Dr.'s and Insurance Updates

In preparation for Bela's arrival, I spent about 2 hours making lots of phone calls to ensure that Bela's medical needs are covered immediately. What was most important to me is that she sees a pediatrician who understands international adoptions and doesn't insist on re-running all tests and re-vaccinating her; some pediatricians we spoke to insist on not trusting a foreign Dr. but Ryan and I have been very impressed by the record keeping of the orphanage's Dr. and don't want to put Bela through more blood tests and potentially cause more trauma to her unnecessarily. So I found a Dr. from our insurance company's web site that is just down the street from us. But before I could even make the appointment, I had to get Bela added to our insurance. Our insurance company allowed us to add her to our medical and dental plan based on the court decree indicating we are now her legal guardians - they didn't even need a copy of it, they just asked us for the date. So she is now on our plan even though we haven't picked her up yet. The process I went through included the following (BTW, everyone in this entire process was very kind and sweet - congratulating us on our decision to adopt)....

1. I called our insurance company first to add Bela based on the final court order
2. They asked me to call my husband's Benefits department
3. The Benefits department asked for the official court order date and added her to our medical and dental coverage from there
4. Her 2010 covered begins on Jan 3rd which is just fine since she won't see her first Dr. until the 29th.
5. I asked about Bela's current medicine to see if would be covered - the Benefits Department then asked me to call the prescription meds company
6. I called the prescription meds company and of course they had no idea of the Indian version of her thyroid medication - luckily the Indian Dr. emailed us the chemical name because she initially indicated that her medicine was not covered - but I didn't take NO for an answer. I asked her to get a pharmacist on the line - he confirmed the chemical name was covered as a different drug name and for only $5/month under our insurance. Whew!
7. I then called our insurance company back to see if they knew of any local pediatricians with international adoption experience since their online search criteria didn't have that info. Of course they had no idea. So I did a search on their online web site for local pediatricians and just started to go down the list, calling each Dr.'s office to see if they had international adoption experience. I got really lucky as the 2nd Dr. I called had that experience! So her appointment is set about 1 week after she gets home.

Whew!!!