SZV Director Glen Carty.
PHILIPSBURG--Social and Health Insurances SZV says its goal when re-opened is to have customers visit the office only when really necessary to ensure the safety of customers and staff.
SZV Director Glen A. Carty said in a press release on Tuesday that the re-opening of the SZV offices for appointments will take place when given clearance by the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) chairperson, Prime Minister Silveria Jacobs, and with implementation of the proper hygiene and social-distancing protocols at SZV.
“We are preparing to re-open our doors and offer customers a new experience with the focus on assisting them to transition with us to our online services,” Carty said. “We have no exact date when we will re-open our doors. The goal of SZV, is to re-open and have customers visit only if ‘absolutely’ necessary. Our priority is to ensure the safety of customers and staff.”
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, SZV closed its doors for customers and visitors from March 17, maintaining 24/7 online access and phone operations during regular opening hours. The ongoing automation of SZV made it possible for SZV employees to work from home and enable flex-operations, to ensure limited disruption of services to customers and stakeholders.
SZV said that in the continued interest of public health and safety, the re-opening of SZV offices will mean that not all services will require customers to visit the office to get assistance, and not all SZV staff will be stationed to work from the office.
“We never closed or stopped working, and once we re-open our doors, we will not go back to the old way of service at SZV,” said Carty. “The COVID-19 pandemic is creating a new reality in how we provide public services.”
He said SZV has actually improved its access during this pandemic and would like for customers to continue to be able to benefit from its social and health insurances without going back and forth to the different offices.
“Now more than ever, we need to be able to sync data to allow us to do our work in a faster and safer way. We look forward to having more entities on board with us, syncing data and access to service, such as government services, Tax Administration, Chamber of Commerce, Labour Office, Census Office, etc. This way forming an E-Government,” he added.
The re-opening of SZV will come paired with a faster transition to E-health services, online self-service and extended customer (technical) support services. The automation of SZV services is part of the SZV 3.0. strategic plan, the full implementation of which has been delayed several times due to Hurricanes Irma and Maria, and now again with COVID-19.
Over the years, SZV has been able to do phased launches of digital portals between SZV, health care service providers and employers, syncing data to improve service, accuracy, and most of all reduce paperwork and visits to the SZV office.
As a result of these automation improvements, now in the midst of COVID-19, the majority of SZV customers have maintained consistent access to their benefits, including those with expired medical insurance cards.
Carty admitted that the “instant” transition of SZV to online and phone services only did not come without the necessary learning curves. Over the past weeks, SZV’s team has been able to adapt current procedures to make it possible for customers to get service without visiting the SZV office. The adjusted procedures are available on the COVID-19 page on
www.szv.sx.
“No one can say they were fully prepared for the COVID-19 pandemic. With our experience so far, we can prepare for the changes ahead and adjust our public health and safety protocols for what may be the new normal. At SZV, we are looking at a future with, possibly, no more ‘cards’. We’ve already stopped the use of paper mutation forms for employers. All of this means less reasons to visit SZV,” said Carty.
He elaborated further by saying, “We need to be flexible, but secure in our work. We are going digital, but this will not take away from our direct communication with our customers. Going digital will make it even easier for us all. If you cannot e-mail us a scan copy, send us a clear picture from your mobile phone instead.
“In our plans, we include extended customer technical support, where we can better guide our customers in using our digital services. With public health and safety considered in all our decision-making, our appointments will be for those who ‘absolutely’ need to visit us and those that require additional assistance or have no online access at all.”
