another question

seanmama · August 3, 2003

Another quickie! My drs office said it will take 2 weeks to get his letter dictated and sent to the ins co. and then surg will be scheduled if all is well up to 6mo ahead!

How much badgering on my part is usually needed:) Or should I just let them do their thing?

Seanmama

tangerine · August 3, 2003

Just moving this to the general discussion area, hopefully more people will see it there!

Alexandra · August 3, 2003

Seanmama, every surgeon's office is different. But I'd suggest calling your insurance carrier the week *after* the two weeks have passed just to see if they've received the request for precertification. When they say no, be sure to ask them how much time it takes for such a request to show up in their system. (Sometimes a request can be received and then not logged in for a week, or two weeks, or whatever.)

Then call back after THAT amount of time has passed and see if it's there. If they still say no, definitely call your surgeon's office and see when (or if) they submitted it.

If they are efficient you shouldn't have to call them back, since your insurance carrier will tell you when it was received. But if they're not, there's no point in badgering them until you know for sure that they didn't submit it when they said they would.

This is exactly what happened with me, and even though it took a while I was confident I hadn't antagonized the doctor's office. (I felt it was important to stay on the doctor's office's good side since they were doing me a favor.)

FDATrialGuineaPig · August 8, 2003

Don't be TOO pushy with them. I gave them a month then began calling to get updates. Usually if you've given them a reasonable amount of time to get stuff done they won't get snippy with you.

JC_GODOLPHINS · August 12, 2003

Hey, I gave them about a month too. Then started calling daily. They starting getting annoyed, then they called me. GULP!! At first I was scared, cause this lady had told me I will only hear from her if I am denied, but I was approved, next day I got a letter. 2 more weeks, can't wait for the new me to be born.

dezzyntx · August 13, 2003

To cut down on the badgering, I got set up on my insurances web site. I was able to check it daily to see when I was approved. Maybe your insurance has a web site like this. It won't hurt to check it out. I just recieved my letter in the mail saying approved yesterday, but I knew I was approved last week. Good-Luck!