Playbook, healthtech app
A refund request about care is not a refund request
Most refund messages here are about a consultation. Some are straightforward: it did not happen, the connection failed, the time ran out before anything was covered. One is not. Somebody paid, was seen, and did not get the answer they wanted. The first kind is a billing decision. The second is about care, and it belongs somewhere else entirely.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for refund requests holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- What was bought was time with a clinician rather than an outcome, so a consultation that ran properly and produced an unwelcome answer is not a defective purchase, however the message is worded.
- A refund request that criticises what a clinician said has become a complaint about care, and handling it as a billing query is how a serious message ends up sitting in a payments queue.
- A late cancellation or a missed consultation holds a slot in a clinician's rota that could not be reused, which is the reason a charge exists, and stating that reason defuses most of the argument about it.
- Nothing here can see whether a consultation happened or how long it lasted, and it also must not ask what the consultation was about in order to sort the request.
How it arrives
- the video call dropped and i never spoke to anyone
- the doctor was late and we ran out of time
- i want my money back the consultation was useless
- i cancelled an hour before do i still get charged
- can i have a refund if the prescription was not what i needed
- who decides whether i get a refund
What has to be indexed for this to work
| The consultation refund position, written situation by situation | A call that failed, a clinician who did not join, a consultation cut short, and one that ran as intended. Each gets a different answer, and a single refund paragraph forces all four into the wrong shape. |
|---|---|
| The late change and missed consultation terms, with the reason attached | The notice period, the charge, and one line explaining that the slot was held in a rota. The explanation is what ends the argument, and almost nobody publishes it next to the figure. |
| The clinical review route, kept separate from billing | Where a message about the care itself goes, who looks at it and how quickly. It has to be a different destination, because these arrive worded as money and are not about money. |
| Who decides a refund, and how long it takes | The role and the response period. Naming them turns a handover into an escalation, which is the difference between somebody waiting and somebody writing again angrier. |
The reply
Where a consultation did not go ahead, or the connection failed, our published position sets out what happens in each of those situations [1]. Where one was cancelled late or missed, the terms explain the charge and why the slot could not be reused [2]. If what you want to raise is about the care itself rather than the payment, that goes to the clinical review route on the same page instead of to billing, and it is taken seriously there. I cannot see a consultation, a charge or a refund, and nobody here decides one. Leave your name, an email and the date, and the team will pick it up.
It handles the situations separately, because the honest answer differs and one policy sentence would be wrong for most of them. Naming the clinical route inside a billing answer is deliberate, since that is the message which must not be filed as a payment query. And it refuses without hinting at an outcome, which is the sentence that gets quoted back.
Where it stops
The trigger. Any request for money back, any message describing what a clinician said or did, and any dispute about a late change charge.
A refund is decided by the team once somebody has looked at what happened, not here. Leave your name, an email and the date of the consultation. If any part of this is about the care you received rather than the charge, say so and it goes to the clinical review route instead, which is the right place for it.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- Never say a refund will be given, is likely, or that requests like this are usually agreed.
- Never comment on whether a consultation was adequate, whether a clinician was right, or whether an outcome was reasonable.
- Never ask what a consultation was about in order to categorise a refund request.
- Never waive, reduce or hold a late change charge, since that is a decision for a person.
Questions
- How does it tell a billing refund from a complaint about care?
- By what the message says rather than by what it asks for. Anything describing what a clinician said, did or missed is about care whatever the final sentence requests, and it should be routed that way and told that it has been.
- Should the missed consultation charge be published with a reason?
- Yes. A figure on its own reads as a penalty and gets argued with. The same figure with one line saying the slot was held in a rota and could not be given to anybody else is argued with far less often.
- Can it tell somebody whether the call failed on our side?
- No. It has no view of any consultation, any connection, or any record that one took place. It can quote what happens in each situation and take the date, so that somebody who can look is looking at the right one.
Keep reading
- Everything for a healthtech appHealth data is a special category and clinical claims carry device rules. What a healthtech assistant answers for patients, and for buyers.
- Handling refund requests in generalA refund question is really about eligibility and timing. What to index, what the reply may promise, and where it has to reach a person.
- The card failed, and something behind it has a date on itA declined card on a health service is a continuity problem. The retry dates, what stops working on each of them, and the part that cannot wait.
- The one question where a fluent answer is the wrong oneAn outage with a booked slot behind it. Why the assistant cannot see the service, and the route that must never run through the thing that broke.
- It is a support question until somebody describes how they feelTwo ordinary faults on a health product, and the line where a message stops being technical the moment a symptom turns up in it.
Try it on your own material
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