Day 412 - 🤳 Mom Waits on Hold for Hours

Tuesday, February 15th, 2022

Mom spent the day (and yesterday too) on the phone with Medicaid and DCF trying to file for an appeal for something insurance won't approve. 

The automated phone call starts out.. "Thank you for calling...Press 1 if you're a Member, Press 2...yada yada". Finally reaching someone typically after a 2 hour wait they need to confirm who you are. They want your name, the patient's name, DOB, SSN, street address, hospital street address, phone number, email address. Once that it's confirmed you say who you say you are, they want to know how to help you. You explain you just need to be transferred to the Appeals Department, then they transfer you..."Thank you for calling. We are closed. Our hours are between 8am and 6pm. (It's not even 5:15pm yet)...To leave a message, press 1". You press 1 Click! Disconnected. 😑 Time to try again..."Thank you for calling...Press 1 if you're a Member, Press 2..." After another 2 hour wait and verifying all of your information, they transfer you to Appeals again. This time instead of getting the message that they are closed, you get..."Thank you for calling...Press 1 if you're a Member Press 2...". Back in the loop from hell! It was endless and nothing was ever resolved. This was Mom for the last 48 hours.

One of the Medicaid Customer Service reps informed Mom that in order to have the correct Residential Address on file for James she would need to update that with Department of Children and Families (DCF). Mom let her know that James has Medicaid through Social Security not DCF and that she had already updated his address several times with Social Security both at the National and Local offices. The rep still insisted that the address needs to be updated with DCF. So Mom calls them and waits on hold for half the day just leaving the phone on speaker while caring for James. Once someone answered he searched and searched and couldn't find James in the system, just like Mom thought. What a waste of time! Does anyone know how Medicaid works?! No, not even their own customer service agents.

First photo shows his 2 bottom teeth!🦷🦷 Mom did most of his care while the nurse charted. The only real reason we have nursing is so that Mom can take a shower once in a while. More on this at a later date...

P.S. Do you follow James' journey? James would love to read an email from you. His email is JamesWestonAbramowitz@gmail.com. How heartwarming for him to receive these and fun for you to get a response from him in like 10 years...