insurance problems

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My wife and l have been dealing with a certain insurance company who are providing a service(s) for our son, but it has been going on for 6 years. Now we are finally at the point of getting service taken care of. What can we do in future to help get service in a timely manner? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

6 years?! Wow... I guess I've been lucky with my insurance? We've had all of the 'big 3' (Aetna, Cigna & UnitedHealthcare) and I've never had much difficulty getting services for my family. Sometimes it's hard to find a doctor/therapist we like that's in network, and not an hour's drive away, but that's nothing compared to what you've gone through.

Can I ask what was the problem?

Sure, he got braces on 6years ago because orthodontis said because of narrow palate he would need oral surgery down the road. Well the insurance company had to find oral surgeon since we could not find any in network. They found someone out of network and was 20 minutes away. Well we jumped through their hoops and had no problem with oral surgeon, but the orthodontis admitted to me after 4 1/2 years into process that he had never done this type of adjustment to this degree before(would have been nice if he would have told us 6 months into procedure). Well he finally got teeth to the position oral surgeon was happy with. So now l called insurance company to get surgery lined up and was informed person l had been working with was no longer with company and they could not find detailed record of our son. So since oral surgeon was out of network they would now have to find oral surgeon in network. Well they did. But they are not a 20 minute drive away, but almost 3 hours away. The surgery he is getting is called orthongnastic. The first oral surgeon was willing to go down to 50% of what he would usually charge and would have been an outpatient, new surgeon wants 2 days. The insurance company did not want to pay price for second surgeon who would work with the out of network surgeon. So that is where we are now.

Aahh... yeah, I don't know if there is much you can do about that sort of thing, beyond keeping very, very good records, and getting very good a dealing with ret*d insurance people.

I have found that working with a group of doctors/dentists/etc tends to help though. Then, even if your main dr/dentist/whoever leaves/retires/dies, the office itself is still up and running and maintaining your records. Of course, it helps that I live in a major metroplex. :/

Thank you for advice. We will definitely keep records, and document. We were ignorant when dealing with this company, because we never had a problem until setting up surgery date.