JourneyOfRabia

Thanks for the detailed reply. This really helps.

I was in Pakistan visiting and met this dietitian. It was cheap so I wasn’t bothered by the charges and at that time I wasn’t even looking into surgery.

im not concerned with insurance covering the cost. My concern is how to meet the 6 months requirement of diet with a dietitian/ nutritionist. Like if anyone had experience with submitting that to the insurance

I had a very long timeline. LOL.
I started orientation in January 2020, started a 10 week class March 2020 (which got cancelled)
Classes resumed July 2020 (online).
Finished my classes in August 2020 but had to wait because my A1C levels were still too high with a retest in January 2021.
Again levels too high, August 2021 my levels were good so I was referred to the surgeon. Had orientation with the Bariatric clinic in October 2021 and met with surgeon November 2021. Appointment with Internal medicine was December 2021 and meeting with Psychologist January 2022. It took a couple of weeks for them to schedule me due to having to take care of patients who got their surgery cancelled and needed rescheduled. I got my surgery date late February 2022 for surgery April 2022.

My process took almost exactly 6 months from my initial consult until my surgery date.

I managed mine in just over 3 months.
My insurance demanded a 6 months medically supervised diet, but I had that proven via two different paths of two different programs in the previous 12 months, so they had no gripe there. They also wanted 5 years of proven morbid obesity and and I had that proven medically and with pictures so again, they were beaten. All that remained were all the tests proving I could live through the procedure, which I managed quicker than usual, since I made frequent calls pestering for any appointment cancellations.
When the doc's office submitted for approval Friday afternoon, I was surprised to learn I was already approved Monday morning. My surgery, originally scheduled for 4 weeks later was 2 weeks later.
I suspect a lot has changed in the subsequent years.
Good Luck,
Tek

So this question really depends if you have insurance. Typically with insurance most have to do like 6 months of supervised weight loss attempts and such.
I had no insurance.. So i saw my surgeon for the first time on December 14th. This is where he ordered all the testing like EKG, Chest Xray, Bloodwork, psychological exam. I did the testing pretty quickly. The psychological exam took 2-3 months to book. There were no openings before that so that was on March 1st. One of my test came back abnormal which was the EKG. So i had to visit my cardiologist to get clearance for surgery. This is when they ordered a nuclear stress test. after that i was cleared for surgery. Once everything came back normal my surgery was scheduled for 3 weeks later. So if it wasnt for that stupid psyc exam i could have had the surgery months ago.

My insurance (Highmark Blue-shield, I am in Pennsylvania) has no program specific requirements for education/classes or pre-op weight-loss requirement.

My program put me on a 3 month schedule - the shortest duration they offer… because of getting pre-op clearances.

I had the intro meeting plus three classes where we went over their program material & requirements. My first intro class was May 16th. Classes were spaced about every two weeks. I had two in June and a final appointment and weigh in on July 7th (my program required I not gain weight after my initial weigh-in).

I managed to get all my pre-op testing in fairly quickly, but it was not all reviewed and signed off on by the July 7th class, so I had to wait a few more days to schedule to meet the surgeon.

First available appointment to meet the surgeon was July 21st. She scheduled me for her first available surgery for August 16th, 2022.

So my whole program from first appointment to surgery will be exactly 3 months … that is not typical from what I understand.

Most of the people in my intro class were on 6 month schedules or longer, which was dictated by their insurance.

Welcome!

Hello and welcome to the bariatric life. I'm Kim, 38 no kids. From MD.
You will find lots of helpful stuff on here and maybe some not so helpful stuff. (haha) Overall, I had a lot of questions answers just by reading everything when I first started the WLS process.