Kaiser Gave Bonuses for Denying Care
from the take-two-aspirin-and-don’t-call-us-in-the-morning dept.
Here’s one that should resonate with anyone who’s ever had to deal with a big, uncaring HMO: Kaiser Permanente, California’s largest health maintenance organization, has acknowledged that it paid bonuses to call-center employees who kept their calls with patients short and managed to talk the patients out of scheduling doctor visits. Note that these call center employees were high-school graduates with little or no medical training. Slick. With the money the company saved it was able to run lots of TV ads showing caring “doctors” handing teddy bears to cute little girl “patients,” and still had a tidy profit left over for the shareholders. Cha-ching!
June 12th, 2013 at 6:01 pm
More on the unethical practices that I found at Kaiser Permanente. Recently I was searching for a medical prescription plan that would offer all of my medications in their drug formulary. I called sales at the above “caring” organization and was assured by them all that my meds were covered. So I went to the effort and time to convert! My first doctor visit was a comedy of errors. Not only did the nurse bring in the wrong patient’s chart, but when I went to the pharmacy to pick up my medications, I learned that only two of them (I take 4) had been ordered. After much time and stress I managed to get them all. I also took a kidney test which eventually supposedly said that my kidneys are malfunctioning. I had just had a thorough physical done plus I am in excellent health so I was shocked. I went back to my old internist and got the paperwork in hand that shows my kidneys are functioning perfectly. Then I researched Kaiser and wrote a detailed email to their CEO. So far I’ve received two calls from the internal group that investigates errors done by their staff. And I’ve also gotten another call just yesterday and you won’t believe it! The pharmacy was calling me to tell me that my 2 prescriptions were ready to pick up!! Kaiser Permanente? No I say “Tzar Temporari”!
Mimsy