Role of the primary care physician in weight loss surgery

From the list of providers, an overweight person will need to select a primary care doctor or internist for the first step of medical clearance for gastric bypass surgery. For most morbidly obese people, they will already have this doctor and will be well known to the doctors' practice. This physician will usually be the first point of reference and should be able to provide great help.

This primary health care provider will assist in ordering the tests that will be required to get medical clearance. Their letters of clearance and recommendation for the gastric bypass surgery or other form of weight loss surgery will be part of the first paper work that any insurance company will want to review as part of their consideration for approval process. In addition to these two, usually other specialists will be required and/or will certainly strengthen a person's case for obtaining insurance authorization to proceed with the gastric bypass surgery or other form of weight loss surgery. Again, every insurance company will have its own set of criteria utilized to determine authorization.

Some primary care offices will have a list of the insurance companies' requirements, but it is always safe to get the most ‘up-to-date' list directly from the insurance company. This will avoid the delay of the newly added test or requirement that an older version of requirements does not have.