Anyone in Ohio have the sleeve?

Hi. I am wondering who you used if you had the VSG.  I am probably going to have the sleeve, however, I believe United Health Care is still self pay. I'd also like to know how you are feeling!  Thanks

Yes, I had VSG - best decision ever.   Do you have a surgeon in mind yet?  I highly recommend Dr. Schumacher and his staff - they are wonderful!

ARe you saying that they would pay for the first stage and I just wouldn't have the second stage?  Do you know how many sleeves Dr. Schumacher has done?  I heard good things about him with the band.  Thanks

My husband had the VGS the first week of June. He is doing very well. He used Dr.Trivedi, who is in the same practice with Dr.Schumacher. I'm not sure how many surgeries they have done, but it might say on their website? We were both very, very impressed with the entire office there, and how much they have helped through the whole process. We have Anthem, which only approved the gastric bypass surgery. However, the doctors worked around that, put all the paperwork through as a bypass and determined once the surgery started, that only the sleeve would work. Insurance paid for all of it.  My husband is still just a little sore, but has healed well and had relatively few problems. The worst problem has been trying to curb just the everyday habit of eating so much.

Thanks ! The website doesn't even show VGS!  I need to call them. Thanks, ow much has your husband lost? How much work did he miss? How long did it take to schedule surgery once you decided?  Sorry for all the questions!

The entire process took about 4-5 months, from the time we went to their seminar, to the time of surgery. In that time, he had several appointments with the surgeon, the nutritionalist, the psychologist and the exercise physiologist. Then the pre-testing, which was an all day process all by itself!  He was only off work for a week. He has a desk job, so I would assume that if you have any kind of a physical job, you'd need to be off longer.  He's dropped more than 20 pounds so far, plus more that he lost during the several months prior to surgery.  Let me know if you have any other questions. If you can make one of their seminars, I'd really recommend that. They go through the different surgery types, answer all your questions, have their office staff there also. I can't recommend them enough.

Just a word of caution here, as there is a lot of this going on out in the surgical community and from a billing and coding perspective it is asking for trouble.  If a surgeon does 50 sleeves and they were all precertified as gastric bypasses and on all 50 cases it happened to be that "only the sleeve would work for this patient, wink wink"...you get my drift.  Could get the surgeon in a lot of ho****er and maybe even some jail time and hefty fines if it is involving Medicare. Technically the sleeve is a non covered procedure because it doesn't have a CPT code.  There are some real cases where the sleeve is the only option that will work for a patient, but these are uncommon. Good luck in your pursuits!