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Iâm old enough to remember when a real, live person answered my calls â and a doctor actually made house calls (anyone else remember those?) Everyone says our medical system is terrific, but you have to get there to benefit from it. Docs who are part of UPMC in Pittsburgh are actually limited in how long they can spend with an individual patient, because theyâre required to see a certain number of patients a day. Factory line medicine?
Now I got an answering machine that responds with an Middle Eastern accent that I still canât understand. Go ahead and transfer me to your new office in Central America
I took down LG Canada customer service. Well, I got past them to the VP who had several called in to âsplain themselves, got the service Iâd been guaranteed and had a guarantee some changes would be made. (I was newly retired and needed a hobby.) The good thing: I identified at least one problem fixed later on. Still, Consumer Reports rates them worst appliance customer service by a long way, and though I really respect their electronics, Iâd never recommend a water appliance of theirs.
OMFGâŠ. Northern Lights seen clearly as far South as Atlanta⊠Total solar eclipse⊠Supermoon⊠and nowâŠ. G&K give us a 6-panel Sunday strip⊠weâre at the peak of a Fourth-TurningâŠ
One of the great innovations that my doctor uses is a way to send him a email message. On his site I can also schedule an appointment, all without going through the outgoing message board of you know where. This really cuts down on the stress.
âYou have reached the Annâ€ïžEiffel Really HOT line. Eat your â€ïž out while on hold. Shoog Daddies press 1, Shoog Daddies with seven figure incomes press 0 for immediate assistance. Lowly unworthies (we know who you are) press 3 and all calls will be forwarded to Helen Waite.â
She couldnât have made an appointment online? If you need to call IRS expect to be online for 90+ minutes but they do have very smoothing jazz hold music.
I was one of those live persons that answered the phone, now that itâs my turn, all I get is AI! I hate calling Amazon, Spectrum, my health ins, etc.
In 2005 my dr was in an association, which had rules about using other doctors not in the group, including specialists. The association had no urologist, so my dr, fearful he might lose money for breaking the rules, kept saying my prostate was ok. I finally went to a dr who was not in an association and after an exam, he sent me to a urologist, who found I had advanced prostate cancer.You think Iâm fond of associations? Think again.
My doctor used to have his own office and receptionist â making appointments was so easy. Now heâs in the stupid clinic â making an appointment is just like todayâs strip.
Absolutely. Itâs absolutely irritating when you drive 30 minutes to get to your doctor, only to have him see you for 5 minutes. One doctor I had admitted as much. The irony? The same thing happened to him whenever he had to see one.
I recall a few house calls from about 1957, give or take. My wife had many health problems, some quite serious. We go to a Mayo clinic here in SW Wisconsin. Our doctor (whom weâve been seeing since 1999) did actually phone our house a few times to change medications, make a new appointment, or just check on how she was doing with the new Rx. I think we have access to the best medical care in the worldâfor those that have the best insurance, or the financial means, and live in the right locale. We do not have nearly the best health care system.
Whatâs worse, is when you navigate through all of the robo questions, pushing the appropriate button, the call drops, ending the call. Then you have to call back, going through all this nonsense all over again. I call it the not-so-merry, merry go-round.
This is so true, and if you pick a number when asked what you are calling about, like for instance â billing questions, it will take you to a recorded message that states your balance due and then disconnects the call. I just keep saying customer service over and over until ai gets tired of me. Sometimes it works, sometimes it just disconnects my call.
For the most part, my doctor (and my former dentist, before he retired) makes me schedule my follow-ups when I leave from my current appointment, but for other things like making appointments for blood draws, I have no problems with doing it online.
My PCP actually doesnât want to deal with actual sick people anymore. Shes made it abundantly clear that if you have ANYTHING wrong with you, you should go to Urgent care or a specialist. For the most mundane things! But loves the Medicare âWellness visitâ! She wants to see you draw the clock and she asks you if youâre often sad. No, actually, really disgusted is more what I have in mindâŠ..
