I go to my info session tonight, and being the meticulously need-to-be-informed-of-every-little-thing-I-can-think-of person I am, I made a list of questions to ask the doc that are left unanswered after the info session. I'm driving 3 hours to get there, so hopefully he'll take pity on me and answer my questions!

So here's my list, if you can add any others in the next couple of hours, I'd love to see them!!!

Questions for Lap-Band Info Session 8/14/07

What kind of co-morbidities do insurance companies look for?

What has your experience been with insurance denials? Do you help appeal? What do you do to help with insurance?

Do you work to find loopholes in insurance exclusions, say if the patient needs something else like gallbladder or hernia surgery?

Have you worked with Mercy Health before, and if so how did it turn out?

Are there options besides insurance and self-pay?

What qualifiers make or break your accepting a patient?

What tests and specialists do you need before hand?

What are your personal pre-op requirements?

How many lap-bands have you done?

What kinds of bands do you use?

How do you decide which kind to use?

Do you use different kinds of ports?

Does the patient have to request a smaller port?

Other than size, are there any differences in the smaller and standard ports?

How do you decide where to put the port?

What was your complication rate? Death rate? What caused them?

What complications have you personally run into in the operating room? What is your protocol for complications?

Can you fix a hiatal hernia while in there? What does that entail, and can insurance cover it?

What is average recovery time?

How long do you recommend taking off work?

What is your pre-op diet recommendation?

What is your post-op diet recommendation?

Do/can you record the procedure? (Yes, I’m a Health channel freak)

What can a patient do to minimize recovery pain and time?

How long are patients usually in the hospital post-op?

Do most patients get relief from GERD?

What are the activity limitations?

What aftercare do you provide, and what is the cost?

How long do you wait to do a fill?

Are your fills done blind or with fluoro? Is there an additional charge for fluoro?

Why do people complain of shoulder pain?

What can we do to prevent slippage?

Why does erosion occur and what can we do to prevent it?

Are there many patients who reach goal and DON’T need PS/TT’s?

What can we do to be one of them?

What is the “golfball”? How do we avoid it? How do we get rid of it?

What about PB’s and Sliming?

Do we get a card saying what kind of band we have? What’s on it?

What affect does drinking while eating have?

Straws to drink – yes or no?

My PCP recommends 4 months supervised dieting before trying to get an approved consultation with you. What do you recommend I do in the mean time?

Wish me luck, I'm jazzed to go to the info session, plus my mom and boyfriend are going with me!!! :girl_hug:

Every single one of those topics were covered in my seminar. Other than the insurance questions because they work with so many companies they couldnt answer about individual companies other than BCBS of NC. (BCBS of NC does not require a prior approval) Good luck getting things answered

Yay! :girl_hug: Thank you! I figured most of them would be answered, but then I'll write the answers beside them and ask anything that's left. It's good to know they're so informative, I went to one on GBP a few years ago and they didn't cover the lapband at all, but I've been told this will.

Plus, I wonder if I was the only one incredibly let down by the info packet straight from LapBand's maker... y'know, the one you call the 800 # for? It was lame!

Those are all really good questions! I had three pages of questions to ask as well, but most of mine were answered in the seminar as well.

What is PS/TT btw, when you said:

"Are there many patients who reach goal and DON’T need PS/TT’s?"

Thanks in advance, and goodluck with everything!

They were not able to answer any insurance questions at my seminar because of coarse that is not the area that the surgeon deals much with. Other than that, great questions! Good luck.

Those are all really good questions! I had three pages of questions to ask as well, but most of mine were answered in the seminar as well.

What is PS/TT btw, when you said:

"Are there many patients who reach goal and DON’T need PS/TT’s?"

Thanks in advance, and goodluck with everything!

Nevermind, i just figured it out (plastic surgery/tummy tuck)

Well, due to my car breaking down and a bad storm I got there about halfway into it (3 hour drive). The surgeon was on-call and got called out not too terribly long after we got there. There were no patients, which was something I was really hoping for, and the lady that took over the seminar seemed in a huge hurry to GTF out of there. I managed to stay behind and was the last out the door, talking to some of the other people there for the seminar.

One lady has the same insurance as me, so she gave me a heads up on them. I know there's an exclusion, but she said they'll fight but allow it if it's life threatening. The way she SAID it though upset me. As if she had contempt for me because I was smaller than her. She was seriously bitchy about it, and kinda looked at me like I look at skinny people... woah... I've never been looked at like that by someone bigger than me! I'm used to it from people smaller than me, but this threw me for a loop!

I'm kind of in limbo right now because my employer is shopping around for different insurance! Now that I've started to look into this and started my 6-month diet, things are going to change! EEK!