I was thinking of making sort of a book of my paperwork.

My thought was that I would take copies of all my medical records, letters of reccomendation, etc. and I would organize them into a book. Each section of my medical records would have a neatly typed page with the doctor's name on it and the years the records covered at the beginning of the records. Then I thought maybe I could take it to KinKos or something and have it bound into a sort of a book. Do you think this would be overkill? The reason I thought to do this was 1)to show them I am serious about this and I am very motivated. 2)I thought it would be more easy for the insurance to process my application and less likely for them to lose any thing. Heck, I'm ready to do this thing, YESTERDAY!!!!! BTW my insurance is Aetna PPO So tell me what you think of my hairbrained idea. Lynda D.

The insurance companies photo copy everything into their system. This is how they can pull everything up on the computer screen so if your wanting to send them a book they might not appreciate. I'm not trying to burst anyone's bubbly here but from my experience when I was fighting them to get my surgery I learned a lot about how these insurance companies think. They don't care if you need the surgery are not. You can whine and cry to them all day long. MY Doctors say I need it. I won't live to be 50 if I don't get it!!! I did 5 years of dieting 10 years ago and that should count towards getting my WLS!! Insurance companies are not impressed with fancy books and what you think you need. All they care about is that you fallow their Guidelines and do you qualify for the surgery. I will give this advice. Don't NEVER, NEVER give up fighting them for what you want. Don't let them win the battle. Best of luck Donna 338/229 -109

I did make a book for myself. It is indexed and contains everything from my insurance policy to every communication that I've had with my doctors, lawyer and Anthem. I even have a section for posts that I've found to be important from Obesityhelp.com. It has come in handy when talking to my lawyer or insurance customer service. They always want to know the date that something happened or what somebody told me or telephone numbers. With my notebook, I have it right at my fingertips. I also figure that if I have to switch gears and apply for RNY then I have a copy of everything that I need. Cathy P "still waiting and waiting and waiting..."

Don't have everything bound together. Your surgeon's office may be required to fax all the documentation to the insurance company; even if Aetna accepts a mailed submission, they will want to be able to photocopy individual pages easily. What *would* be helpful is to organize your information and make it easy for the insurance company to find what they're looking for. Check over your medical records and ensure that the relevant information is legible enough to show up clearly on a fax or photocopy. You could create a summary section, with photocopies of the most essential pages; for Aetna, this means the records of your required diet plus yearly weight records that show a multi-year history of morbid obesity. I created a document for my own benefit as well as for Aetna's and the surgeon's. It listed every professional involved in my WLS journey (PCP, surgeon, nutritionist, and personal trainer), contact information and credentials for each one, and details of every appointment with each person during my 6-month supervised diet. I don't know if this helped Aetna at all, but it definitely helped my surgeon's office. The most important thing is that your records demonstrate that you've fulfilled Aetna's WLS requirements. As Donna said, they really don't care about anything else. They don't give extra points for creativity, darn it! My PCP and I made sure that the supervised diet was recorded in great detail, and that the records were absolutely clear and legible. The diet records were among my general medical records, but we also made second copies of just those specific pages and placed them at the top of the pile so they'd be easy to review right away. My surgeon's insurance coordinator gave me a date only 11 days away because she felt sure Aetna would be satisfied and would approve quickly (which they did).