Frequenty when placing a call, you are already annoyed about something so why, after running you through the phone tree exercise, do they put you on hold with music that is even more irritating? Especially if it is fed into the system too loud which causes distortion. I am already ticked off with them and now they are getting me more tense with this lousy music, if you can even call some what I hear music. You would think they would play something soothing to lower your BP before talking to the CSR.
The tech support for the app my pharmacy uses doesnât even allow you to stay on the line until a tech is available. You leave a call back number. If youâre unable to answer the phone when they call back, you have to start all over again. I ended up waiting 4 hours for an issue that took less than a minute to resolve.
Since Iâve retired, the most stressful thing I do is deal with my health insurance company. Four times now, they have sent me authorizations for places 300 miles away and it takes weeks to straighten out. I leave recorded messages and no one calls back. I leave detailed messages with a live person and half that information gets lost, resulting in another two to three week delay for another authorization. My general practitionerâs office does not return phone calls from my pharmacy. The administrator for one of my specialists had to call ten times and, in the end, I had to personally call to get the requested information.
Over Memorial Day weekend, I broke my toe. The insurance companyâs online website could not find an urgent care facility within 20 miles (wonât make a wider search) that would take their insurance. No one was answering the phone at their business number. I literally had to email the CEO of the company to get referred to an Urgent Care facility 30 miles away. He was good enough to respond personally, even though it was a holiday.
I retired because of chronic headaches which are aggravated by stress. It seems like my insurance company, and probably many others, are fighting a war of attrition with the elderly.
All those companies are in business to make a Profit. Maximum profit. And cutting services just enhances their Profits.
Providing services, in this case medical services, is just something those companies have to go through in order to Maximize Profits. Any money that could have been made and was not, is money LOST. And why would any company insure someone who was not healthy? That would require providing services, which would reduce profits.
And maximizing those profits benefits everybody. Doesnât it?
I had a doctors office like that once. After more than 30 min of cycling hold patterns, Iâd hang up, call again and repeat every time they put me on hold. Then I finally got a live person who asked me if I could hold and I said âNO, Iâve BEEN holding for quite awhile and if you hold me one more time there will be H*LL to payâ. I donât know why I stayed with that office for so long (well, I liked the doctor, although the office staff was awful). One time, the waiting room was full, I stepped up to the counter to tell them I was there for my appointment and they asked me to have a seat. I said âWHERE? All the seats are filled!â. It annoyed them when I didnât stop standing by the counter. They had a habit of forgetting you were in the exam room. After awhile I made of habit of waiting in the room for 10 min and if no one showed up, Iâd start wandering the office and talking to people. They LEARNED to get me out of there FAST.
Medical calls are the worst. The doctor calls you and you canât get to the phone so you call back and his phone wonât take incoming calls. So⊠like in the cartoon. Or you can leave a message on the portal, and someone who doesnât understand the situation replies and you have to call to clear it up⊠and so on.
I call telecom companies like AT&T all day. She ought to be glad she doesnât have to call them 90% of the time, you end up in the wrong department from the number on the invoice.
I had to deal with that this week. I have Aetna, which often goes through Optum based on my work planâs network. I got a referral letter for a CT scan from Optum. They told me which doctor to call and that I was approved. I made the appointment and when it came time to pay, they said I had to cover 100% out of pocket, which is not my plan. I called Aetna, and they could not tell me if the doctor was in-network, only that the CT scan was approved. I had to call Optum (a number they had to give me) and even Optum did not know. All they said is that they would not pay for the service even though they approved it, and they didnât know why they sent me the letter or even if the doctor was in my network. In fact, they said there was no way for me to even look up who was in my network, and that they could only read a few to me over the phone (not even email or text). I had to cancel my appointment, call the doctor, get them to place the order all over again with a request for one of the imaging places I was read over the phone, wait for approval, and call to reschedule an appointmentâand hope that the insurance doesnât pull the same thing again and refuse to pay for services that they already approved.
