Insurance companies are not the only people trying to wreck our practice!
In the old days, when your phone system failed, you called the repair line, usually from a different phone, and a guy came out to repair it.
Now, when you have phone system issues, you are entering a nightmare world which will consume your entire day.
Take Verizon… please. Two days ago, we discovered a bizarre problem. Our phones worked perfectly, so long as we stayed within our area code. However, outside of our area code, we could not call out and patients could not call in to us. Everyone attempting to communicate across different area codes with our practice got a fast busy signal.
The same was true with faxes. They simply didn’t happen.
A lot of our patients are in different area codes from us. A lot of people still have cell phones with an area code they used ten years ago which is not even close to being local. The two large tertiary care centers we utilize are in different area codes.
None of us could communicate.
Stay within our area code and all was well.
So, in addition to being a practice doctor, I am also the IT guy. I call Verizon.
For thirty minutes, I get bounced around because there are many flavors of Verizon: Personal, business, enterprise, government, military, wireless, wired, Fios…. The list goes on and on and you have no hope of connecting to the right department. Every transfer is usually to the wrong person or risks a disconnect. There are PIN numbers that need to go to my cell phone with every contact and they need to know where I was last married. I have to repeat our account number with every contact. I kept expecting retina scanning and DNA sampling.
Every transfer also involves 20 to 60 minutes of hold time…NOT AN EXAGGERATION!!
Every contact is with someone trying to be polite, apologizing for the delay, tapping on their computer before reassuring me our phones are in perfect working order. While on the line, I grab one of our practice phones and try to call Charlottesville, resulting in a fast busy signal.
“They are not working. I just tested it.” I give my usual dramatic account about being a doctors’ office and patients dying because we cannot communicate with the outside world. All of this elicits a sympathetic response.
Some of the encounters result in literally hour long sessions with me repeating information while the person types it into a computer. I am not exaggerating. Since we have five lines coming into the practice, they have to file five different repair orders. That takes time. That takes a whole lot of time!
Finally, three hours later, the nice representative assures me five different repair orders have been filed and a team of skilled specialists will be working on the problem… TOMORROW.
Then, my cell phone starts blowing up with a huge number of Verizon text messages. There is a set of messages for each of the five lines. “Rate how we are doing!” “ Rob is coming to fix your line!” “We’re coming tomorrow!” The messages go on for hours.
The next morning, the text messages resume. “Rate how we are doing!” “We’re coming soon!” “We’re here for you!”
Finally, I get an apologetic call from Rob (is everyone at Verizon named Rob?) who explains a phone switch fifty miles from us was broken and it stopped all of our traffic across area codes. It appears to be fixed. I test it and it is, indeed, fixed. I thank him. He warns me I will soon get a lot of text messages and apologizes.
As promised, my phone explodes again with texts from Verizon, while I’m trying to see patients. Every three minutes my phone pings for hours and hours. Finally, about six hours later, it all stops.
I want to give Verizon a horrible rating, but all of the “rate us” messages make it clear it is only going to deal with the representative I interacted with at the time. All of them have been polite and are clearly working in a system that is impossible and not of their doing. If I blast them, all I do is get some good person fired.
What I really want to do is blast the CEO who created such a customer service nightmare. That horrible person, however, is unreachable.
Am retired and got my home service from a local company that included 1Gig internet and phone when they started and put fiber optic cables in the area. I dropped ma Bell years ago and haven’t looked back. Called about the installation and chit chatted with the nice woman for 30 minutes on other topics besides getting a fiber optic cable hooked up. One might try looking around for a local company. Shoot I’m in a rural area when that company started and the HQ is in a smaller town than the one I live in! Heck I drove by them coming back from a medical meeting and sure enough, they had a pretty large building/garage on the outskirts of their town with trucks parked outside. Probably provides needed employment in a rural area too.
“clearly working in a system that is impossible and not of their doing”
Describes modern medicine to a T!
Gee, a real comedy of errors.Sort of like the EMR of many medical facilities..
The military is 3 to 4 systems piled on top of each other,so is the VA system.So is the Indian Health system… We just continue to fumble along.Everything will be all fixed in 5 or 10 thousand years.. Maybe… Meanwhile thank God for all the complications to challenge us and our systems so we can make them all better…LOL,LOL,LOL..Thank you God For all the crap we are about to receive,ain’t your fault,all ours..Helps to develop our sense of Humor…..
So true! And I comment just so someone doesn’t think this is an isolated example. I have had exactly the same problems with Verizon. Add in outsourcing customer service to countries where the English is less than understandable.
But at least it prepares us for government medicine.
Dumped Verizon at least a decade ago because of poor service and high cost. Using VOIP with comcast which is not flawless but is certainly no worse than Verizon. Haven’t had a problem with same day service since we are a business account.