Were you impacted by the February 2006 Medicare decision regarding bariatric surgery?

As part of our continuing efforts to improve access to the treatments of obesity, the Obesity Action Coalition (OAC) is gathering information on the continuing impact of the February 2006 Medicare National Coverage Decision (NCD). If you were personally impacted by this decision as a patient seeking bariatric surgery, either positively or negatively, we want to hear from you.

Please let us know how the Medicare NCD affected you personally. If your surgery was cancelled, please let us know if you have been rescheduled, identified and begun the process of accessing surgery at a different bariatric program or have been unsuccessful in finding a program to perform your surgery. For those of you that have been unable to find a program to perform your procedure, please let us know what barriers you have faced. For example, there is no Center of Excellence program in near proximity or the closest Center of Excellence does not accept Medicare.

We also would like to hear from those of you that have positive experiences with the new ruling. For example, those of you that were able to access adjustable gastric banding or the duodenal switch.

The OAC will summarize any information received and share it with the leaders at Medicare and with the other key parties interested in improving access to bariatric surgery. No personally identifiable information will be shared.

Please send your responses to info@obesityaction.org. If you are a bariatric surgeon, coordinator or allied healthcare professional, we urge you to distribute this message to your impacted patients so that they may respond to us directly.