Wednesday, March 7, 2012

OK, I am frustrated by, shall we just call it a lack of customer relations?

I have spent most of the morning on the phone with:

1 - physical therapy group
2 - doctor's offices
3 - pharmacy
4 - medical insurance
5 - prescription plan insurance

Have I gotten anything resolved yet?  No.

This is the deal:

Exercising With Dumbbells Clip ArtAt the doc's office on Wednesday, he gave Frank a prescription.  Frank took said prescription to pharmacy.  Later, when he went to pick it up, they said they needed approval from the doctor.  (I figured his prescription would be his approval for the prescription, but obviously not.)

At the doc's office on Thursday, he gave me orders for physical therapy.  The PT group called me Thurs afternoon and said they needed to get pre-certification from the insurance company before scheduling me.  I have never needed that before, but hey, Obamacare is changing things.  So, OK.

Fast forward a week, neither of us have gotten our stuff.  So I call the insurance company.  Which takes several degrees and a couple of PhDs to get through.  For some reason I must have a really bad Southern accent because the automated system keeps saying, I am sorry, I did not understand what you said.  Geez.

I get through to a human.  Who verifies that I do not need pre-certification from them, that I can have my PT appointment with no strings attached.  I call the PT office who says, oh, yeah......we knew that on Monday but just have not gotten around to doing anything about it.

Pills And Bottle 2 Clip ArtThen I call the Prescription people, who say, we can't talk to you because you can only answer 4 of the 5 questions we need to verify that you are the party who can hear the answer.  The question I can't answer is what strength is the prescription written for.  I CAN answer, SS#, DOB, ID Number, Employer Number, what doctor wrote it, what the date was, what the name of the drug is and how many times I blinked this morning.  You would figure that after all the info I DID know, that I was pretty much who I said I was.  But they thought I might be an illegal drug runner trying to get his heart meds without authorization by pretending to be Frank.

So I call the doctor who says they have never received the fax from the pharmacy requesting authorization.

Ringing Phone Clip ArtI call the pharmacy to ask them to send the fax requesting authorization, but they say they did it and whined about how much work they have to do, and how important their personal time is and, heaven's forbid, I call when they are at lunch.  This is Walmart, kiddies, Walmart.

Screaming And Yelling Guy Clip ArtI called the prescription drug people, and got caught in a loop where they wanted to know Frank's date of birth and didn't understand the way I said "2".  I was thinking of some other things to say to them by this time.  I think I speak very well, indeed.

So there I sit, a week later, a morning of frustrating phone calls and teeth gnashing, and still no PT appointment and no prescription.

glen

5 comments:

  1. Your doctors fault for prescribing such complicated medication and physical therapy. Got to blame it on where it started!

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  2. Wow, what a circus of miscommuncation and so many of us understand exactly what you are saying!

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  3. Hope you get to the bottom of it. Don't give up. He who hangs in there the longest wins, he he he.

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  4. Come do my house stuff and I'll do your calls!!

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  5. Many phone systems will do the right thing with it if you press the buttons on the phone (touch tone) rather than speaking them, even if it tells you to speak them. It's worth a try, anyway.

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