1. Do you want to see a psychiatrist? You will only be able to see them 2-3 times a year because they are booked 4-6 months between appointments. each psychiatrist has about a thousand patients.
2. Do you want to see a specialist? good luck. i told my GP i wanted to see a dermatologist for a couple of skin conditions. he insisted that it wasn’t necessary and that he was good enough to handle it himself. On another occasion, I went in because my knee hurt, which I had surgery on a few years before. my main said it was just because i am overweight and just need to exercise more. I said I’d really like to make sure it’s not something more serious, so he wrote me a referral to get an X-ray. I programmed it, went to find him, and found out that he was going to have to pay $500. I left, then called to see why they were charging me so much. they said it was because he coded it a certain way and if he had coded it another way it would have only cost me $50.
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3. I went to see my GP (different than above) because I found a lump that worried me. he agreed that it was very concerning and he was going to write me an urgent referral so that I could have an ultrasound. when I called to schedule it, the first appointment was over 2 weeks away. call me crazy, but it doesn’t seem like a very appropriate timeline.
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4. kaiser online portal and overall software system is horrible. when i have a video date they have no way to join from the online portal. I have to wait for them to send me a link to join. That doesn’t sound so bad, right? well they either texted me the link only or they didn’t send me anything. so i have to copy the link to my computer to make the appointment. Still not the worst? Well, when the link is sent to me, I receive it 5-10 minutes after my scheduled appointment time.
5. the pharmacy – what a disaster. when nothing goes wrong, it’s okay. unfortunately, i have had multiple terrible experiences with the pharmacy. Once, I was told that I couldn’t fill one of my prescriptions because it was too soon, even though their system sent me a text saying it was time to fill it. I told them that I always pick up my prescriptions together so both should be available to fill or neither should be. they looked at her records and said she hadn’t filled one of them for over 6 months which I knew was not correct since I take these medications every day and get a 90 day supply each time. Also, these medications require my doctor to write a new prescription each time I fill them, which they shouldn’t do if I was requesting a refill too soon. I ended up picking up the meds that were ready and had to go back a few days later to get the other one.
6. my employer sponsored coverage started at the beginning of the year. i still hadn’t received my kaiser membership cards so i called kaiser. I spent over an hour talking to 2 people from kaiser, which eventually ended with them saying, “you’ll have to work with your company’s HR because we don’t see you in the system.”
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The next day, I asked my company’s HR department if there was a problem. they said it looked like everything was ok on their end and even sent me a screenshot of my info in kaiser’s system. I was now able to log into the kaiser portal, but could only access northern california, where I used to live several years ago. I had been a member of kaiser southern california for a couple of years since then so i was very confused as to what was going on.
I called kaiser back, spoke to a total of 4 people over a couple of hours. the call ended with them telling me: “we changed something in her account, so you should be able to access her now.” I confirmed that I still couldn’t access southern california and was told, “give it 24 hours and it should be fixed.” By the next day, it seemed to have been fixed, so I went ahead and requested refills on my prescriptions. Later that day, I get a text saying that one of my prescriptions is out of stock. ok, I’ll go pick up the other recipes that are marked as done.
I go in to pick them up. the price is much higher than usual, so I ask why. The pharmacist looked and said, “weird, for some reason it didn’t go through insurance. Do you want me to do that?” obviously, I said yes. then takes some time to try to run it through insurance with his manager, comes back and says my insurance only covers a 30 day supply so I will have to pay out of pocket. I told him, “I’ve been getting a 90-day supply for years and it’s always gone.” he looks and sees it’s true, so he talks to his manager for a while, he comes back to tell me there must have been a change in policy in the new year. I said, “okay, I need the prescription, so I’ll pay out of pocket.”
10 minutes go by, so I ask what’s going on. he replies, “oh, we have to reprocess it without the insurance.” spend more time I see his manager talking to someone else about it. he comes back to tell me that they can’t actually give me the 90 day supply and they will have to start over to just give me 30. needless to say i won’t be staying with kaiser any longer. I would not recommend them to my worst enemy.
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