I've thought about moving out of State, but the Health Insurance / Medication / New Doctors situation seems almost impossible. While moving to a different State how can Health Care be a seamless process ?
Hi there, I had an advocate help me figure it all out (are you on Twitter? Twitter IBD-verse is amazing). This is what I did:
Doctor:
1) This advocate gave me a few names of the reputable doctors in the area I was moving to
2) I informed our then doctor of our future location and he immediately recommended two names and they all matched with the names from 1). He said early appointment is key and if I couldn't get an appt right away, let him know and he will reach out directly (he knows both personally).
3) I made an appt with one of the referrals and worked around the clock sending all the medical records over to the future doctor (also needed to obtain all the images on a CD). Got on his calendar right away.
Med:
- Our then doctor refilled our med for another 6 months. The specialty pharmacy called our insurance and did vacation override twice so we had 2 months of extra supplies in our hand by the time we moved. Since we will be seeing our new doc next week there would be no need to use up the refill from our previous doctor. But if for some reason we had to, our insurance will dispense it directly thru their partner.
It was very stressful for me for a while but once the steps were laid all out and our moving plan was communicated with our care team then everything seemed easy. The doc/nurses/pharmacy have all handled similar situations in the past and they stepped up and filled in the missing pieces to make it work.
We've moved btw and we will see our new doc next week. Will let you know how the transition works.