Not able to help members with Specialist List

Email sent to Discovery on 30 August 2019: Good morning ***, I was dreading receiving the Discovery hop with a request, i.e. bumped from operator to operator.

I have a comment/question: We have a problem and we’ve been looking with a doctor at all the various things it could be. Many things have been discounted and the next step is to go and see an Endocrinologist. The doctor suggested someone in Roodepoort for us to go to. After calling, we were told that the first consultation would be R1’600-00 cash, which we could submit to Discovery ourselves, and see if anything would be paid back. Although they doubted very much that would be the case. Follow-up consultations would be R1’000-00 that they would submit directly to Discovery, of which they expected the co-payment to be about R400-00.

This is too steep for me, so I contacted Discovery and asked if they could give me a list of contracted Endocrinologists that I could contact. Imagine my surprise, when I was told that this is not in any way possible. I need to tell the operator, the practice number and consultation code, and only then maybe could they tell me if the specialist is contracted with whatever hierarchy & types of contract Discovery have available.

This is like telling a customer to go and figure out what products or services I sell and then I can hopefully help them further after I’ve been told what they want. That is most definitely not service.