My OSS of the last 12 years has told me that WC is hardly authorizing anythng anymore. He said in 2 years Medicare will be the same (not authorizing surgeries). Then he said something to the effect of "wait until we have Obamacare".. so I think if you can get surgery auth'd now and need it that'd be good. I didn't do it when I could and I'm no longer even a candidate for same surgery tho thankfully getting along Ok.
ESIs helped me tremendously re pain but they're not being auth'd any longer either. WC adjustor calls me every so often to see if I want to settle out my future med/go medicare set aside. This last time she was too nice so it made me think something's up that isn't going to bode well in my favor.
** wanted to edit to add that Mark (this is his forum and he's a spine patient advocate as I mentioned on the other forum) accompanied me to the Coufal visit and while I think he would have given the same opinion re the 2nd surgical opinion I believe it greatly helped to have Mark there with me. When I was too tired to accurately state my situation Mark could word it in a way that the surgeon identified w/better (the original appt. was for a certain time and it got delayed a few hours because of an emergency surgery for Dr.Coufal and my spine wasn't too good at sitting/waiting). Mark also accompanied me to the Delamarter visit and got me into see Dr.Regan as WC didn't authorize that visit and I wanted his opinion as well. Again he asked questions or stated things I didn't think of tho pertinent to my spine situation. Long story short..worthwhile to contact Mark and talk at the very least. Check out the website below:
GPN Artificial Disc Replacement ADR