Insurance for weight loss surgery in Santa Rosa, California 

Healthy Steps Weight Loss Center is committed to providing the most comprehensive and highest quality of care available for the patient with obesity-related health problems. Such care is costly, however, and not all health insurance providers cover such costs completely. The expert insurance and billing specialists at the Healthy Steps Weight Loss Center office will make every effort to work with your insurance carrier in order to maximize reimbursement for any out-of-pocket expenses you may incur.

Steps all potential surgical patients need to follow in order to maximize early insurance approval and reimbursement:

• Make sure your insurance company covers you for bariatric surgery, and Roux-en-Y gastric bypass in particular.
• Get your medical records together, particularly any documentation of weight-related health problems (tests and treatments for diabetes, sleep apnea, heart conditions, arthritis, high blood pressure, acid reflux disease, infertility, stress incontinence, etc)
• Write down, to the best you can recollect, an accurate and detailed history of all dieting efforts you have made, including the type, dates, amount of weight lost, length of time you were on the diet.
• Keep a "PMA," or "Positive Mental Attitude," as you and Healthy Steps exercise persistence, resilience, and dogged determination in pursuing authorization and approval from your insurance carrier!
• Get informed! Just like it is important to understand all the clinical aspects of obesity and weight loss surgery, it is also important to learn about the insurance and financial issues involved. Check out the following website for an excellent discussion of these issues: Obesity Law & Advocacy Center

Professional Charges:

The charge for your initial office visit at Healthy Steps Weight Loss Center is $300. Your primary care physician should refer you for this visit.

Unless Healthy Steps Weight Loss Center has negotiated a contract with your particular health insurance provider, the program fee is $8000, and is due two weeks before your scheduled surgical date. This fee covers the cost for your operating surgeon, his assistant, surgeons' fees for all postoperative follow-up and treatment of any complications for one full year after surgery. In addition, this fee covers both preoperative and postoperative visits with a registered dietician for one full year.

Please note that the medical staff of Healthy Steps Weight Loss Center are participating providers for obesity surgery with a limited number of insurance companies, although individual providers (as solo practitioners) may be listed as participating providers with a variety of insurance companies for other procedures.

If your primary insurance provider is Medicare or MediCal, please note that separate policies apply. Please call our office for more details.

Our office will bill your insurance company after surgery. If we required you to pay money up-front for your surgery, please note that any and all reimbursement from the insurance company for professional fees will be refunded directly to you. This occurs usually within 90 days from surgery. If the insurance company denies all or part of the charges, we will help you appeal to get maximum reimbursement.