Surgery with medicare

Hi! Is anyone here waiting for Medicare approval? Do you know what are the steps to go on bypass? I've having a hard time with the Medicare and the options here in Tampa Fl

Do you have regular medicare or one of the medicare HMO's. That makes a big difference. Generally your surgeon will take care of getting the surgery approved. What kind of trouble are you having with medicare and the options in Tampa. It is somewhat hard to help without additional information.

There are steps as on a ladder to climb. But if your heart is really wanting this to make you fight for it plus to give you healing patients, You'll be in Losersville one day soon. Now have you've attended any of the WLS Seminars in the Tampa Bay area? What part of Tampa Bay do you live near? Right now in Pinellas County there are only a few taking Straight Medicare, but if you arrange for one of the HMOs Insurance Companies to Manage your Medicare, well they have their own criterials too. Your best choices in Pinellas are the Palms of Pasadena Hospital in St.Petersburg and Morton Plant Hospital in Clearwater. In Tampa there's Town & Country Hospital, Tampa General and Community Hospital. Keep us informed to help you. But also please start filling in your OH Profile as one day someone might read it and be Inspired to continue because you never gave up. Mike

You should not have trouble getting approval with Medicare. In fact unless it has recently changed medicare did not require pre-approval like regular insurance. Your first step is to find a surgeon that will accept medicare and is a Center of Excellence. Medicare requires that your surgeon and hospital carry this designation. In Tampa both Tampa General and Town and Country hospitals have that designation. So far as surgeons go Dr. Murr at Tampa General and Dr. Fernandez at Town and Country have the designation. There are other hospitals and surgeons in Florida that carry the designation and you can view the complete list at http://www.surgicalreview.org/locate.aspx Also bear in mind just having the designation does not necessarily mean they accept Medicare. I would call and ask. Once you have identified a surgeon that accepts Medicare then generally you go to a seminar or informational meeting first and then you can schedule a consult with the surgeon. Some surgeons want you to have some of the pre-op testing completed prior to the consult others will see you and then schedule the testing. But you will get all of that information at the seminar. So far as insurance approval -- generally it is the surgeon's office that takes care of all of that. Red

Oh and I should mention the surgeries medicare will cover are: open and laparoscopic Roux-en-Y gastric bypass (RYGBP), laparoscopic adjustable gastric banding (LAGB), open and laparoscopic biliopancreatic diversion with duodenal switch (BPD/DS), And in order to qualify for the surgery one must meet the following requirements: have a body-mass index (BMI) > 35, have at least one co-morbidity related to obesity, and have been previously unsuccessful with medical treatment for obesity. All of this information is taken from the Decision Memo for Bariatric Surgery for the Treatment of Morbid Obesity (CAG-00250R). The document was published last year and there may have been changes made that I am not aware of so if in doubt about something your best bet is to contact medicare or your surgeon's office. The decision memo may be found at: http://www.cms.hhs.gov/mcd/viewdecisionmemo.asp?id=160 Red

Thanks to everyone who answer my questions.  I found a Dr. in Tampa, Dr Fernandez and last june 13, 2007 had my surgery done.  By now I've lost 51 pounds and keep on losing them.  Doing very good.