The name Best Medical immediately suggests that it is not the âbestâ but probably a busy understaffed clinic that has lots of patients because it takes most forms of public and private insurance.
Iâm assuming Luannâs family lives in the USA where at least they donât have socialized medicine like those poor backwards countries like Sweden, Spain and Canada where you have to wait forever to get in to see a doctor! (Sarcasm, in case it wasnât obviousâŠ)
Iâve been there. This is a major disservice to your patients. This is one of the biggest factors when I pick a doctor. If I canât get through to make an appointment. they clearly have way to many people to care for.
J. Scarbrough 8 months ago
WOW! The accuracy in todayâs strip is what Marisa Tomei as Mona Lisa Vito would describe as dead-on balls.
Namrepus 8 months ago
BM is appropriate, considering how theyâre treating her.
howtheduck 8 months ago
I used to dislike the call back number, but the last few years I have been using it more and more often.
thevideostoreguy 8 months ago
YepâŠtrying to pick through a hospital voice tree is a nightmare.
Joe1962 8 months ago
Well done Greg and Karen!
Argythree 8 months ago
Iâm old enough to remember when a real, live person answered my calls â and a doctor actually made house calls (anyone else remember those?) Everyone says our medical system is terrific, but you have to get there to benefit from it. Docs who are part of UPMC in Pittsburgh are actually limited in how long they can spend with an individual patient, because theyâre required to see a certain number of patients a day. Factory line medicine?
Caldonia 8 months ago
She knows Shannon will be around more soon. Hence the stress.
kenhense 8 months ago
Next Year â Iâm afraid 911 will request a password when you call.
Mordock999 Premium Member 8 months ago
Spot ON.
And as a PS:
1) All âcustomer servicesâ are a JOKE.
2) When these companies THINK that You owe Them Money, Youâll talk to a âhuman representativeâ right away. :-(
snsurone76 8 months ago
And after you finally connect with a human being: âSorry, we cannot give out that information!â
nightflight 8 months ago
Now I got an answering machine that responds with an Middle Eastern accent that I still canât understand. Go ahead and transfer me to your new office in Central America
montymiff 8 months ago
I took down LG Canada customer service. Well, I got past them to the VP who had several called in to âsplain themselves, got the service Iâd been guaranteed and had a guarantee some changes would be made. (I was newly retired and needed a hobby.) The good thing: I identified at least one problem fixed later on. Still, Consumer Reports rates them worst appliance customer service by a long way, and though I really respect their electronics, Iâd never recommend a water appliance of theirs.
Wilkins068 8 months ago
The doctorâs office figures that by havin a stroke after goin through all thatâd net em more money
Walter Kocker 8 months ago
I call my dermatologist and I hear:
âThank you for calling Uncaring Dermatology LLC"
IF THIS IS A MEDICAL EMERGENCY, HANG UP AND CALL 911 !!!
Really?
âWhat kind of medical emergency would cause you to call a dermatologist?â
âYou have a zit, and tomorrow nightâs the prom?â
sigh
BlitzMcD 8 months ago
TRUTH!!! The most true to life installment Iâve seen of this strip (or any other strip) in recent memory.
mysterysciencefreezer 8 months ago
And this is why I wonât deal with any provider that wonât accept online bookings.
GirlGeek Premium Member 8 months ago
I feel for her
French Persons' Treasury of Self-Applauding Batty Premium Member 8 months ago
OMFGâŠ. Northern Lights seen clearly as far South as Atlanta⊠Total solar eclipse⊠Supermoon⊠and nowâŠ. G&K give us a 6-panel Sunday strip⊠weâre at the peak of a Fourth-TurningâŠ
OneTime59 8 months ago
No such thing as good customer service, anymore.
mgl179 8 months ago
Time to find a new doctor, or better yet, just cut down on visits.
