Wednesday, January 13, 2016

Bernard J Tyson Kaiser Permanente, Billing Problems, and Why I Changed My Doctor

I am working on an update to this article about my experiences with Kaiser Permanente and Bernard J Tyson. The original article is interesting and is posted below.

3-16-15
I think it is interesting that I had to speak with Bernard Tyson the CEO of Kaiser Permanente in order to have my billing problems corrected. I suppose is it a sign of the modern times we live in today that I would be blogging about changing my doctor, and the reasons why that medical doctor change was needed.


I have to meet my new doctor and of course he will want to know why I am changing doctors after being a client (patient) of my previous doctor for more than ten years.

I will not mention the old doctor's name however I will say I have Kaiser and that I have been having many terrible problems with Kaiser since 1-1-2014.
Kaiser lost eight months of my payments and has been sending me collection and termination letters, and no one at Kaiser would help me for months until I finally phoned the CEO Bernard Tyson.  Yes this gentleman returned my phone call and promised to help me and he is keeping his service commitment to me.  Of course I am very happy the CEO helped me and this is a huge plus for Kaiser in my mind.  I am now loyal to Kaiser for life because I like Bernard so much.  Sometimes a super CEO like Bernard Tyson has to step in and help solve problems. 
The sad part of this story is the Kaiser CEO returned my phone call, yet my own physician for over ten years refused to return my phone calls.

Medical - Doctor - Stuff
My main problem with my old doctor is that he could not properly renew  and approve my prescriptions for a year.  I would have to go 3-4 times and stand in long lines to collect my constant and long term prescriptions.  Then he cut off my prescription just before I was going out of town for Thanksgiving.  My physician was on vacation and I was screwed.  Nice, cut off my medication I have been taking for ten years and go on vacation.
So I set up a complaint appointment, which I had to pay for.  It was not for any medical reason it was just to complain about their defective service renewing my prescriptions.
My doctor promised me he would have this fixed and I thought life would be good again.
I just completed picking up my medications; it took four trips and multiple phone calls and messages.  It wasted nine hours of my life.  My doctor is causing my blood pressure to go up and harming my health not helping it.
I think he is overloaded and forgets what we discuss and agree to and sometimes I feel like my doctor does not even remember who I am.

I will say my old doctor is highly intelligent, in fact one of the smartest physicians I have ever seen.
I just wish he could of had my prescriptions processed properly.
 

3-23-15 Update:
I now have Dr. Pang as my physician and he is fantastic. He even showed me in the Kaiser Permanente software how he renewed all my prescriptions, so I will not have anymore problems. At last I am completely happy with Kaiser. The Kaiser physician software and online database system is amazing (5 stars). I am the CEO of an Internet and software development company, so I am not easily impressed with other software developers work.
The Kaiser software system is outstanding and extremely impressive to me.