Dr Halpin at Legacy Weight Loss & Dr Mark Smith at OWLS did my surgery. Both clinics are wonderful & you will receive equally good care from either.
Best wishes!

Hang in there.  Sorry you've had such a hard time.  My vitamin D was too low as well.  And I am just not able to take pills anymore.  If I can break them in half or grind them down - they won't go down.  my surgeon told me about one of our local health food stores having liquid vitamin D.  I put one drop of it on my calcium citrate chocolate chew (my "candy" for the day) in the morning and at night.  It's getting my levels back up pretty decently.  Plus, it wasnt half as expensive as I expected it would be.  Whew!  If you are still looking for options, let me know & I'll check the name of it.

Hi there,
Did you ever find out about this?  Not sure why your PCP would not do the referral.  But they do have to have a certain amount of criteria on each patient before they can do a referral.  Maybe the others in the class who already have theirs have more comorbities. 

I am on Kaiser but ended up going outside the system just cuz I wanted a different type of surgery that the kaiser in Oregon does not do.

But my PCP put through the referral so I could make the best decision for myself.  To qualify for the referral, I had to demonstrate I'd been severly obese for a certain amount of time (5 years or 10 years - can't remember), how high my bmi was, then had to document all the ways I'd tried to lose weight in the past,  and then had to look at what comorbities I had (side-effects of my obesity).  You have to have a minimum combination of all of this before they're allowed to submit that referral.   For you and your hubby, maye this class was needed because you were low on something else.  Hard to say.  It's kind of odd... and obese person trying hard to lose weight before they end up with health problems has a hard time getting surgery covered. For me, I had sleep apnea, arthritis in both ankles, and arthritis in my knees.  I think she also checked off low back pain because I'd had p/t for my back before.  It's gotta be stuff that is documented in your record over time cuz they're going to look for backup. 

Once you get the referral, you'll get a call or letter from the bariatric coordinator.  Forgot her name, but a really nice lady.  I think it's done in a letter now.  She'll have a date and time for you to attend a class.  The classes are only once or twice a month.  It goes over the type of surgery they do there (RNY gastric bypass), their program, and the steps of the program.  Usually their dietician is there, one of the counselors, and one of the surgeons.  Their program is becoming more and more reputable and they have a great surgical team now.  Once you go through the class, they set you up to meet with the dietician & the counselor.  Those two may want you to come back a few times before they'll give the green light for you to meet with the surgeon.  After you meet with the surgeon, the bariatric team gets together to review your file and deterime if you qualify for surgery.  The process takes approximately 6 to 9 mos (similar to most other insurance company processes). 

It sounds like a long time, but the last two or three months of it flys by.  I know quite a few people who have had their surgeries through the Kaiser Oregon program.  They are doing just awesome.  Good luck on your journey!

I would love to come. I live in Newberg and had surgery on Jan 17th 2011. I have been looking for a support group that was closer to home.

I have found that each Kaiser offices are different. The Kaiser in Lancaster, CA would not send the refferal until you see the Metabolic Dr. at the end of the Options Classes. The only thing I could speed up is the blood work up, ekg , Phyc eval. These need to be done before your last visit with the Dr. This could be different where you are. Kaiser is pretty ridget with their proceedures. I figure by the time I have surgery it will be almost a year .