Dealing with annoying, sometimes rude, or just downright incompetent providers.
It's a call Center.
There is a lot of information to keep track of, a good chunk of it you will never fully understand, but there are providers who expect you to know everything anyway, up to telling them how to bill their own claims.
When asking a question, if you are like me and have a learning style that lends itself better when having things explained to you, you might have a tough time. I felt constantly discouraged to reach out to leads, instead of consulting the "Desk Procedures" first, and sometimes got the impression they some of them were condescending because my question was too "basic" I guess.
Even got talked to for calling the lead line more that "the department average", which up until that point I had no idea there was such a thing.
Points system. It is restricting, ridiculous, and should kind of be done away with. I understand why call centers do it, but it just isn't for me.
Everything ends up on a list.
The benefits are quite expensive, some people opt to get their benefits elsewhere.
My supervisor was always remote and I never got to talk to him face to face. It takes some getting used to.
This job can be very stressful. You are left to tell providers about the status of their claims with little to no knowledge of how coding works, or anything below the surface from what you are given in training. This understandably leads to some conflicts. As mentioned before you will often get providers who don't even know how to bill their claims. They call you asking about what this error message is and what it means when they try to file something, and if it's anything to do with a code, or something like that, you cannot tell them anything, and the VA doesn't want you telling them anything. If it is out of scope, you tell them "get with your coding department" or "get with your billing department". Expect lots of "I AM the billing department."
Lots of calls from off-shore reps, who are not vetted and the quality control is non-existent. I have had off-shore reps tell me to basically hurry up getting through these claims, because their lunch break is coming up. Why are these companies outsourcing these important tasks to incompetent individuals with slow systems who care nothing about what they are even doing, and sound like they are constantly annoyed.
Recently the company had everyone take Vet calls as well as provider calls so it's not even really the provider experience center anymore. I know many coworkers who were very stressed out and at their wits end because now we have vets calling about getting a bill and...well we aren't really trained in that, so there is a lot of calling strings of other departments and waiting 20-30 minutes at a time just to even reach someone.
I had switched to the 72-hour notification line, because they were asking for volunteers as there is a greater need on that side, and the VA seemed to mandate it. From my impression it was easier and less stressful, but I was wrong. Not for me. They recently asked for mandatory overtime because there is such an overflow of notifications. This is for a department that runs 24 hours. I'd finally decided I had enough. I expect the provider experience side to be slowly dissolved soon enough.
