Tricare Prime - Insurance Question

 I attended the orientation at the end of January, had my initial consultation mid February, then my surgery on March 2, 2011.  My surgeon actually scheduled my surgery date, I did all my tests, THEN they submitted to Tricare for surgery for approval.  What Tricare wants is very black and white---so it's pretty easy to tell if you meet their criteria.   Good luck!!

For me, I had to attend orientation.  The class was full.  They told us anywhere from 4-6months after orientation.  I think it depends on the number of surgeons there are, the number of potential patients, which surgery.  I attended orientation in Oct and had surgery in April.  There were many players in my process, nutrition, surgeon, psych, surgeon (decision appt.) pre-op appt.  I think it depends if you are doing this at a military facility as well.  Sometimes civilians get things done quicker.....Hurry up and wait...Military motto:)

 Thank you so much for all the info!!  So helpful!!  We have Tricare Prime South.......live in the Tampa Bay Area.  My husand is retired Airforce........he has been a civilian for about 10 yrs. now.  I am so excited to go the orientation meetng in a couple of weeks!!  -Holly

Do you know what surgeon you're going to be using?  I so highly recommend Dr. Jawad.  He and his team are awesome!! 

I hope is was helpful!  Sometimes getting all of my thought process down when typing can be spuratic!    I hope things work out for you...Please be patient with the process.  It may be quicker in your area.  Best of luck and keep me/us updated with your process! 

My orientation was Jan 19 and surgery was Mar 14.  I had to do lab work, upper gi, psyc eval, chest x-ray, ekg, ab ultrasound and a pulmonary function test.  Then wait for all those results and if they were good, I had to do a sleep study test, which took the longest because they wanted to do a bunch more blood work and pulmonary tests because I've had bilateral pulmonary embolism.  Then after all that was done, they submitted it to insurance and it was approved in less than 24 hours, then it was 10 days until surgery from approval date.  My doc also requires you to attend 3 support group meetings and have someone within their practice that's had WLS to be your 'angel', a person you can go to with any questions/concerns and all that.

Took me 5 months,  but I had a few extra things we wanted to check out before going under the knife. I could have got it all done in 3months but took me 5.

It took 2 months from the initial consult to surgery date.