I often complain about the amount of time I spend processing my health insurance claims. You see, we have to pay in advance and then go to get reimbursed.
Each visit this includes:
1. paying doctor, either up front or by a bank machine
2. scanning all of my documentation in. So if the doctors invoice is 3 pages, one by one
3. exporting and reserving each page of my documentation as black & white pdf file (the others are too large so insurance doesn’t accept it). Make note to save this in the proper file on the computer.
4. Login to insurance website. Navigate. Upload 1st document. Wait 5 minutes. Upload 2nd page. Wait 5 minutes. Repeat.
I also have to verify that they paid both on the insurance website and our bank account. I won’t get into the details of using a Swiss bank account online, but it involves like 5 extra layers of security and a handheld machine that looks like a calculator to log into the internet. One I get in, a lot of the time I realize they didn’t pay us properly. I know this is a big surprise to you with an insurance company 🙂 Then resolution starts working around time zones, etc. Or getting proper documentation from the doctor while attempting to speak French.
With all my physical therapy and surgeon bills having to be done individually, let’s just say I have become very intimate with this process. Gabe tells me its like a full time job for me to do my insurance follow up.
However, today, as I was spending time doing this, I stopped and thought “How lucky am I do get to do all this?” I am very fortunate for good health insurance, and it’s certainly not the case for all people. So, today’s gratitude post is for our insurance….I am quite thankful.
Bon weekend, everyone!
The Swiss Watch Blog 
I know! I went through this with my surgery! I am dealing with an American insurance co., so I also had to deal with the conversion rate, still not sure if mine is correct, but like you, very grateful I HAVE insurance!
🙂 Sounds really a tedious process never knew the procedure for uploading your documents and getting approved was such a lengthy process, Is it the same procedure for all Insurance providers? I doubt it …Please shed some light on that though, as I remember reading somewhere in an Insurance aggregation website a few days back which lists all the various policies sold by providers that few policies have a very easy claim process.
Thanks, Have a Great Day and yes I empathize with you on the baritone that few Insurance providers do like this though 😦
Marco, I am not sure if it is the same for all insurance providers. We didn’t have a choice – we sign up for the insurance my husband’s company offers.
We are from the US and typically the doctors office would do the paperwork for you and you’d pay the balance insurance didn’t cover, via a bill that came to your home at a later date. Here, most expect payment upfront. And due to being on a different continent, the internet portal reduces the mail time which shortens reimbursement time – a good thing! Perhaps if we had Swiss insurance, they might know what was covered and not, and only charge for the projected amount. But because ours is International, I am sure they just don’t want to dig into the the nitty gritty of each type and what is covered and would rather get their payment upfront from us foreigners.
All in all, does take a long time to do it, but works pretty well!!