Handling Customer Complaints

It is the nature of any business to get customer complaints. And for home medical equipment providers — whether they come from referral sources or patients — those complaints must be acknowledged and addressed.

Most often, HME providers say, their complaints concern the overall complexities of the U.S. health care system and range from a misunderstanding of insurance coverage to unmet expectations.

“We find that most complaints, both from referral sources and customers, are due to the lack of understanding of the sale and delivery process itself,” says Cindy Ciardo, CEO of Milwaukee, Wis.-based Knueppel HealthCare Services.

“They especially do not understand or appreciate that much of what we request of them, or need before we can dispense a product, is dictated to us by insurance companies, state Medicaid plans and Medicare — specifically the burden of determining or proving medical necessity and the time and effort it takes to do so.”

What's more, according to training expert Louis Feuer, president of Dynamic Seminars & Consulting, it must be acknowledged that there are going to be some legitimate mistakes.

“We're in a people business,” says Feuer. “As long as you have people dealing with customers and delivering equipment, you are going to have mistakes. They happen,” he says. But he adds that addressing those mistakes and handling customer complaints allows providers the chance to improve processes and service.

Here are some of the most common complaints providers say they receive:

• “I want it — why can't I have it?” When customers are unfamiliar with the products that their payer will cover, they can become angry and upset.

  Ciardo says the most frequent complaints Knueppel employees receive regard out-of-pocket costs associated with choosing deluxe products that the company cannot dispense under its restrictive managed care contracts.

  “The difficulty is that when they check with their insurance company, customer service simply tells the beneficiary that the item is covered, which is misleading,” she explains. “When they come into our facility and choose, for example, a designer cane over a basic aluminum one, they feel it should be covered in full, even though the designer paint or inlaid rhinestones have nothing to do with meeting their medical need.”