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Is Baptist Medical Center rated as a center of Excellence? Or does anyone know of a hospital in AR that excepts Medicare for Lapband surgery?

Hi Linda, I was just told on Monday that Baptist did get their ranking as a center of excellence. Within the last month or so. Sorry I don't know anything about lapband, I had rny. Good luck to you!

The last that I knew, there was no hospital in Arkansas that was given the center of excellence for bariatric surgery. I hope that it has because too many of the folks are having to go out of state and for many that is a hardship. Keep us posted.

http://www.surgicalreview.org/locate.aspx?state=AR#srchResults This is the asbs webpage search for Centers of Excellence. As of today, there were no results for Arkansas. It takes time to update the listing. You may want to contact the asbs to find out if Baptist has actually become a center of excellence. Good luck, Dawna

Just as a follow up I called the Surgical Review Corporation that does the certification process for the Center of Excellence program. The rep stated that currently there are applicants in the process of certification but as of yet, no hospital in Arkansas is a "Center of Excellence". Dawna

Hi, there are none as of right now. I am on Medicare and have been waiting since February, Baptist has filed for a centers of excellence and they did have their site inspection but I have not heard anything else yet. I was told by my surgeons office via email in Sept: "Site inspection is the week of Oct. 11th. Don't know how long it will take for approval. i've heard up to 6 months.??????" Who is your surgeon? And what type of surgery are you going to be having? My surgeon is Dr Wellborn, I went for RNY Sept 2005 but had some breathing problems and it was cancelled, and I was told to quit smoking, and I finally was able to quit at the end of the year and after 8 weeks of no smoking I had my bloodwork drawn for surgery and that same day Medicare made all the changes, so now I am sitting and waiting, and you can mail me if you want to and we can wait together.

There are doctors in Missouri, Louisianna, and Texas who are board certified and their hospitals are centers of excellence. You might try one of those.