Sick son and unreliable health care August 4, 2005
I pay a lot for my sons’ health insurance coverage although I won’t mind if I don’t ever have to use it but since “not ever” is not something you associate with growing children, “rarely” would do just fine.
Tuesday was one of those “rare” times–this being the first time this year–that I was forced to go to Mactan Doctors’ Hospital to have my son checked at one of the clinics there. Imagine my surprise when the card provided by our health maintenance organization, ValuCare, turned up as invalid when swiped through the card reader.
The person manning the information booth, where they keep the health card reader for the hospital and for clinics without this equipment, asked me if I’ve used the card before and if I had encountered problems when I first used it. I said I used the card over a year ago and there didn’t seem to be any problem then. He tried swiping the card again, gave up after several tries, and suggested that I call my health care provider.
In the meantime, my son was fidgeting and was clearly on his way to a full-blown tantrum because he had been sitting on the uncomfortable wooden seat at the hospital lobby for 20 minutes while the hospital employee and I were figuring out what was wrong with the card.
I called the office to report what happened and they called the provider who said they were going to call Manila and would call back after 15 minutes. What?!?! Are they crazy? What was I supposed to do in the meantime that they were taking their time calling Manila to ask what happened? How do you explain to a sick two-year-old that he has to wait 15, 20, or 25 minutes more because the Cebu office obviously does not know how to deal with such a simple problem?
To cut a long story short, I brought my son home because the physician, who is the ValuCare coordinator and the only one authorized to conduct the check-up based on the provider’s outpatient health care policy, was not accepting patients anymore because he already has a long line of them.
I’m still thinking of a good time to bring him back for that checkup.
Have a horror story about your HMO? Do tell.
[...] This is not my first experience with the unreliability of this HMO. In August, it refused to honor my sick son’s coverage for reasons it only knows. Last week, I brought my sons to Valucare’s accredited testing center for the yearly regular medical check-up, which would only run from October 13 to 31, only to be refused by the center because of some fiasco that was either the fault of my company or the HMO or both. I told the ValuCare representative that the doctor had been my obstetrician-gynecologist for years, had delivered my second baby, and already knew my medical history enough to confidently treat me for my polycystic ovaries. [...]