a while, it can rear its ugly head.

For me, the “every once in a while” was yesterday, during a cross-department meeting attended by various executives of our hospital’s divergent departments. Legal always attends and generally provides updates on anything legal or legislative in nature, or whatever else may merit a mention.

Since it has been in question for a number of months, and provides financial coverage for a sizable chunk of our patients, I was excited to report to the group an agreement to continue funding the federal Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) was reached the prior evening.

When it was legal’s turn to provide its update, I sprung to my feet and eloquently relayed:

“Last evening, Senators Hatch and Wyden reached on agreement to continue to fund CHIP beyond its original end of September expiration date. The deal will extend CHIP an additional five years, and it will maintain the ACA’s 23% increase in funding through 2019, and then stair-step the increase down to its pre-ACA level in 2021. We are working with finance now to understand the impact of the reduction in funding in 2021 and I will report back when it’s known.”

While everything I said was correct, and a few of my fellow nerdier readers may have understood everything I relayed during the meeting, the executives in the room had not, and I had failed in my role as in-house counsel.

To recount the ways I erred:

1. Our hospitals are not located in Utah or Oregon, so name-checking old senators got me nothing but eye-rolls.

2. CHIP, ACA, and 23%? Abbreviations and percentages matter little if the audience does not understand their original frame of reference.

3. Finally, explaining that the agreement could impact our finances in 2021, but that I did not know to what degree, only incited looks of panic — not relief that a potential CHIP agreement had been reached.

If given a mulligan, a better update during the meeting would have been:

“A federal insurance program that provides financial coverage to over 15% of our patients was set to expire at the end of the month. However, I am happy to report that Congress reached a preliminary agreement to keep the program funded for another five years. Although the program does decrease its current reimbursement levels in 2021, we have three years to plan for this reduction, and our hospital will fare far better than if the program ended altogether.”

Despite my mulligan answer omitting many of the details that we attorneys might deem relevant, it conveyed far more pertinent information to the group than my stodgy legalese of an answer offered during the meeting.

Yes, our respective in-house employers pay us to be nerds and to understand the impact of such things as the CHIP agreement, but our real value comes in translating wonky issues into actionable information for our non-legal colleagues.

As a tip moving forward, the next time congressional action gets you excited or a Supreme Court opinion gets your heart racing, take a moment to decode it from nerd talk before you race to your non-legal colleagues to share the good news.

Not only will they thank you, it just may help you on your next performance review.

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Stephen R. Williams is in-house counsel with a multi-facility hospital network in the Midwest. His column focuses on a little talked about area of the in-house life, management. You can reach Stephen at [email protected].