Blue Shield mistakenly tells 730 Northern CA Medicare members their coverage ended
More than 730 Blue Shield of California Medicare customers mistakenly received this week letters postmarked June 11 notifying them that their healthcare coverage had ended June 11, according to a Blue Shield customer service representative.
“Thank you for being a Blue Shield of California valued member. We are writing you with an important update to our network,” one letter read.
Jonna M. Constantine, a senior manager in corporate communications at Blue Shield, wrote in an email that the issue had been resolved and said the company is “proactively” notifying affected customers.
“Earlier this month, during routine system updates, Blue Shield of California identified an error that resulted in incorrect letters being sent to some Blue Shield Medicare members in the Sutter Health network,” wrote Constantine. “No member who received these letters had their coverage impacted.”
The Oakland-based insurer plans to send apology letters to affected customers.
“That letter we sent out is in error due to updating providers’ information in our system,” the customer service representative said. “We already assured today members who called us that they can still continue to see their providers and they can disregard that letter.”
Affected customers included residents of Sutter County in addition to those seeing health providers in Sutter County but who did not live in the area, according to the representative.
“My doctor’s office knew nothing about it and when I called Blue Shield they said they’ve been inundated,” wrote one customer, who received the letter on Monday, four days after it was postmarked and after the letter claimed their coverage had been terminated.
“It was a mistake and they’re trying to correct thousands of errors and sending out another letter to these frantic customers like me!”
Customer service representatives were unable to provide information on which plans were sent the letters.
A second customer service representative, who declined to provide her name, said that the company is working to update their records to display the correct information that providers are “still remaining in network.”
She said she “has definitely received calls from members advising that they haven’t or they’ve received notifications that the providers are no longer going to be with the network.”