NeedaChuckle Premium Member 8 months ago
If you go to the website you will have to make your 333rd account to access it.
preacherman Premium Member 8 months ago
One of the great innovations that my doctor uses is a way to send him a email message. On his site I can also schedule an appointment, all without going through the outgoing message board of you know where. This really cuts down on the stress.
Aladar30 Premium Member 8 months ago
If Nancy wanted to have some stress, she got it. If she wanted a cure for stressâŠ
Count Olaf Premium Member 8 months ago
âYou have reached the Annâ€ïžEiffel Really HOT line. Eat your â€ïž out while on hold. Shoog Daddies press 1, Shoog Daddies with seven figure incomes press 0 for immediate assistance. Lowly unworthies (we know who you are) press 3 and all calls will be forwarded to Helen Waite.â
Gen.Flashman 8 months ago
She couldnât have made an appointment online? If you need to call IRS expect to be online for 90+ minutes but they do have very smoothing jazz hold music.
Ignatz Premium Member 8 months ago
âWe know your time is valuable. Hahaha. Just kidding. OUR time is valuable. Yours isnât.â
kaycstamper 8 months ago
I was one of those live persons that answered the phone, now that itâs my turn, all I get is AI! I hate calling Amazon, Spectrum, my health ins, etc.
UBBM Premium Member 8 months ago
I can get through to my Dr.âs office quick enough. But it takes six weeks to get an appointment.
baskate_2000 8 months ago
Insurance companies have created this. Hate them!
Jim 9700 8 months ago
And they didnât attempt to drain your bank account then, either.
WoT_Hog Premium Member 8 months ago
Turns out BM.com is a real website, and itâs not âBest Medicalâ. I kinda think they wonât appreciate this all that muchâŠ
thight1944 8 months ago
In 2005 my dr was in an association, which had rules about using other doctors not in the group, including specialists. The association had no urologist, so my dr, fearful he might lose money for breaking the rules, kept saying my prostate was ok. I finally went to a dr who was not in an association and after an exam, he sent me to a urologist, who found I had advanced prostate cancer.You think Iâm fond of associations? Think again.
NewBurgundy 8 months ago
My doctor used to have his own office and receptionist â making appointments was so easy. Now heâs in the stupid clinic â making an appointment is just like todayâs strip.
NewBurgundy 8 months ago
also, does every clinic have âhigher than normal call volumeâ ALL THE TIME?
Chris 8 months ago
oh, thee irony⊠:j
anaditz 8 months ago
Absolutely. Itâs absolutely irritating when you drive 30 minutes to get to your doctor, only to have him see you for 5 minutes. One doctor I had admitted as much. The irony? The same thing happened to him whenever he had to see one.
FGWaiss 8 months ago
I recall a few house calls from about 1957, give or take. My wife had many health problems, some quite serious. We go to a Mayo clinic here in SW Wisconsin. Our doctor (whom weâve been seeing since 1999) did actually phone our house a few times to change medications, make a new appointment, or just check on how she was doing with the new Rx. I think we have access to the best medical care in the worldâfor those that have the best insurance, or the financial means, and live in the right locale. We do not have nearly the best health care system.
currysteph Premium Member 8 months ago
I HATE these telephone treesâŠ.
currysteph Premium Member 8 months ago
we do have the best health care in the world if you have the money to pay for itâŠ..
tuliplover 8 months ago
Whatâs worse, is when you navigate through all of the robo questions, pushing the appropriate button, the call drops, ending the call. Then you have to call back, going through all this nonsense all over again. I call it the not-so-merry, merry go-round.
Ellis97 8 months ago
Oh yeah, been there, Nance.
Billys mom2022 8 months ago
I remember when Dr.s asked you if you had any questions. Now itâs look at you and shove you out the door.
comic reader 22 8 months ago
This is so true, and if you pick a number when asked what you are calling about, like for instance â billing questions, it will take you to a recorded message that states your balance due and then disconnects the call. I just keep saying customer service over and over until ai gets tired of me. Sometimes it works, sometimes it just disconnects my call.
