Missing the first pitch, cause I'm stressed

I got a call from the Bariatrics coordinator this evening.  My insurance company has four demands that need to be fulfilled before they will approve my lap band.  Their requests are reasonable, but the timeing sucks and I blame the coordinator for delaying a month in getting my material to them.  They want 1) pulminary approval (try to get an appointment with a pulmonologist on short notice!!) 2) the letter from the cardiologist has to be re written. 3+4) They want blood tests for thyroid and peptic ulcer.

These are reasonable requests, but they'd be a great deal easier to fulfill four weeks ago.  I'll get on the phone as soon as the doctor's office open in the morning and then I'll head out for a blood test.

Wish me luck, I may need it.  Ok I wrote this, took a deep breath and I'm calmer, hoping I don't over eat this evening in response to this stupid stress.  No I guess I just have to decide to stay in some control.

Henry

My Insurance wanted  a pulminary approval as well. According to the coordinator at my surgeon's office, these are only good for 30 days. The good news is that I was able to do mine as a walk in patient at the hospital where my surgery was scheduled.

If you live close to your surgery hospital, you might want to check into that. If not, you may want to see if a local hospital can get you in on a walk in basis....

Good luck and hopefully this won't delay you...

Mars

Thats right Henry - deeep breath... in with the good.... out with the bad.

It'll be over before you know it. Stay on top of the b**t***s, and get them whatever they need so they CAN'T deny you!

And the game was called for rain.

Keep on them Henry.

If they did it the easy way, there would be no stress. what fun is that

Go Phillies

I actually work for a large insurance carrier and all I can say is, when working toward an approval, call your insurance and ask them about the policy and criteria for approval. Then once they go through their spiel, ask them for the website where this is posted. They have to either give it to you so you can see it (because it needs to be available to providers) or they have to fax it to you.

The reason I say this is, you can actually use this as a checklist of items. For me, I had to have a 12 month Dr supervised weight loss program showing some kind of loss with at least 4 follow up visits specific to the weight loss, a nutritional eval and a psych eval. I literally went through this as a checklist (except for the nutritional eval as I thought my Dr's visits to count, but I was wrong) then after my denial, I went and did the nut eval and was approved a week later.

So hopefully this will help the guys that are working toward approval. I know it wont help you specifically since you are at the back-end of your auth, but I thought I would throw my .02 in.

Things are more under control today.  I go for the blood test in a few minutes.  i was able to get a pulmunologist appointment for Thursday morning. The nurse in the cardiolgist office rewrote his letter.  I should be ok.  Still feeling stressed, but it seems to be coming from me more than anything else.