Andy just received a computerized notice of Tuesday’s follow-up appointment with his surgeon. The computer had the date and time correct, but for the address it had the address of the billing and scheduling department in Santa Fe. We already knew about this kind of problem because of the reminder we had received for the surgery. For that one I phoned and got things clarified. And for this upcoming appointment Andy had already gone down to their office here in town to confirm that the appointment was here, not in Santa Fe. It always pays to check.
And we received another letter from our health insurance company about the ongoing matter from last January. I wouldn’t have been surprised if it were a fourth version of the request for us to repay them — I figured the computer wouldn’t know for a while even if they had straightened it out. But this letter said they knew we hadn’t cashed the check, but please give them the documentation proving the provider had returned the money. We have no access to that information, of course, so I just wrote a note on the bottom of their letter:
This matter was resolved months ago. For details contact Customer Service, [Phone number].
I was willing to mail this back to them because they included a postage-paid envelope. Otherwise I would have just ignored their letter.
Clearly some systems work better than others!
October 26, 2014
Incompetence isn’t limited to government.
Agreed! The problem is there’s no way to give feedback to their flawed system. The letters never have a name attached.
it’s almost to the point of being ridiculous.
oh wait… it passed that point long ago. now it’s … well i really don’t know what it is!
you could have drawn one of your great cartoons on it… “TAG! YOU’RE IT!”
At this point it’s just funny. And too good not to share. 🙂
I think they need to “fire the robot” that is creating so much waste of time, paper and even you ripping open yet another envelope!
I find similar crazy things as you do in our health care system. I get so much paperwork from one dr. visit that I just ignore it and ignore it, until I am convinced that the insurance companies and the dr. have settled their part – then I pay my part. It is Crazy.
I have the same strategy. Years ago I tried to stay on top of it, but it was impossible.
This current mess was all straightened out once, then the provider billed again and the insurance company sent us the check. Impossible for the billing department to handle.
There is a book you might love called Systemantics
I’ve just read the description and reviews. It sounds interesting.
Jesus and Satan were having an ongoing argument about who was better on his computer. They had been going at it for days, and God was tired of hearing all of the bickering.
Finally God said, “Cool it. I am going to set up a test that will run two hours and I will judge who does the better job.”
So, Satan and Jesus sat at the keyboards and typed away. They moused, They did spreadsheets, They wrote reports. They sent faxes. They sent e-mail, They sent out e-mail with attachments.
They downloaded, They did some genealogy reports. They made cards. They did every known job
But ten minutes before their time was up, lightning suddenly flashed across the sky, thunder rolled, the rain poured and, of course, the electricity went off.
Satan stared at his blank screen and screamed every curse word known in the underworld. Jesus just sighed.
The electricity finally flickered back on, and each of them restarted their computers. Satan started searching frantically, screaming “It’s gone! It’s all gone! I lost everything when the power went out!”
Meanwhile, Jesus quietly started printing out all of his files from the past two hours. Satan observed this and became irate. “Wait! He cheated, how did he do it?”
God shrugged and said, “Jesus saves.”