Just-me 8 months ago
If Iâm calling some place, itâs because what I need to discuss requires a human, not a virtual assistant or info from a website.
del_grande Premium Member 8 months ago
For the most part, my doctor (and my former dentist, before he retired) makes me schedule my follow-ups when I leave from my current appointment, but for other things like making appointments for blood draws, I have no problems with doing it online.
nonoyobeezwaks 8 months ago
Great expression in panel six!
percheronhitch6 8 months ago
My PCP actually doesnât want to deal with actual sick people anymore. Shes made it abundantly clear that if you have ANYTHING wrong with you, you should go to Urgent care or a specialist. For the most mundane things! But loves the Medicare âWellness visitâ! She wants to see you draw the clock and she asks you if youâre often sad. No, actually, really disgusted is more what I have in mindâŠ..
w16521 8 months ago
Many of us can relate to Nancyâs frustration.
TexTech 8 months ago
Frequenty when placing a call, you are already annoyed about something so why, after running you through the phone tree exercise, do they put you on hold with music that is even more irritating? Especially if it is fed into the system too loud which causes distortion. I am already ticked off with them and now they are getting me more tense with this lousy music, if you can even call some what I hear music. You would think they would play something soothing to lower your BP before talking to the CSR.
Jason Allen 8 months ago
The tech support for the app my pharmacy uses doesnât even allow you to stay on the line until a tech is available. You leave a call back number. If youâre unable to answer the phone when they call back, you have to start all over again. I ended up waiting 4 hours for an issue that took less than a minute to resolve.
mousefumanchu Premium Member 8 months ago
Absolutely LOATHE those things with the lists â push 3 â generally holler customer service at it until I get a human being.
mistercatworks 8 months ago
Since Iâve retired, the most stressful thing I do is deal with my health insurance company. Four times now, they have sent me authorizations for places 300 miles away and it takes weeks to straighten out. I leave recorded messages and no one calls back. I leave detailed messages with a live person and half that information gets lost, resulting in another two to three week delay for another authorization. My general practitionerâs office does not return phone calls from my pharmacy. The administrator for one of my specialists had to call ten times and, in the end, I had to personally call to get the requested information.
Over Memorial Day weekend, I broke my toe. The insurance companyâs online website could not find an urgent care facility within 20 miles (wonât make a wider search) that would take their insurance. No one was answering the phone at their business number. I literally had to email the CEO of the company to get referred to an Urgent Care facility 30 miles away. He was good enough to respond personally, even though it was a holiday.
I retired because of chronic headaches which are aggravated by stress. It seems like my insurance company, and probably many others, are fighting a war of attrition with the elderly.
CoreyTaylor1 8 months ago
Divorce Frank, itâll be faster and remove most of your stress.
braindead Premium Member 8 months ago
Whatâs the big deal?
All those companies are in business to make a Profit. Maximum profit. And cutting services just enhances their Profits.
Providing services, in this case medical services, is just something those companies have to go through in order to Maximize Profits. Any money that could have been made and was not, is money LOST. And why would any company insure someone who was not healthy? That would require providing services, which would reduce profits.
And maximizing those profits benefits everybody. Doesnât it?
MichaelAxelFleming 8 months ago
IVIax must be sick.
pearlyqim 8 months ago
Ainât that the truth!
Anon4242 8 months ago
I had a doctors office like that once. After more than 30 min of cycling hold patterns, Iâd hang up, call again and repeat every time they put me on hold. Then I finally got a live person who asked me if I could hold and I said âNO, Iâve BEEN holding for quite awhile and if you hold me one more time there will be H*LL to payâ. I donât know why I stayed with that office for so long (well, I liked the doctor, although the office staff was awful). One time, the waiting room was full, I stepped up to the counter to tell them I was there for my appointment and they asked me to have a seat. I said âWHERE? All the seats are filled!â. It annoyed them when I didnât stop standing by the counter. They had a habit of forgetting you were in the exam room. After awhile I made of habit of waiting in the room for 10 min and if no one showed up, Iâd start wandering the office and talking to people. They LEARNED to get me out of there FAST.
