Luann by Greg Evans and Karen Evans for June 23, 2024

WOW! The accuracy in today’s strip is what Marisa Tomei as Mona Lisa Vito would describe as dead-on balls.

BM is appropriate, considering how they’re treating her.

I used to dislike the call back number, but the last few years I have been using it more and more often.

Yep…trying to pick through a hospital voice tree is a nightmare.

Well done Greg and Karen!

I’m old enough to remember when a real, live person answered my calls – 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 they’re required to see a certain number of patients a day. Factory line medicine?

She knows Shannon will be around more soon. Hence the stress.

Next Year – I’m afraid 911 will request a password when you call.

Spot ON.

And as a PS:

1) All “customer services” are a JOKE.

2) When these companies THINK that You owe Them Money, You’ll talk to a “human representative” right away. :-(

And after you finally connect with a human being: “Sorry, we cannot give out that information!”

Now I got an answering machine that responds with an Middle Eastern accent that I still can’t 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 ‘splain themselves, got the service I’d 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, I’d never recommend a water appliance of theirs.

The doctor’s office figures that by havin a stroke after goin through all that’d net em more money

I call my dermatologist and I hear:

“Thank you for calling Uncaring Dermatology LLC"

IF THIS IS A MEDICAL EMERGENCY, HANG UP AND CALL 911 !!!

Really?

“What kind of medical emergency would cause you to call a dermatologist?”

“You have a zit, and tomorrow night’s the prom?”

sigh

TRUTH!!! The most true to life installment I’ve seen of this strip (or any other strip) in recent memory.

And this is why I won’t deal with any provider that won’t accept online bookings.

I feel for her

OMFG…. Northern Lights seen clearly as far South as Atlanta… Total solar eclipse… Supermoon… and now…. G&K give us a 6-panel Sunday strip… we’re at the peak of a Fourth-Turning…

No such thing as good customer service, anymore.

Time to find a new doctor, or better yet, just cut down on visits.

If you go to the website you will have to make your 333rd account to access it.

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.

If Nancy wanted to have some stress, she got it. If she wanted a cure for stress…

“You have reached the Ann❤️Eiffel Really HOT line. Eat your ❤️ 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.”

She couldn’t 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.

“We know your time is valuable. Hahaha. Just kidding. OUR time is valuable. Yours isn’t.”

I was one of those live persons that answered the phone, now that it’s my turn, all I get is AI! I hate calling Amazon, Spectrum, my health ins, etc.

I can get through to my Dr.’s office quick enough. But it takes six weeks to get an appointment.

Insurance companies have created this. Hate them!

And they didn’t attempt to drain your bank account then, either.

Turns out BM.com is a real website, and it’s not “Best Medical”. I kinda think they won’t appreciate this all that much…

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 I’m fond of associations? Think again.

My doctor used to have his own office and receptionist – making appointments was so easy. Now he’s in the stupid clinic – making an appointment is just like today’s strip.

also, does every clinic have “higher than normal call volume” ALL THE TIME?

oh, thee irony… :j

Absolutely. It’s 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 we’ve 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 world—for 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.

I HATE these telephone trees….

we do have the best health care in the world if you have the money to pay for it…..

What’s 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.

Oh yeah, been there, Nance.

I remember when Dr.s asked you if you had any questions. Now it’s look at you and shove you out the door.

This is so true, and if you pick a number when asked what you are calling about, like for instance – 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.

If I’m calling some place, it’s because what I need to discuss requires a human, not a virtual assistant or info from a website.

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.

Great expression in panel six!

My PCP actually doesn’t 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 “Wellness visit”! She wants to see you draw the clock and she asks you if you’re often sad. No, actually, really disgusted is more what I have in mind…..

Many of us can relate to Nancy’s frustration.

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 doesn’t even allow you to stay on the line until a tech is available. You leave a call back number. If you’re 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.

Absolutely LOATHE those things with the lists – push 3 – generally holler customer service at it until I get a human being.

Since I’ve 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 practitioner’s 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 company’s online website could not find an urgent care facility within 20 miles (won’t 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.

Divorce Frank, it’ll be faster and remove most of your stress.

What’s 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. Doesn’t it?

IVIax must be sick.

Ain’t that the truth!

I had a doctors office like that once. After more than 30 min of cycling hold patterns, I’d 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 ‘NO, I’ve BEEN holding for quite awhile and if you hold me one more time there will be H*LL to pay’. I don’t 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 “WHERE? All the seats are filled!”. It annoyed them when I didn’t 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, I’d start wandering the office and talking to people. They LEARNED to get me out of there FAST.

This hits too close to home.

I someimes wonder when trying to navigate a phone tree whether, or, not they were designed to induce fustration, and/or, stress?

Medical calls are the worst. The doctor calls you and you can’t get to the phone so you call back and his phone won’t take incoming calls. So… like in the cartoon. Or you can leave a message on the portal, and someone who doesn’t 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 doesn’t 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 plan’s 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 didn’t 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 appointment—and hope that the insurance doesn’t pull the same thing again and refuse to pay for services that they already approved.

It’s ALWAYS a higher than usual call volume

So, if you canceled the appointment, you wouldn’t need the appointment?

I think it says something about the current state of service in medicine that pretty much anybody who reads this can relate.

Today’s call directors are a royal PITA!

Hahaha, the cartoonists did that name on purpose so that they could have those initials for the website name!!

I can think of another thing BM stands for, and it describes their customer service.

The name Best Medical immediately suggests that it is not the “best” but probably a busy understaffed clinic that has lots of patients because it takes most forms of public and private insurance.

“Recording Session”

“A Damsel In This Stress”

“Pest Medical”

“What? AUUUGH!!-ain?”

“A Jolly Good Follow”

“Holding Pattern”

I’m assuming Luann’s family lives in the USA where at least they don’t 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 wasn’t obvious…)

No lies here.

I’m glad our town isn’t that large.

I’ve been there. This is a major disservice to your patients. This is one of the biggest factors when I pick a doctor. If I can’t get through to make an appointment. they clearly have way to many people to care for.

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?