Insurance Approved

I don't know much about the process and all but I thought I would just share what I do know about how our personal insurance approval process went from my perspective.  I just want to give other families out there as much info about CHOC's feeding program as I can!  

I was told that CHOC would send in everything needed for the insurance company to evaluate and approve or deny the inpatient intensive feeding program about 3-4 weeks before our pending admission date.   And that they did!  Then it takes our insurance company about 1-2 weeks to evaluate everything.  Whitney qualifies for California Child Services (CCS) because she was born with a birth defect, congenital diaphragmatic hernia. And they cover specialist that relate to her health problems, which is GI and Cardio.  She also has Inland Empire Health Plan (IEHP).  Both of the insurance company's are very specific to our local hospital.  But our hospital and surroundings don't offer a feeding program like this.  So our ins. co are able to work around that and realize that this will be the most beneficial for Whitney and them.  Formula and feeding tube supplies are crazy expensive.  I'm not sure how much this program costs but it's about a few years of feeding tube supplies.  CHOC has a very high success rate of tube weaning and that's why the insurance company approves this program.  

So when we got back home on Sunday (9-21) from visiting family in Arizona, we got a letter in the mail from CCS.  It said: Medically eligible for CHOC GI Center/Feeding Program.  I knew what it meant but I wanted to make sure!  So first thing on Monday I emailed Amber, she called me right back to say that we are in!  It still didn't quit sink in for me yet.  Whitney came up to me and I told her "We're in!" and I started to cry because I was so happy.  I didn't think I would be so emotional about this, but really, it makes sense.  This is literally life changing for us!!