Sydney Health

First off, I have to remember that my anthem health insurance uses an app called Sydney. Just publish two apps, I don’t care that some other insurance provider uses the same one. This isn’t the only app to do this but it’s annoying every time conglomerates do this, the brand of your chatbot does not matter to me, my health insurance company name does. It’s a small, but meaningful add to the user’s cognitive load every time you have to interact with the app. Secondly, the “Sydney” chat is just a search box but slower and with more menu navigation. There is no excuse to ship a chat-style experience in 2025 without any actual AI functionality here. If your request doesn’t fit the rigid flows they have built, it has to be handled by a human. The chat interface adds negative value here. Beyond this, the app itself is very mediocre. It’s not completely functionally broken like some of the other apps I’ve used, but no care has been spent on the interactions or flows, just menus on menus with odd loading spinners everywhere and clicking this button inexplicably takes you to the top of the page, etc. It’s a legacy website shoved into mobile, built by a team that only focuses on functional requirements. This is par for the course in the medical space, but there are companies that do this much better, there’s no real excuse for it other than hubris and laziness. No clue how this landed a 4.8 average.

I love the idea of this app, but there are big problems. 1) if you want to chat with a doctor, you wait for hours and then if you are in the middle of something when it is your turn, you lose your opportunity. The time predictor is wildly inaccurate by hours. And because of the way it notifies you (see more about that later) you might not even get a timely chance to join the doctor in the app for the appointment. 2) the doctors depend heavily on the camera app, which is horrible. My phone has 4 cameras, but there is no way to switch to the zoom or wide angle camera and there is no way to force the flash. Even if you have somebody else to take a photo for you, and even if they have a flashlight to sub for the flash, it can still be impossible to get a photo that is meaningful to the doctor. 3) there are numerous dead end screens when there is no way to exit a screen other than by closing the app and starting over. 4) when a new message comes in from your doctor, they text your emergency contact instead of you. 5) messages are terribly delayed in the app. The doctor sends you a response, your emergency contact gets a text, and 15-30 minutes later, the message shows up in your app. 6) this means that you may spend days instead of minutes communicating with the doctor and waiting to see if they can help - the whole time, you are not feeling well and the cure could be minutes away if you could just have a few moments of prompt communication. 7) the symptom checker isn’t great. If you type something in that it doesn’t recognize, there is no way to register that symptom. You end up abandoning symptoms that the app doesn’t recognize. Some of the follow up questions have possible answers that are not listed. 8) after your visit, you are asked how it went. The doctor was okay, but the app was frustrating - but that’s also not a feedback option.

I loved the Anthem website and used it all the time for Bill Pay with my HSA account. I downloaded this app and now it has taken 3 calls to Customer Service to get this basic task done. I needed to ‘pay myself’ with my HSA to resolve a balance this week with a provider so I can have a procedure done. I went through the normal steps on Friday January 10th. I log in yesterday and it says it was denied although I had more than enough in there. I tried it again, same transaction. Got all the way to the end screen saying “submitted”. Checked back about an hour later (typically when I do this, it takes the funds out of my balance within seconds), funds were all still there. I look in pending transactions and my recent bill pay submission isn’t there. I waited and checked back today- it’s like it never happened. This app allows you to go all the way to the submit screen, submit it, tells you you’re all set, but meanwhile is doing absolutely nothing. I called customer service and they were dumbfounded, telling me “oh if it said you submitted it then you did but I don’t see it here. Can you do it on the phone with me now? It should show up in real time.” I go through all of the steps for a third time, nothing shows up. No pending transaction. I have no HSA card or time to wait for one to be sent so I may have to move my procedure because of this weird glitch where it won’t let me do a basic task.