Fidelis Care – New York City Regional Office

Update as of May 2016:
Oh, this is a hoot. Fidelis once again is changing premium rates, if anyone else hadn’t gotten a letter in the mail stating as such. Their previous increase, for me, amounted to only about an additional ten dollars per month. This new increase will be an additional THIRTY-​THREE dollars a month! Unreal. By the way, I have not made a SINGLE claim on this insurance. No prescription meds, no specialists, NOTHING. I am a relatively healthy male in his mid 30s and mainly have the insurance to avoid penalty and in case of emergency room visitation.
I can only say that if you are in the market for health insurance, don’t even go anywhere near these crooks. Take it from me. I still haven’t gotten around to canceling them and going with another provider who’s worth the money, but now that I’ve gotten this notice that will certainly speed me up.
Once again, if you’re going to pay money for health insurance, avoid the headache and go with an operation that isn’t held together with plastic staples. Crooks!

no need to explain anyone who has been in contact with customer service. fidelis care stinks from the top to bottom terrible, just absolutely terrible customer service. …

So I have had Fidelis Child Health Plus for several years for my son. He was disenrolled in March with no explanation. We resolve the issue so I thought and I was told his enrollment will start up again April 1^st. We get a confirmation number and his new ID card arrives. I login to our account and see he is still inactive so I call. I am told that his enrollment wasn’t complete and assured it would be in 5 business days. Over the next few weeks I hear the same story from 3 other reps. I am assured this will be taken care of. Perplexed at this point I seek a manager. Athena Perez at 718−896−6500 ext 11 182 tells me she would get on it and call me Monday (It was Friday). Monday I receive a voicemail saying «something» was emailed to another department and that she will update me. Over the course of 2 days I called her direct extension 9 times to get a voicemail every single time. Today I decide to track down her manager as now it has been 2 weeks since I spoke with Ms Perez and never got any update. I am told that her manager is Antonio Arias. I ask for his number and I am told they can not give that out so I ask how am I to contact him. Guess what??? He is not available but I can leave him a voicemail. To allow a child to go without insurance for 7 weeks with no real explanation is outrageous. It’s one thing for the reps to give you the run around but management? I left Mr. Arias a detailed voicemail but assured him I do not expect a call back. I called the marketplace and they have no idea what is going on with Fidelis. They assisted me in getting MVP and will be contacting Fidelis directly. 7 weeks of lies. Thank god my son did not need medical assistance. Thank you to the management team at Fidelis for completely ignoring your customers needs. To anyone reading this go elsewhere if you are looking for customer service. These people are useless.

I applied to work for Fidelis Care in the spring of 2007 they never called me back. I actually applied for their insurance when I got accepted for their insurance in December 2014 through the NY State of Health website everything was fine with my Diabetes care and doctors visits when I was interested in changing my primary care provider few doctors in their directory supposedly did not accept that insurance. When I call Fidelis care their customer service representatives are lost they give you the run around they are lacking knowledge of information of what the insurance offers and deadline timetables.

I had this insurance for my family for a year. I was paying $ 1,500+/mo for it and yet it was a total nightmare. Tons of problems with coverage and every time I called, EVERY TIME, it was at least 20 minutes and sometimes an hour, before I could talk to a representative. Lots of phone tree nonsense. The people that work the phones for them are all super nice and try to be helpful, but the company has such terrible policies that they really can’t help you. You are just screwed if you have this insurance. Give up hope and get rid of it as soon as you can.

