47 Minutes on Hold With Insurance. This Is Why We’re Building Elena.

While researching this problem, I sat on a Zoom call with someone who was trying to resolve a claim denial with Anthem. She was on hold for 47 minutes. When she finally got a human, the call lasted 8 minutes. The rep asked her to call back with a different reference number. That’s the moment I knew we were building the right thing.

I’m going to call her Priya (not her real name). She’s 29, works in marketing, and has what should be straightforward employer-sponsored insurance through Anthem. She’d had a routine blood panel at her annual checkup, the claim was denied as “not medically necessary,” and she owed $380.

Priya knew the denial was wrong. Her plan covers preventive labs at 100%. But knowing it’s wrong and getting it fixed are two completely different problems.

How long do people actually spend on healthcare phone calls?

Before I walk through what happened, here’s what the data says about hold times. This matched what I’ve heard from dozens of people I’ve spoken to:

That means for the most common healthcare phone tasks, you’re looking at 30-70 minutes of your day gone for a 35-40% chance of actually resolving the issue on the first try. Most people need 2-3 calls.

What happened when Priya called manually

I was watching her screen over Zoom, taking notes for our product development. Here’s the timeline:

1. 0:00 - Priya dials the number on the back of her insurance card
2. 0:02 - Automated menu. Press 1 for English. Press 3 for claims. Press 2 for claim status. Enter member ID.
3. 0:04 - “Your estimated wait time is... 35 to 45 minutes.” Hold music starts.
4. 0:47 - A representative answers. Priya explains the situation.
5. 0:52 - Rep says the claim was processed under the wrong billing code. The provider submitted it as diagnostic, not preventive. Priya needs to call the provider to resubmit.
6. 0:55 - Priya asks if Anthem can handle it. Rep says no, the provider has to initiate the correction.

Total time: 55 minutes. Outcome: she now needs to make a second call to the doctor’s office and ask them to resubmit with the correct code. Which means another 10-20 minutes on hold with the provider, then waiting 2-4 weeks for reprocessing.

Priya told me: “I almost just paid the $380. It’s not worth my time.” And she’s someone who knew the denial was wrong and had the knowledge to explain why. Most people would have just paid.

This is the problem we’re building Elena to solve

Priya’s situation is fixable. The claim was coded wrong — preventive lab submitted as diagnostic (a CPT modifier mismatch). Fixing it requires two phone calls: one to the provider to resubmit the claim with the correct code, one to the insurer to flag it for reprocessing. That’s it. But those two calls would cost Priya another 60-90 minutes of hold time she doesn’t have.

This is exactly what we’re building Elena to handle. The vision:

1. You tell Elena about the problem — in plain language, from your phone. “I got a $380 bill for a blood test that should be covered.”
2. Elena identifies the issue — in this case, the coding error between preventive and diagnostic billing.
3. Elena makes the calls — to the provider’s billing department and the insurance company. She sits on hold so you don’t have to.
4. You get a summary — what was said, what was resolved, what to expect next.

We’re not there yet — we’re still building. But every conversation like Priya’s tells us exactly what Elena needs to do.

Why phone calls are the real bottleneck in healthcare

The healthcare system runs on phone calls. Not apps, not portals, not email. Phone calls. Booking appointments, checking claim status, disputing bills, getting prior authorizations, asking about coverage. All of it requires calling someone, navigating a phone tree, and waiting.

The people who get the best outcomes in healthcare are the ones who make the calls. They call to negotiate bills. They call to appeal denials. They call to verify coverage before procedures. Everyone else pays more, waits longer, and gets worse results. It’s not fair, but it’s how the system works right now.

The question I kept asking while building Elena: what if everyone had someone who would make those calls for them?

What I learned talking to 30+ people about the healthcare phone system

After talking to dozens of people about their healthcare phone calls — on Reddit, through outreach, and in user interviews — some patterns became clear:

• Most people give up after one unsuccessful call. If the first call doesn’t resolve it, they pay the bill or ignore the issue.
• The biggest barrier isn’t money, it’s energy. People told me they’d rather pay an unfair bill than spend another hour on hold. The mental cost of the call exceeds the financial cost of the error.
• People who work hourly jobs can’t make these calls at all. Insurance companies are open 8-5. If you work 8-5, you’re choosing between your paycheck and your phone call.
• Knowing what to say matters almost as much as making the call. The people who got results knew to ask for specific things: “I’d like to file a formal appeal,” “Can you reprocess this under preventive care codes,” “I’m requesting an itemized bill under the No Surprises Act.”

Have you ever spent an unreasonable amount of time on hold with a healthcare company?

I collect these stories because they’re what shape the product. Every time someone tells me “I was on hold for an hour to ask a yes-or-no question,” that becomes a use case we test. If you’ve had a particularly bad experience with healthcare phone calls, I’d genuinely like to hear about it.