Nobody looks forward to calling their health insurance company with a question, complaint, or claims adjustment request. But if you had to contact Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts this week, the experience might have been more pleasant than usual.
Because Blue Cross knew people who called its member services lines from Oct. 15 to 19 would be surveyed by an outside company to gauge their level of satisfaction, the Boston-based insurer prepared a special script for customer service representatives to follow this week only.
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Recently Blue Cross lost electronic payments made by Bank of America for health insurance premiums. Unequivocal evidence was presented to Blue Cross that they had received and deposited the payments. Nevertheless they cancelled the health insurance coverage for two months until Blue Cross discovered its error. Fortunately, there were no physician or hospitals fee incurred during this period. Imagine if some medical emergency had arisen.
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“Please use these workflows to ensure Member Satisfaction during SQM week,” the instructions advised, referring to SQM Group Inc., the Canadian survey firm that Blue Cross and more than 400 other companies use to measure themselves against peers in various industries. “Thank you for all your hard work and dedication to our members!!”
My guess is that this is what MOST organizations will do if they know how to game the oversight. So, any oversight that is predictable will not have valid results. But, perhaps Blue Cross does not care about REALLY getting more customer friendly, just about being able to quote some survey purportedly showing that it is so.
This is a FRONT PAGE story and BC/BS doesn't usually make the top ten? Why is this a front page story? Because they're so big? Because it's their anniversary? The information in the story isn't even that revealing. Strange . . . . .
On Netting it Out, "The Corrupting Influence of Metrics. http://nettingitout.com/2012/10/21/corrupting-influence-of-metrics/