Washington State Employees

Hi, I was wondering if anyone who works for the state has been approved for surgery. I know they started covering the Gastric bypass this year, but I haven't heard of anyone being approved yet!! I would love to know what to expect. I have Regence Blue Shield...

I work for WA State DNR in Olympia and have Uniform Medical Plan insurance (UMP), who also started paying for the surgery this year.  I submitted my application (was on UMP's website) in early March 2007 and received a letter in the mail telling me I was approved on March 29, 2007.  They have a 6-month waiting period and I was assigned a case manager to work with.  She talked to me about the process and the requirements (losing 5% of your initial weight and having a psychiartric evaluation - which is included in the costs UMP pays for) and then I had to submit weekly food and exercise logs to her.  Later, she was so busy (had over 125 patients by then) that she assigned me to another case worker she works closely with and he was was just as helpful as she'd been.  I continued to submit my weekly logs to him and he'd call me and give me advice if he saw anything in the logs where he thought he could help me out - like if I was eating too much of one type of food or doing the same exercises repeatedly, he'd suggest other options to add a little variety in both foods and exercises.  He was very helpful. My 6-month waiting period was to end on September 29, but since that's a weekend, I wouldn't be able to have surgery before October 1 and I was tentatively scheduled for October 5.  That was okay with me, because I'm on an interagency fire management team and spend most of the summers out on fires and was hoping to get through fire season before being laid up for a couple weeks. On August 10, I received a letter in the mail saying I'd passed all my requirements early and I received the approval to have my surgery anytime within the next 90 days.  So, they called to set up my surgery date, but I had just dislocated my kneecap and couldn't walk on it for 3 weeks, so my surgery was rescheduled to October 26.  Now I tripped in a mole hole in our yard and tore the ligaments in my ankle, so I'm hoping I'm able to walk well enough when I go for my labs that they let me continue with my surgery date - my 90-day approval is up on November 10! If somethiing happens and the surgery doesn't happen in the year of the approval, Uniform makes you reapply and start the whole 6-month process over again the next year. So far, insurance-wise, I haven't had anything to worry about.  As long as you meet all their requirements, it's a really easy process. I hope your process is as easy as mine has been.  Good luck!!