Guest post: Choosing theme songs

by Howard Rodenberg, MD, MPH, CCDS

(How many of you are working from home these days? Since COVID-19 hit Florida, I’ve been appropriately ordered by my hospital to do so. I’m sitting at home, WebEx fired up, dogs milling about, pants optional. It’s not too bad a life. But because I’m not running back and forth between offices and hospitals, and usually half my workday is spent running stoplights, looking for parking, and having serious internal dialogue about eating roller hot dogs for lunch, I’m kind of bored. And what do late-middle-aged frustrated novelists do when they’re bored? They dig up half-written stuff from their iPads with some vague relationship to their work to fill the time. So here goes…)

I’ve come to the conclusion that everything has a theme song. This is probably not a revelation. Generations have songs, era have songs, events have songs, couples have songs (“Ciao Baby” by The Cult, if anyone’s asking). Despite their ubiquity, it’s always kind of random when these songs pop into your head. A few weeks ago, I was working an ED shift when a patient came in with a rectal prolapse. The treatment for this is sugar. I am not making this up. Granulated sugar spread over the area soaks up the edema so the prolapse goes in easier. But as we stuff our pockets full sugar packets from the coffee room, I’ve got The Archies reverberating in my head.

I’m kind of fixated on the Bubble Gum and Sunshine Pop music of the late 1960s and early 1970s—the Beloved Dental Empress (aka The BGFE…Best Girl Friend Ever) is fond of reminding me that my understanding of pop culture stopped in 1989 when the B-52s released “Love Shack,” which I believe to be the last real song ever written. And it was listening to a Sunshine Pop playlist while driving one day that led me to the official theme song for utilization management (UM).

Of course, it’s not unusual for random thoughts to be linked in our heads to equally random theme songs. The internet is rife with similar lists, some version of the “If (fill in the blank) was a character in (insert name of television or movie franchise), it would be (insert name of character).” For example, if emergency medicine were a character is Star Wars, it would be Boba Fett, because “I just bring them to someone else. They’re no good to me dead.”

It works the same with songs. If emergency medicine were a song, it would be “Back in Black.” If CPR was a song, it would be “Staying Alive.” Pathology might be “Another One Bites the Dust.” You get the picture.

But I never could find a good theme song for the administrative part of medicine, and especially those kissing cousins of CDI and UM. You know UM—they’re those relatives you never really talk about, the ones you have to invite for Thanksgiving for Grandma’s sake but pray the tickets are too expensive for them to show up. But this is where Sunshine Pop comes into our story, and a little-known band called the Peppermint Rainbow.

The Peppermint Rainbow was a group that started in Baltimore and spent a few years touring and generating some minor hits. I’ve listened several times to their one complete album and they’re actually pretty good, kind of pale version the Fifth Dimension, lacking the power, depth, and range, but perfectly pleasing to the ears. Many of their songs seem to have a recurrent theme, which seems to be “We know each other biblically, and now you’re ditching me” as evidenced by songs such as “Don’t Wake Me Up in the Morning, Michael” and “Good Morning Means Goodbye.”

But their biggest hit, and the one I propose as the official theme song of UM, is “Will You be Staying After Sunday?” Why? Because the first two lines are: “Will you be staying after Sunday, or go home on Monday? / Will you be staying after Sunday or go home?” There’s no way you can tell me that doesn’t have length of stay, UM, and case management written all over it.

There’s actually another link between this song and the hospital C-suite. It turns out that after the group broke up, lead singer Bonnie Lamdin worked in healthcare finance and rose to be the CEO of St. Agnes Health Care in Baltimore. I think ACDIS should try to book the Peppermint Rainbow for a reunion concert.

So now that I’ve got UM wrapped up, I’m still stuck trying to find a good song for CDI. There are a few tunes out there that use the word “code” but don’t really apply, and no song makes “specificity” tuneful. I’m not even making the effort to find ICD-10-CM in a lyric. There’s always “Cleopatra, Queen of Denial” by Pam Tillis, but that’s likely a better tune for the third-party payer than us. The closest thing I can find is a more obscure song by a 1980s English band called The Beautiful South entitled “Song for Whoever.” It’s essentially a list of women about whom the singer wrote songs, noting in various places that “I love the checks that you bring” and “you made me so much money I write this song for you.” Close but no cigar?

What’s your candidate for the best CDI theme song?

(Speaking of songs and the viral cause of my isolation, the internet has told me that one can put the words “My Corona” quite nicely to the tune of the “My Sharona” by The Knack, and that “COVID-19” sounds a lot like “Come On, Eileen” by Dexy’s Midnight Runners. No, that’ll never get out of your head, either.)

Editor’s note: Rodenberg is the adult physician advisor for CDI at Baptist Health in Jacksonville, Florida. Contact him at howard.rodenberg@bmcjax.com or follow his personal blog at writingwithscissors.blogspot.com. Advice given is general. Readers should consult professional counsel for specific legal, ethical, clinical, or coding questions. Opinions expressed are that of the author and do not represent HCPro or ACDIS.