So my nightmare with these health insurance missionaries didn’t end with my previous post. Yesterday I received a call from someone named Peter who was very hostile and mansplained to me that I could access family planning services with my Medicaid card (I already knew that from the letter I received from the NY Department of Health)… Problem is, I don’t have a Medicaid card, never had one, and even if I wanted one I wouldn’t qualify for it! I told him I would be switching insurances and to never contact me again.
Fast forward to this morning at 9am, I got a call from Elena or something similar from Fidelis Care asking me to verify my address. Why would you want to verify my address when I very clearly told them yesterday that I want nothing to do with them? To put me on a blacklist? I don’t even know how it’s legal for them to deny people from accessing family planning (but they cover STD care… makes total sense!). Roe v. Wade was approved before I was born but this insurer still denies all kinds of birth control (including condoms!) and abortions, while getting reimbursed with taxpayer money. I told this lady I wasn’t going to «verify» my address (that they already have), to never bother me again and to delete my name from their system, but guess what? Apparently I am still their client despite already having enrolled in a different healthcare plan that probably also sucks but at least doesn’t seem to hate women as much as Fidelis Care does. By the end of the call Elena was speechless and probably questioning her sanctimonious beliefs.

I’ve been transferred 4 times already. Nobody knows anything about my consumer. I don’t understand why all of her info isn’t available to everyone. What a waste of an hour if the system was made better. I’m still on hold. Hire more people.

Get yourself any other insurance but this one. Just horrible customer service. I signed up for 2016, received activation notice and card in the mail, however as I try go to the doctor, Im told my insurance was never activated. It’s now March 3, I’ve been on the phone with Fidelis almost every day for 2 months and have been told numerous times by various supervisors (Christen x12415 is the worst) that NOW my insurance is indeed active, however, when I got to the doctor it’s not. They sent me multiple insurance cards and every time I call Fidelis it’s a new person I’m talking to. Meanwhile they’re cashing my monthly checks and telling me that if I request a refund for the months I’ve been unable to use the insurance, it will be completely cancelled.

Second year of having this cheap but horrible health insurance. This will be the last few months that I have this horrible insurance. Im switching as soon as I can. I have been paying, never missed a payment and received a letter that my insurance has been canceled??? They did this before once, and after a lot of wasted time with them on the phone, they apologized for the mistake and thats it. A year later similar problem, I have removed my husband from the insurance because they suck and he got much better insurance thru employer and again my insurance has been canceled. This insurance is a huge nightmare. I dont recommend getting this insurance if you want to keep losing it.

My wife has been denied her medicine 3 times now. Does Fidelis care I don’t think so. They won’t approve my physical therapy. I have had to pay $ 345 out of pocket because they won’t cover it. Had a major back surgery. Do I think they care absolutely not. But I continue to pay my insurance bill they send me every month.
They keep telling us to talk to someone else at Fidelis. Does anyone at Fidelis know anything else but denying someone their proper coverage or they only care about their TV commercials? Someone needs to start to care about the patient and not the money. If anyone from Fidelis reads this

Horrible «customer service». They are really hostile to customers. .I switched to Fidelis Bronze from a much better insurance company that I could no longer afford. NY State messed up my coverage, but the Fidelis customer service people have been hostile to put it kindly. Fidelis claims I owe them money which I don’t owe them. NY State, to their credit, is at least trying to straighten this out, although by the time they do it Fidelis may terminate my insurance. NY State tells me to call Fidelis and Fidelis tells me to call the state. At least some of the people from NY State admitted it was their error. I never got anything from the Fidelis people except the brush off, and not a very nice brush off. I can understand the Fidelis people’s frustration with the state’s screw up, but do you have to take it out on me?
My best advice is to avoid this company at all costs.

Whatever the Catholic Church does not approve of, Fidelis Care will not cover. They didn’t make that apparent when they offered insurance through the ACA. They are mandated by NYS law to provide coverage for stuff the Catholic Church doesn’t approve of, but they actually just deny coverage. They have no idea who accepts their insurance and so cannot tell you when you call. They say they offer member services 8am — 8pm on Sat and Sunday, but in fact it’s just on hold until you get an answering service who says they will take a message and have someone call you back next week. This is the lamest, most incompetent insurance company I have ever dealt with. Although I met the deductible, they did not pay one single cent in coverage for 2015. Not one cent.

This insurance company doesn’t cover many prescriptions
So if your looking for a company that covers many
scripts don’t use this company as they are the worst !

