The Joys of working with Home HealthCare Companies

Medical Supply Companies ... yeah!!!

Benjamin has been on home oxygen since 1999, and this year, he finally got off supplemental oxygen at night, so that he is 100% breathing room air all the time. VICTORY!!

We have had a couple of medical supply companies over the years. I love the local small private ones, like White in Michigan, a caring company that sent out a nurse regularly. ALso, you always had a number to call if you needed something, and when you did call, you got the same people, people who knew you and knew what you needed. There was a monthly delivery of formula, oxygen, g-tubes, stoma supplies. I really enjoyed our first company and all the people. When we moved from Michigan to Colorado, they all signed a card for us and we said many fond good byes.

But with companies merging from the 90s and up, medical supply companies, the little ones, are more rare, and the giants like Apria Health Care have taken over.

Apria is what we have had to service Benjamin's home medical supply needs all our years in Colorado. In the beginning, one could call the local branch in Golden or Louisville, their hours ran a little into the evening after work, and over-all while it was not personable like White back in Michigan, it was doable, the people were reachable and we got what we needed and were able to communicate in a timely manner.

Not so any more. Apria has gotten to the point of “too big to care”. 

Their phone hours are (9-5) Central time. One time before I knew this, I called after 5 central time, and their automated phone said they would be with me "momentarily". After 90 minutes or so, I went on their webpage and found out they closed 5 central, but their phones were not switched over to let me know this while I was on hold.

Apria's "convenient" delivery and pick up hours are M-F, 9-5 Mountain time. 

Their “window”  when you schedule a delivery with them is 9-5, so you just need to be home all day in order to connect with them on a scheduled delivery or pick up day. You cannot call and talk to the driver and find out if he is near. In fact, your call goes to a call center somewhere between Ohio and Pakistan (I think – or some other Asian country that features a Pakistani/Indian style accent). And if you reach one of their over-seas call centers, in addition to having to listen carefully to an accent that is not always easy to understand, has employees working in a big area where there is no sound insulation, so you hear 10 other voices at the same time as the one you want to hear, which makes it doubly hard to hear the agent you are trying to communicate with.

Generally speaking I try to be really nice to service people at all times, especially hard working poorly paid foreigners...  though they are hard to understand. But when one sits on hold for 45 minutes to an hour every time one tries to call Apria, and when one often gets to the last stage, finally hears a phone ring, and then the call drops before one reaches a live person, it is difficult not to be frustrated and on edge, when, on the second or third try one finally gets through to a live person.

During one of my recent calls to Apria, after getting enough information from the person in the call center to know how I – with my own car—can pick up and deliver the requisite equipment (because I am never home during their truck pick up and delivery hours), I asked how I could file a complaint about their service … i.e. register a complaint with responsible people, not with the call center person … and the call center person said he had no information on how to register a complaint. I could not talk to his supervisor because he has no number to transfer me there, however, he helpfully suggested that I was welcome to call the 800 number again, sit in line, and try to pick options (he did not know which) that might get me to somewhere where someone perhaps would be willing to listen to a complaint.

The words here are “too big to care”. Apria is all over the United States. Their concern is purely with their share holders. The friendly customer services they previously had when we started using them in 2003 have dwindled away in the name of saving personnel and service costs so the company can focus on delivering more to their share holders. 

Any contact you need to make with Apria requires more than an hour of your time (in case the call drops once or twice). Being on hold entails listening, not to hold music, but to their two minute advertisement audio segment of what services they provide, a track that after an hour’s wait has run about 30 times until rings in your head over and over and over again - even after you hang up. As a result, while you are on hold you cannot just put the phone on speaker and get some work done. Their sound track destroys your ability to think while you are waiting.

I do not know what the other companies are like (but I have heard like horror stories from others with other big companies). Currently we are discontinuing services with Health Care Companies  for Ben (thank God!!)

Think about other caregivers of the very ill (which is most of the customer base of home health care companies) – persons who are already super busy both working and taking care of their sick loved ones. Why should caregivers of the most ill  have to put up with such terrible service? Why should anyone, indeed? When the free market works, you can go elsewhere and get better service, ideally. Not so here. 

The profit motive for companies who are way too big in their market share to care what their customers think of them has destroyed what was previously a humane and customer satisfaction driven service. 

I think of the man who was forcefully dragged off United Airlines last year when they decided he could not keep a seat he had reserved.  I think of how that brutal action against a respectable citizen who was sticking to his rights did not hurt United Airlines bottom line one bit!!)

While I have not physically been dragged anywhere by Apria HealtCare, I have been treated with about the same amount of complete LACK  of care and concern for my son's needs, no respect for my time, or for my convenience regarding their services.  Companies like Apria, insulate the top executives and middle level management from ever having to deal with customers’ concerns. They then put poorly trained and peanut-level paid call center representatives out front to talk to the customers. The call reps are miserable, the customers are miserable, and the folks at the top are content that their business model delivers to their share holders – the only folks the company actually cares about.

Can anything be done about this? Or are we just that unimportant in the greater scheme of things?