Consultation with health insurance often poor

Financial test: advice from the statutory health insurance only rarely good. Just two health insurance companies advise their insured well. Still, the results are better than they were two years ago.

(17.08.2010) The magazine „Finanztest“ has examined the advice and service of 21 statutory health insurance companies in more detail for the insured and comes to the conclusion that only two of them their customers „Well“ to advise. The other 19 received the rating „satisfying“, a „very good“ Note could not reach any of the insurance companies.

As early as 2007, the journal published by the Stiftung Warentest had examined the counseling services and the services of the statutory health insurances in a health insurance practice test. The insurances performed better this time than two years ago. The best results in the current test were achieved by the Techniker Krankenkasse and the AOK Plus, which, however, is only represented in Saxony and Thuringia and from 2011 also in Hesse. In third place is Barmer GEK.

Improvements in accessibility.
In particular, as far as the accessibility of the insurance is concerned, since 2007, a clear improvement can be seen. By telephone, the customer service was consistently good and there were often problems only with email inquiries, which meant that about every eighth electronic message was not answered. If there was an answer to an email, this information was also usually worse than in personal calls or phone calls.

Also in the point of medical consultation occur in the insurance sometimes considerable gaps. Thus, only the AOK Plus recorded a good grade for their advice. The worst performance in the consultation was the AOK Baden-Württemberg, which only provided sufficient services. The counseling service was tested with the help of test customers, who either contacted their cashier by phone or e-mail or had their personal advice at a branch office. For example, the test persons looked for advice on diseases such as diabetes or hypertension or asked for additional services offered such as check-ups, health courses etc ... was positively assessed by Finanztest that now every health insurance on a medical ´Hotline available to insured persons.

Extra rates and further offers at health insurance companies.
The financial test determined to catch up particularly with regard to the advice on further offers of the health insurance, here none of the insurances could have a better result than „sufficient“ achieve and some even cut „inadequate“ from. The comprehensive advice material from brochures and leaflets to the information provided on the Internet is therefore not sufficiently used.

Often no contact person at the health insurance companies.
In addition, the insured is often called a contact for any inquiries and they learn only on their own initiative, which offers useful additional services their insurance. Where the individual consultants here are sometimes significant gaps and they could not even provide the correct information on demand.

Internet offers of health insurance mostly good or very good.
A „quality“ to „very good“ Most of the funds were assessed for the information provided on the Internet. The result was here four times „very well“ are consistently achieved by AOK health insurance funds, whose internet presence, however, is very similar anyway, since in most of the websites of the various AOK insurances are based in large part on a centrally managed by the AOK Federal Association offer. With „Well“ was also the website of the Techniker health insurance, the Barmer-GEK, the DAK and the KKH alliance judged ... But here were some funds only „sufficient“ Perform services, such as the German BKK, the BKK Health, Big directly healthy and the IKK Southwest, the website is not considered in the context of the test as relevant for the care of the customer. (Fp)

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