& son

[Guest guest]

Hi ,

You might contact your insurance company yourself and ask for a person

to oversee the process. Explain that loss of hearing even for a short

time is detrimental to a child's development at that age, and he might

well fail the school year because he cannot hear and so forth.

Meanwhile, your implant company can also work with you to get it approved

in a timely manner. I know Cochlear has an insurance reimbursement dept

that will work with you and the other companies probably do as well. The

thing is to be ACTIVE in this. Harass the insurance company yourself.

Get the names of everyone you talk to, start asking for the supervisor,

or claims manager from the start, don't mess around with the underlings.

Keep records of everyone you talk to and call every day if you must.

Good luck,

The Original

From: " robertbudder " <robertnj63@...>

Subject: insurance

My son was aided since an infant and became a very verbal oriented

child. Two years ago, he lost his residual hearing in his left year,

and than most recently, when he was playing basketball in school he

hit his ear against the wall and he lost whatever hearing he had

left in his right ear. Needless to say, he has been traumatized by

this complete and sudden loss of his hearing, he cant stand the

silence and hates struggling to communicate. Obviously, we went in

to overdrive researching the cochlear implant and have met with 2

different hospitals. After going through every emotion under the son

we felt we finally started seeing the light....we found a great

hospital....got great information on which implant, we were coming

to terms with sending our son in to surgery....until we feel like we

hit a brick wall. Our hospital called and said blue cross/blue

shield of nj is the most difficult insurance company regarding the

cochlear implant!!! She advised us that they typically take 6 months

for an approval and than another 3 months after that to schedul

surgery. My son cant come to grips with this complete hearing loss

and now we have to sit for 9 months and wait.....we never thought

our insurance would be the dificult part. Is there any other avenues

we can seek to speed this up??? Any help would be greatly

appreciated it.

robert/rose budnick

nj childrens hospital of philadelphia