Blue Cross/WellPoint would like to have the choice to move customer service centers over seas in Virginia, but the corporation commission is still not moving since allowing the buy out of Trigon in 2002. If you are outside of Virginia, some of your routine customer service calls to Well Point may already be handled via overseas outsourced call centers. BD
An array of medical societies, physicians and dentists urged Virginia state regulators last week to continue barring the state's largest health insurer from moving some of its customer services out of state or overseas.
The top executive of the parent company of Anthem Health Plans of Virginia complained, however, that the requirement is impeding efforts to provide medical insurance more efficiently.
"Our company absolutely needs to keep changing," said Angela Braly, president and chief executive of WellPoint, which insures 34.8 million people nationwide. "We have an obligation to fix the health care system . We have an obligation to provide better services at lower cost."
WellPoint has "no current plan" to move services outside of Virginia but offered no guarantees about the future should the State Corporation Commission decide in her company's favor, Braly said. "Certainly, we would consider the opportunity to have provider services increased in efficiency," she said.
In other states, Well Point directs routine services such as insurance verification to the Philippines, Jamaica and Argentina. More complicated questions, she said, always are answered by operators inside the United States -- although not necessarily from the state where the inquiry originated.
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