Do I have to go through the entire process again??? X-Posted

Last summer I was going to have the gastric bypass done. I went through all of the testing, got approved, and got my date. 2 weeks before the surgery I had a meeting with the surgeon who suggested that we wait on the surgery because I had told the psychiatrist that I suspected that I was bipolar but was not in therapy. I have since found out that I had PTSD and that I am not bipolar. So, since it has been almost a year since that meeting, and the fact that I want the sleeve instead of RNY, will I need to go through the entire process again? Or should I be able to just have another psych eval and resubmit and have the surgery? I plan on calling the surgeon's office tomorrow to ask them but didn't know if anyone would have any kind of experience in this situation. TIA!

More than likely you will need approval from your insurance again because usually one needs to have the procedure done with in a certain time frame. And you now would prefer the sleeve so there will be a different approval for that. Look at your approval letter it might give you a clue for how long you were approved for.. As far as the testing I would be 99.9% certain that the surgeon is going to want you to go to the psychiatrist for another evaluation or s/he might just accept a letter regarding the diagnosis. The medical testing will need to be redone because our bodies are constantly changing.

Calling the surgeon's office is a great place to start and I would also contact your insurance company to make sure that your policy still covers WLS and the sleeve.

It will depend on your insurance company and your surgeon.  Some things need to be done within a certain amount of time before surgery.  For instance, if they did pre op blood work last summer, well, they will need to do that again because the results could be very different a whole year later.  Likely the approval from the insurance company was only good for a certain number of days, so your surgeon will probably have to submit things to insurance again.  However,  if it was approved before, it should be approved again, unless something has changed like you lost a lot of weight over the past year (which I'm guessing is not the case).