NHIC Intends to Upgrade Services

Health insurance organization adopts five-point slogan to improve public services, sets up center for foreign clients

The National Health Insurance Corp. (NHIC) headed by President Chung Hyung-gun announced on Nov. 3 that it added No. 7 (1577-1000) to the phone lines for the exclusive use by foreign residents effective from November.
The NHIC said its exclusive call center for foreigners (02-390-2000), manned by women interpreters, received increased calls this year so far numbering 7,000 cases as of Oct. 31, showing the number is far ahead of last year with calls totaling 4,400.
Most of the calls were concerned with the qualification for health insurance coverage, the payment of insurance premiums and the use of medical clinics, among others. The call center for foreigners has been in service since 2006, which had 580 cases of calls that year, and call numbers have been rising every year since then to 4,400 calls in 2008.
The health insurance corp. has also been operating the phone consultation service for immigrants in Korea in 15 mother tongues including Russian, Vietnamese and Chinese, among others, which has been very popular among multi-cultural families.
Out of 1.15 million foreign residents in Korea, about 360,000 hold health insurance. Any foreign resident in the country can join the national health insurance scheme upon registration of their residence and obtaining their permit to live in Korea, entitling them to medical checkups and treatments just like any Korean citizen, the health insurance corp. said.
The NHIC will enlist more interpreters to expand the number of foreign language consultations to ensure that foreign residents can get better medical services and that the Korean health insurance system is one of the best in the world.
In the meantime, the NHIC declared a five-point slogan to provide upgraded services to customers on No. 9. Its “Moments of Truth” slogan includes appreciation of meeting customers; sharing the same feelings for inconveniences with customers; nurturing the sentiments to trust and respect customers; nurturing sentiments to cope with changes in customers and taking care of the problems of customers well enough to move both customers and fellow employees.
The NHIC collected ideas for the slogan through public notice from Aug. 28 to Sept. 10, receiving 704 recommendations for its slogan calling for improved public service by the NHIC.
The five-point slogan was finalized after screening and voting by the staff, along with a map of the world to show that the NHIC is pushing for globalization of its services.
The selected slogan will be posted on the homepage of the corp. and on all the memos. The NHIC will not stop here, but will also work to find the hidden rights of its customers through high level service, terming it a “blue ocean” project as part of the NHIC’s impending takeover of the collection rights of the four largest social insurance premiums.
President Chung swore that the NHIC will be a top health guarantee organization with the launch of the slogan.
Even before the selection of the slogan, the NHIC decided to make its service fun and warm, based on President Chung’s management philosophy that top-quality service begins when all the staff take pride in the organization they work for and exemplary staff are given citations for their meritorious roles and make them public as masters of service.
Under this as a base, the organization applied the ‘broken window rule’ to its public service and discovered and improved 520 cases of tasks in the areas of its policies and practices, such as an office environment that might inconvenience the customers, just prior to the selection of the five-point slogan.
In the meantime, NHIC said the medical expenses paid out of the health insurance in the 3rd quarter amounted to 9.820 trillion won, up 10.7 percent YoY or 945.7 billion won more than the amount recorded in the second quarter.
Third quarter medical expenses brought the total for the first nine months of the year to 28.861 trillion won.
The medical expenses for senior citizens over 65 years of age came to 3.142 trillion won in Q3, up 13.5 percent YoY, or 374.1 billion won more than those in Q2. nw

President Chung Hyung-gun presides at a recent meeting at the NHIC head office. NHIC adopted recently a five-point slogan to improve its public service.