0:00
I called 31 times. I spent over 40 hours on hold. I think the grand total was 44 hours on hold
0:08
When I was still able to work, I'm disabled now, I billed $500 an hour. So if I were still working
0:16
they would have just cost me $22,000. So there's a little bit of background here
0:25
for 13 months I've had a stalker I eventually had to take out a restraining order
0:33
move apartments within the same city then change my name and relocate to another state
0:37
to get away when I changed my name the social security administration was of course duly notified
0:44
which is the first thing that you do when you change your name that change automatically feeds to the social security administration
0:51
to the centers for Medicare and Medicaid management and then to your Medicare Part C provider
0:58
In my case, that's UnitedHealthcare. UnitedHealthcare's customer profiling system was correctly updated by CMMS
1:06
Their website never was. In addition to changing my name I had to change my telephone number numerous times So I was locked out of their website because I had access to neither my email address the email address that they had in their HealthSafe ID system nor the telephone number
1:27
despite the fact that I had already updated that. I called 31 times
1:32
I spent over 40 hours on hold. I think the grant total is 44 hours on hold
1:38
When I was still able to work, I'm disabled now. I billed it $500 an hour
1:44
So if I were still working, they would have just cost me $22,000
1:51
The reason that there were so many calls and the reason that, you know, it took so many hours is that what happened is I would be connected to website support
2:05
And then it became a game of pass the parcel. I can't fix this for you
2:09
Let me transfer you to someone who can. I can't fix this for you
2:13
Let me transfer you to someone who can. I can't transfer this, fix this for you
2:17
Let me transfer you to someone who can with half an hour to 45 minutes on hold between
2:22
those calls. Ultimately what happened toward the end of last week is that I finally got hold of someone who could escalate it as high as it went This was the middle of last week and it still took an additional week to fix the issue So I was locked out of their website for
2:39
a month and a half, I think. The reason that this was an issue is that UnitedHealthcare
2:47
when you call, for instance, to ask for provider names, they will give you three and only three
2:52
without access to the website. I was therefore essentially being denied care because I had no
3:00
access to a provider directory. Now I could call and I could wait on hold for half an hour, usually
3:06
getting someone offshore who was not able to help me and then get the names of three physicians
3:12
And that was it. So this became given that I just changed states and changed from one United Health Care Medicare Part C plan to another
3:27
I needed to quickly establish care with a number of physicians and a number of specialties
3:33
And I up to this point have been unable to do so because the issue has not been fixed
3:38
As I said, it was just fixed. And even after having escalated it
3:45
as high as it would go apparently it still took a week I hope that I hope that United Health Healthcare will set up and take notice and actually do something about the appalling quality of their website support
3:58
particularly the offshore component, which was terrible, just terrible. The offshore component
4:04
is why I kept being passed around from pillar to post with no one helping me. I want them to ensure
4:10
that all of my data is correct. So that I don't have any more of these problems. I want them to
4:17
ensure that this doesn't happen to anyone else, that no one else has put through what I was put
4:21
through. Just trying to get access to a website that, you know, they should have had all of the
4:27
correct information for. They have the correct information for months. It just wasn't transferred
4:31
from one system to another. And then in one of the, one of the agents to whom I spoke
4:36
tried to blame it on Medicare, which infuriated me because one of my last consulting jobs when I
4:41
was able to work was for CMMS. So I know very well what Medicare information standards are
4:47
related to personally identifiable information, HIPAA information, et cetera. I know very well
4:53
that what I was being fed was garbage and that it was a matter of deflection
5:00
So those are kind of, that's what I'd like to see happen