The Quiet One 8 months ago
This hits too close to home.
WilliamVollmer 8 months ago
I someimes wonder when trying to navigate a phone tree whether, or, not they were designed to induce fustration, and/or, stress?
sid w 8 months ago
Medical calls are the worst. The doctor calls you and you canât get to the phone so you call back and his phone wonât take incoming calls. So⊠like in the cartoon. Or you can leave a message on the portal, and someone who doesnât understand the situation replies and you have to call to clear it up⊠and so on.
Doctor Go 8 months ago
I call telecom companies like AT&T all day. She ought to be glad she doesnât have to call them 90% of the time, you end up in the wrong department from the number on the invoice.
eb110americana 8 months ago
I had to deal with that this week. I have Aetna, which often goes through Optum based on my work planâs network. I got a referral letter for a CT scan from Optum. They told me which doctor to call and that I was approved. I made the appointment and when it came time to pay, they said I had to cover 100% out of pocket, which is not my plan. I called Aetna, and they could not tell me if the doctor was in-network, only that the CT scan was approved. I had to call Optum (a number they had to give me) and even Optum did not know. All they said is that they would not pay for the service even though they approved it, and they didnât know why they sent me the letter or even if the doctor was in my network. In fact, they said there was no way for me to even look up who was in my network, and that they could only read a few to me over the phone (not even email or text). I had to cancel my appointment, call the doctor, get them to place the order all over again with a request for one of the imaging places I was read over the phone, wait for approval, and call to reschedule an appointmentâand hope that the insurance doesnât pull the same thing again and refuse to pay for services that they already approved.
genghis.shaman 8 months ago
Itâs ALWAYS a higher than usual call volume
David Huie Green LikeNobody'sEverSeen 8 months ago
So, if you canceled the appointment, you wouldnât need the appointment?
thudsonz 8 months ago
I think it says something about the current state of service in medicine that pretty much anybody who reads this can relate.
dustoffer 8 months ago
Todayâs call directors are a royal PITA!
cellodude1990 8 months ago
Hahaha, the cartoonists did that name on purpose so that they could have those initials for the website name!!
Meowmocha 8 months ago
I can think of another thing BM stands for, and it describes their customer service.
RSH 8 months ago
The name Best Medical immediately suggests that it is not the âbestâ but probably a busy understaffed clinic that has lots of patients because it takes most forms of public and private insurance.
JPuzzleWhiz 8 months ago
âRecording Sessionâ
âA Damsel In This Stressâ
âPest Medicalâ
âWhat? AUUUGH!!-ain?â
âA Jolly Good Followâ
âHolding Patternâ
samadartson 8 months ago
Iâm assuming Luannâs family lives in the USA where at least they donât have socialized medicine like those poor backwards countries like Sweden, Spain and Canada where you have to wait forever to get in to see a doctor! (Sarcasm, in case it wasnât obviousâŠ)
HodgeElmwood 8 months ago
No lies here.
snowedin, now known as Missy's mom 8 months ago
Iâm glad our town isnât that large.
6foot6 8 months ago
Iâve been there. This is a major disservice to your patients. This is one of the biggest factors when I pick a doctor. If I canât get through to make an appointment. they clearly have way to many people to care for.
DanMercer 8 months ago
When I need an appointment I just go to the website, pick a caregiver, pick a date and time. 5 minutes tops. What backward place do you all live?
[Unnamed Reader - 14b4ce] 8 months ago
your call is very important to us, I also have some swampland in Florida Iâd like to sell you