Surgery that was to be today-cancelled/postponed or? (Spinal Fusion)

[Jan P]

Today was to be my surgery date for the L4/L5 L5/S1 fusion. I found out on Monday (less than 48 hours from my surgery time) that the insurance company (BC of California) declined the procedure. I was told by suregon's secretary (she just started 4 weeks ago) that it was declined as not medically necessary. However, when I called BC myself, the story I was told was totally different. They said requests for medical records of injections, nerve blocks, PT, medications, etc. was not received.

The following day (yesterday) I contacted the secretary's supervisor and she called BC. She called me back with a slightly different story. It now stands, the whole request has been re-submitted (as of yesterday a.m.) and marked "urgent" which means BC should have an answer by this Friday.

I have learned a lesson that perhaps might be helpful to others "Make sure your surgeons office gets working on your insurance pre-authorization as soon as you have a surgery date. Don't let them wait until the last several days to submit the request. Call your insurance company and find out if the request has been made and what the status is. You need to be pro-active and not assume it will get taken care of."

Preparing yourself mentally for surgery is really stressful, you don't need the added stress of finding out at the Eleventh Hour that someone did not do what they should have and your procedure is delayed or cancelled.

I hope this helps.

[Cindylou]

Very good advice Jan. Sorry you had to learn it the hard way. Cindylou