If you file a complaint regarding FidelisCare do it through the State of NY Medicaid office. They are managed by the State so any complaints sent directly to Fidelis are white washed or not processed at all. They are the worse insurance company ever. I could understand it if I had Medicaid but this plan is not. I pay through the roof for myself and my family yet their service is lackadaisical. The priest makes over one million dollars a year and that certainly is not going to the Lord. I hate this insurance company.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again absolute worst health insurance … I pay $ 450 a month and it covers nothing it’s a sad joke!!! When doctors offices find out which provider I’m with they immediately deny me! Fidelis you have made my life nothing but hell

The worst insurance I’ve had, and it’s expensive too. I looked in their provider database for a doctor that took my insurance. 250 were listed. Of that 250, only 97 were actually licensed to practice medicine – the others did not have medical degrees. Then the 97 turned out to actually be twelve doctors, each with 5 — 8 duplicate entries. And finally, of those twelve doctors, four were not taking new patients, and the other 8 were pill mills.
Be warned that the NYSHE is irreparably broken, and only a major overhaul will fix it. I’ve spoken to numerous healthcare providers; all agree that Exchange insurance is (barely) beefed-​up Medicaid.
On top of that, I pay for Bronze but my coverage level is comparable to catastrophic.
Also! My insurance card doesn’t have my group number on it. Totally useless and unprofessional.

Horrible misinformation. Lack of cooperation. People in customer service absolutely can’t understand why you can’t just spend several hours a day on the phone.
They never update their systems. Their website is a mess.

Originally gave them one star as customer service kept agreeing to send me a few documents, but then never did so and never followed up. Eventually, a real person was assigned to handle my request. She called be everyday at 4:00 to provide me with an update. matter resolved in 1 week.

I have no idea how this is actually a «legitimate» company. They are selling something that they don’t actually have. Good luck finding a doctor that takes this insurance. They will direct you to the database on their website — which lists hundreds of doctors and you’ll spend days calling those listed and hearing that either they don’t take the insurance, or that they told Fidelis that they were no longer taking it and have been asking to be removed from the database.
This is what I’ve been going through for 3 days. I called to file a complaint and I was transferred to a special customer service line who then proceeded to look-​up more doctors who supposedly took coverage and was told to call them. FINALLY Beth Israel told me that they take the insurance. They squeezed me in with one of the «covered» providers today. The wonderful doctor bent over backwards to get me in for pre-​surgery testing tomorrow and actual surgery on Monday.
Later this afternoon the doctor’s office called me back to tell me that when they called to pre-​certify the surgery Fidelis notified them that they are not a registered provider for Fidelis. Now here’s the how the «how in the hell» part — the doctor is listed in their database, the doctor’s office was under the impression that they take the insurance, Fidelis told all of the doctors who take their existing Medicaid/​Medicare insurance that they were going to automatically be added for the exchange policies, yet somehow according to Fidelis this provider is not a Fidelis provider?
So as of right now — everything is on hold and I am in absolute pain in the meantime. Thank goodness it doesn’t seem to be life-​threatening, I don’t know what anyone would do if they were in a life or death situation and had Fidelis insurance.
When I called Fidelis before finding Beth Israel, who is now going to try and solve this problem because they are kind and compassionate and actually care about the patient, Fidelis told me that they know their database is totally out of date. And their response was that despite that, I was going to have to keep going through the database to find a doctor that DOES take their insurance, to which I told them — not my job, that’s yours.
So FYI — if you have Fidelis and have been having these kinds of problems too, I spoke to NYC Health Exchange and there is supposedly a clause that will let you out of the insurance if your issue meets certain terms, and you can then choose another provider since it is not currently open enrollment.
This company is a total fraud and it’s absolutely insane that they are allowed to operate. They’re making it impossible for anyone to trust a less-​known insurance brand — I’m going back to Blue Cross. Call the state Attorney General’s office while you’re at it. It’s the only way this will get fixed.

I am a physician and tried to call in a prior authorization for a medicare patient. I was transferred from one customer representative to another at least 5 times, not to count the endless waiting while on hold, after 30 minutes I was still not able to reach a competent person that could do his job.