Health insurance complaints soar to all-time record high

Health insurance complaints have soared to an all-time record high, with Medibank counting for the bulk.

Medibank accounted for 60.7 per cent of all health insurer complaints received. Picture: AAP.

A huge jump in complaints about Medibank has fuelled a record number of submissions to the private health insurance ombudsman, with customers fed up with service delays.

The Private Health Insurance Ombudsman, releasing the statistics for the July to September quarter, revealed there were 1683 complaints received during the quarter -- the largest number of complaints received in a single quarter in the ombudsman’s history. The number was a 60 per cent jump on the same period last year.

Medibank accounted for 60.7 per cent of all health insurer complaints and 42.9 per cent of all disputes received, which was above the insurer’s average number of complaints and its market share of 28.6 per cent.

“A new issue for Medibank in this quarter was a large increase in the number of service and administration complaints related to the insurer’s computer systems, and difficulties in responding to policy holders and complainants in an acceptable period of time,” the PHIO said.

“PHIO has had discussions with Medibank on the steps it is taking to address concerns about its recent computer and service delay problems, and have been advised that the insurer has been in the process of transferring customer records from the insurer’s 40-year-old mainframe system to a new system since early 2016.

“PHIO’s senior staff will continue regularly addressing complainant concerns with Medibank until its IT and service issues are resolved and the incidence of complaints have returned to a normal level.”

David Koczkar, Medibank’s group executive chief customer officer, said the company was “well aware” of the cause of the complaints, which he said was the switch to the new technology system.

“That migration (to the new IT system) is now complete but that clearly impacted the way we serve our customers,” he said.

“The largest cause of the increase was the delay in delivering annual tax statements to some customers. That was a one-off issue related to data migration.

“We recognise that is frustrating for customers who experienced that and it is not the experience we want for our customers and it is not acceptable.”

Mr Koczkar said the company was investing to improve customer service.