Complaint Review: Tela USA - Tela India

Buyer Beware:

This company is the most unethical of any that I have seen. They grossly overstate their capabilities and other than having a semi-decent facility, they are pretty much a sweatshop. If it were not for an unaware company (Adaptis) that they have a joint venture with they would never have been able to get into the health insurance industry.

Adaptis gave them a project, and it took them 6 months to figure out the Trizetto Vertexing system. This is mainly because Sr. Management is very incompetent, and they hire individuals who can barely speak or write english. The vertexing system by trizetto is a claims data entry system that is practically OCR, and still the employees at Tela had a difficult time figuring out the system because they barely spoke or wrote english.

The CEO of the company is a gentleman who is completely unattached to the day to day operations. He is completely involved in marketing, and he would like to keep the client as far away from the operations as possible. The general manager operations in India is a gentleman is overly incompetent. He understands the process, but he has no idead about delivery. He is only still involved with the company because of relationship that he shares with the brother of the owner of the company. The brother of the CEO also works on the operations from the US and India, but again he is very incompetent and only has a senior position because his brother owns the company.

Previously he ran a software company that went bust, and his only concern is making sure he makes it to the gym, and that he has a payment for his Mercedes every month. He is the typical Indian rich kid, and he has no idea about business much less operations.

From a marketing perspective they grossly overstate their capabilites. Let me detail:

1. Educated Employees (This is key) They grossly overplay the Indians are highly educated bit. Their employees if they do have an education are educated at state run schools (which do not teach english) rather than central govt. schools. These employees are the cheapest and that is why Tela hires them. These employees can barely converse in English much less understand complex ideas as COB, EOB, PT etc. in an American context.

2. Quality Standards: In marketing they will completely overcommit to standards that they can achieve. 98-99 Quality. At best they would give you 90% on data entry, and 80% on adjudication. Probably worse. ISO-9001, I know that they might claim that they are ISO certified, but in India anyone can be ISO certified, as there thousands of companies that will certify you if you pay enough money. Check the credentials of the company and you will find that it is an inexpensive company, that is looking out for some business. They will say anything for a few $. 6 Sigma: They will keep telling you that they work under 6 Sigma standards, and they may even have 1-2 employees that have attended a 2 day class on Six Sigma. But they are not practicing it. Their motto is why should we assist the client in improving their processes, it might jeopardize the business that we are getting from them.

3. HealthCare Focused: This their primary market strategy. They will tell you that they only focus on the US Health Insurance industry, and therefore they are superior to all else. They will even let you speak to Sr. Management of Adaptis to confirm this. From a Senior level they do have the knowledge and expertise. But they do not use any of the Adaptis Sr. Management team to plan or train for other projects. They use the incompetent management that they have in India. At the end of the day it comes down to the employees that are working the claims, and because they are so concerned with cutting costs, they do not hire employees that are qualified to do the work.

I would really warn anyone against doing business with this company. If you are looking to save money and improve quality with outsourcing then this is not the company to partner with, there are plenty of other companies that can get the job done.

Please let your colleagues know about this compay as well.

bj
Belton, Missouri
U.S.A.