Top Docs 2008 Part IV: How to Fight Back

You’ve Got Their Number
A consumer avenger puts health insurers’ call-in lines to the test.

Founded in 2004, Get-Human is a website with a devilishly altruistic mission: helping people make end runs around automated phone systems in order to reach a real, live company rep. Today it’s overseen by Acton’s Walt Tetschner, a veteran of the speech-technology industry who is as direct (“Government agencies’ phone systems—it’s like they go out of their way to be incompetent”) as his targets are byzantine. Who better, we thought, to test some of the region’s biggest names in health insurance for user friendliness?

Boston magazine asked Tetschner and his crew to evaluate the customer-service lines of six insurers, plus the Commonwealth Choice program, set up as part of Massachusetts’ push toward universal coverage. They called each number repeatedly, at different times of the day, and scored it according to the “GetHuman Standard,” which includes criteria like “Callers should not be forced to listen to long/verbose prompts.” (They also logged a shortcut for each system, included in the box below.)

The top scores went to Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts and Health New England, which each received 0.86 out of a possible perfect score of 1.0. Harvard Pilgrim Health Care received a score of 0.56, followed by Tufts Health Plan, Neighborhood Health Plan, and Fallon Community Health Plan, which all earned between 0.4 and 0.45. At the bottom of the pile was Commonwealth Choice, meriting a paltry 0.13.

“Commonwealth Choice managed to do almost everything wrong,” Tetschner says. “Its agents did seem knowledgeable and were able to communicate effectively, but that was about it. This was the only one we tested that consistently had long wait times for reaching a human.”

To some degree, though, all the companies’ systems committed the sin of asking questions “that accomplish nothing more than just irritating the caller,” he says. “It’s a shame. You can fix all this stuff—it’s not hard.”

 

Want to Talk to an Operator—Now?
Healthcare-related phone hacks, courtesy of GetHuman’s relentless redialers. (To check out other companies and industries, go to gethuman.com.)

 

Aetna	800-738-7674	Say “member”; press *0.
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts	800-262-2583	Press 1 at first prompt.
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services	800-999-1118	Press 1-0-0-0.
Cigna	800-244-6224	Press ## at each prompt.
Commonwealth Choice	877-623-6765	Press 1 for English, then 5 at main menu. Enter number of family members. Press 1. At next menu, press 0.
Fallon Community Health Plan	800-868-5200	Press 2 for senior plan; other plans, just wait.
Harvard Pilgrim Health Care	888-333-4742	Press 0 at each prompt.
Health New England	800-310-2835	Press 0, or just wait.
Medicare	800-633-4227	Say “agent.”
Neighborhood Health Plan	800-462-5449	Press 0 at first and second prompts.
Tufts Health Plan	800-701-9000	Press 0 at each prompt.
UniCare	800-305-1795	Press 0#, 0#.
UnitedHealth	800-585-6586	Select type of plan. Say “representative” three times.