tragically HIP

tragically HIP, no. 2

Following my debacle with the HIP website, I soon ran afoul of their legions of contradictory phone-bank loons, two of which approved a simple physical with a Manhattan doctor, and one of which added a few hundred dollars of additional charges to my account even though I’d already shelled out the agreed co-pay.

Thankfully, I have a secret force on my side, who revealed his identity in a manner most clever amid a thick tangle of bureaucracy that (I think) means I won:

v. The decision to overturn for the processing of the claim was rendered by Senior Clams Examiner, who is experienced in claims related issues.

The Senior Clams Examiner! Calloo! Callay! I’d like to think he is working away at his desk right now, high in some post-modern box overlooking a deserted midtown avenue, his office gloriously clean and new and tasteful. He empties a bucket of clams on the clean glass before him, the residue of previous loads miraculously wiped away by the futuristic self-cleaning furniture.

The Senior Clams Examiner praises Jah for the dumbass HIP executive who didn’t know the difference between oysters and clams and hired him to look for pearls anyway. He will be home in time to put his son to bed. He smiles, and grants his benevolence on a hapless sucker who didn’t realize that just because a hospital is affiliated with HIP doesn’t mean that all of its doctors are, too.

Putting the appeal in a pneumatic tube, the Senior Clams Examiner returns his attention to the batch of mollusks before him. When he finishes, he slides a few into his briefcase for a midnight treat with his wife, and leaves the rest for the robots to clean up.

tragically HIP, no. 1

My first usage of my new health care provider, HIP, went awry when they did not send me a doctor directory for some six weeks after I paid my initial membership dues. Which is to say we got off on the wrong foot.

As such, in order to find a doctor for a long overdue physical, I employed the Find A Provider function on their website, which is where I encountered this screen:

Knowing that I was looking for a Primary Care Physician and not actually angel dust, it seems pretty obvious where I was supposed to click, right?

For reasons that still elude me, it seems, the proper way to find a PCP through the HIP site is to select “non-member” and “specialist,” despite the fact that I am (in fact) a member of HIP and I am in search of a Primary Care Physician. There is no world in which this makes sense.

From this simple mistake sprung a series of confusions about the type of specialist that I was looking for, which will (sadly) have to wait for a future episode of Tragically HIP.