A new report from the Government Accountability Office calls
for more accurate responses from the 1-800-Medicare help
line, implemented in 1999 to provide information about
program eligibility, enrollment and benefits.
It said the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services
should “revise procedures so that calls are not transferred
to other contractors that are closed, assess current
scripts and pretest new and revised scripts to ensure that
they are understandable, provide more testing of [the
ability of call center reps] to accurately answer questions
and use the results to target training efforts as needed,
and monitor the accuracy rate for each frequently asked
question and use the results to modify scripts or provide
training, if necessary.”
Of the 420 calls GAO placed to the help line, 61 percent were
accurate, 29 percent were inaccurate and another 10 percent
went unanswered, according to GAO-05-130.
It said many of the inaccurate responses GAO received resulted
from the ineffective use of the answer scripts, and that “CMS
and its contractor do not routinely pretest the scripts to
ensure that they are understandable to CSRs or potential callers.”
