*********** & lack of good customer service

I went to a GP outside my "prescribed/allocated" GP's and the process as i understand it is that you pay the GP in cash and claim from your medical aid by submitting the claim form you receive from the GP. Having done this process, i get a response from the Discovery claims department that the refund will paid into the healthcare professional.

I find it quite *********** to state that my refund "will be paid to the healthcare professional on 2017/08/30" whereas the claim form says reimburse the member. I had already paid the GP the R400.00 hence the reimburse the member written on the claim by the GP professional! Proper service would be to call me and inquire further prior to "deciding" what you want to do irrespective of instruction submitted.

I then called Discovery to query this. The audacity for the Discovery manager (Jessica) that i spoke with this morning to advise that i need to submit the receipt as proof of payment because the claim form was written by hand by the GP personnel is even more appalling. I have no control of how the GP operates. If their methods are less technological there is nothing i can do. I was there as a patient not as a Business Analyst to change processes. If you are trained to know that when a claim is handwritten (even though on official paper work and stamps) it still needs to be accompanied by a receipt, then you need to communicate that to your members, because i haven't seen such communication, and as i do not work for Discovery i will not know that. It is by luck that i even found that stupid receipt. Not too sure if she was questioning me even going to the doctor or having not paid the DR because if you are going to question hand written official documentation, you might as well question the legitimacy of the GP.

I am really losing patience with Discovery and any further inconveniences will cause me to change this Medical Aid. While you at it, cancel my Vitality membership too!!!