Denied

December was the last time Teddy had outpatient physical therapy approved by Medicaid, which is his secondary insurance coverage. January is when the denial for PT arrived, after a few weeks of processing. The first week in March is when the hearing happened, via telephone of course to prevent me from dramatically marching Teddy into the hearing to show everyone why it's obvious he needs both outpatient PT and PT in the school setting.

I do realize, of course, that my dramatic entrance entrance would have been followed by me spending the entire hearing wrestling Teddy, which wouldn't have been overly effective. Not that it matters because last week in mid-April is when the hearing decision upholding the denial arrived in our mailbox.

It took 4 months to go through the process to get told there's no way Medicaid will cover PT for Teddy through outpatient clinic while he's receiving it in the school setting ... but we could file a request for services now to see if Medicaid will cover PT during the summer since Teddy doesn't qualify for summer services through the school. (That's a whole other bucket o' slimy worms that I'm not going to dig into right now.)

Let me do the math. Mid-April plus 4 months equals mid-August. That's right when Teddy's about to go back to school where he'll be getting PT services again. And that means, they wouldn't cover services because it would be duplicate services.

What are the odds that Medicaid grants the request right away for summer? How much will my PT hate me if I make her go through all the paperwork and process all over again? Why do we have to wait so long to get an answer on therapy ... and why do we have to request services every 3 months or so? How on earth does OT get approved right away for Teddy (not that I'm complaining!)?

So for now, we say to heck with Medicaid. We're trying to work with our clinic to run his therapy services for PT through only our primary insurance, which theoretically will work to get Teddy the therapy that benefits him.

And we're hoping it works for speech, too, because we just received that denial. I'm not sure I have the wherewithal to go through that appeal process, only to have it denied with the exact same language as the PT hearing decision I have in my hands.