Hey All! I wanna know how long it took all of you to get your surgeries.

I'm talking like FIRST doctors appointment to OPERATING ROOM.

Also, what insurance do you guys have?

Edited January 16, 20197 yr by WeGettingThere

This is more dependent upon your insurance carrier, not state.

May appointment with surgeon, December surgery.

OHHH. Thank you Kim.

It was about ten months for me, as my insurance required me to go through four months of sessions with a dietitian. There was also a lot of testing and education programs I had to go through. Good luck!

Wow, 10 months. Im getting nervous lol

From consult to surgery, it took just under 7 months. My employer has a custom plan through BCBS. The amount of time is mainly determined by if your insurance or surgeon has a required supervised diet program. That should give you an idea of about how long it will take you.

I started the process in December 2016 and had surgery October 2018. I work for the state of West Virginia and our insurance required a 12 month medically supervised diet and 10% of your original weight lost. Took me more like 20 months to lose it. Once that was done, the pre-auth, denial, appeal, approval, labs, psych eval, nutrition classes took about three months all together. So if you don't count my diet period, only a few months. Hope yours goes fast! Mine was so drawn out that I had surgeons change in the practice I was going to, lol!

From submitting my paperwork to apply for WLS program to surgery 7 months. FEP BCBS insurance. 3 months of medically supervised diet. It took long for me because of availability of appointments to see necessary providers.

I'm obsessing over this right now. I've had a first doctor visit Jan 10th and did an overnight oximetry test last night at home. On Jan 29th I have 3 appointments. First is a consult with the surgeon and metabolic testing. Second is a DXA scan and third is a nutrition consult. At the first appointment I had, I expressed my hope to get this done ASAP since my line of work gets extremely busy after March. I called my insurance Co. (Capital Blue/BCBS) and asked two different times to find out if there was a 6 month medically documented weight loss needed and I was told both times that it didn't appear so and that it depends on the surgeon. I feel like it could go either way based on the wording in my policy. This is snipped directly from my policy:

"The patient must have documented failure to respond to >6 months of conservative measures for weight reduction prior to consideration of bariatric surgery, and these attempts must be reviewed by the practitioner prior to seeking approval for the surgical procedure. Some centers require active participation in a formal weight reduction program that includes frequent documentation of weight, dietary regimen, and exercise."

I have almost 2 years of documented weight loss attempts and a whole list of things I've tried. I'm crossing my fingers and toes that it's enough, but won't be shocked if it's not.

My insurance requires that I attend 3 monthly weight management classes. I have 1 more to go. Did you all have to do weight management classes? What happened after you finished?

6 minutes ago, sunkiss1979 said:

I'm obsessing over this right now. I've had a first doctor visit Jan 10th and did an overnight oximetry test last night at home. On Jan 29th I have 3 appointments. First is a consult with the surgeon and metabolic testing. Second is a DXA scan and third is a nutrition consult. At the first appointment I had, I expressed my hope to get this done ASAP since my line of work gets extremely busy after March. I called my insurance Co. (Capital Blue/BCBS) and asked two different times to find out if there was a 6 month medically documented weight loss needed and I was told both times that it didn't appear so and that it depends on the surgeon. I feel like it could go either way based on the wording in my policy. This is snipped directly from my policy:

"The patient must have documented failure to respond to >6 months of conservative measures for weight reduction prior to consideration of bariatric surgery, and these attempts must be reviewed by the practitioner prior to seeking approval for the surgical procedure. Some centers require active participation in a formal weight reduction program that includes frequent documentation of weight, dietary regimen, and exercise."

I have almost 2 years of documented weight loss attempts and a whole list of things I've tried. I'm crossing my fingers and toes that it's enough, but won't be shocked if it's not.

I have a year of document attempts too! I hope you're good to go!

32 minutes ago, Hrsnjs said:

I started the process in December 2016 and had surgery October 2018. I work for the state of West Virginia and our insurance required a 12 month medically supervised diet and 10% of your original weight lost. Took me more like 20 months to lose it. Once that was done, the pre-auth, denial, appeal, approval, labs, psych eval, nutrition classes took about three months all together. So if you don't count my diet period, only a few months. Hope yours goes fast! Mine was so drawn out that I had surgeons change in the practice I was going to, lol!

12 months of supervised dieting sounds like a whole lot. I feel like they try everything so we don't get the surgery. Once we complete whatever they need and they see we are serious, they're like "Oh I guess you really want this. Okay here you go."

7 minutes ago, sunkiss1979 said:

I'm obsessing over this right now. I've had a first doctor visit Jan 10th and did an overnight oximetry test last night at home. On Jan 29th I have 3 appointments. First is a consult with the surgeon and metabolic testing. Second is a DXA scan and third is a nutrition consult. At the first appointment I had, I expressed my hope to get this done ASAP since my line of work gets extremely busy after March. I called my insurance Co. (Capital Blue/BCBS) and asked two different times to find out if there was a 6 month medically documented weight loss needed and I was told both times that it didn't appear so and that it depends on the surgeon. I feel like it could go either way based on the wording in my policy. This is snipped directly from my policy:

"The patient must have documented failure to respond to >6 months of conservative measures for weight reduction prior to consideration of bariatric surgery, and these attempts must be reviewed by the practitioner prior to seeking approval for the surgical procedure. Some centers require active participation in a formal weight reduction program that includes frequent documentation of weight, dietary regimen, and exercise."

I have almost 2 years of documented weight loss attempts and a whole list of things I've tried. I'm crossing my fingers and toes that it's enough, but won't be shocked if it's not.

My policy also has something similar to this, but this is separate from the supervised diet I had to do. For this I had to list other ways I had tried to lose weight in the past: Weight Watchers, behavior modification, diet/exercise, Beach Body programs, etc. My PCP and I discussed these and then she signed off on it. This was to show failed attempts, but for the supervised diet I was required to lose a certain amount of weight. Your surgeon's office should be able to interpret it for you—I found my patient coordinator through my surgeon was more knowledgeable about these requirements than the insurance customer service reps.

Mine was almost exactly 6 months from my first appointment to my surgery date. 6 months is what my Cigna insurance required.

12 months of supervised dieting sounds like a whole lot. I feel like they try everything so we don't get the surgery. Once we complete whatever they need and they see we are serious, they're like "Oh I guess you really want this. Okay here you go."

Agree!! My insurance company especially. Slowly they have been changing their policy to cover less and less. And they still denied even though I met all their conditions! I think they just bank on the fact people will not appeal. I sure was not one of those!!

I'm still in the pre-op process, but my insurance is Anthem Blue Cross (California - even though I live in Texas). My only requirement is to complete 6 monthly dietician visits and a psych eval although we'll be doing an EGD (esophagogastroduodenoscopy) to check for any existing stomach issues and H. Pylori. My first surgeon meeting on 12/03/18 counts as my first dietician visit so I should be ready to submit by early May. Not sure how long the wait will be from approval to the O.R., so I'm curious about that as well.