For many ostomates, figuring out the best place to get ostomy supplies can be a confusing process. This is especially true if you’re trying to buy ostomy supplies using your insurance.
Better Health is a one-stop shop for all your ostomy supplies — we’ll even handle all your insurance paperwork and prescription management on your behalf! Learn more about how to order ostomy supplies with insurance in the video below.
Video Transcript
Hi, my name is Siobhan and I help lead us meet education here at Better Health. I have an ostomy myself that I’ve had for six years. So I’ve experienced all of the ups and downs of life with an ostomy. And I’m here with Sherry today. And Sherry has some questions about how she gets her ostomy products.
Well, I’m worried about how expensive all the supplies are. How do I go about paying for this? That’s a great question. And I know it’s a big concern for a lot of people the way. Paying for ostomy supplies is something you don’t have to do – you don’t pay for them out of your pocket. You can pay for them using your insurance, but there’s a couple of special things that you have to do.
Insurance will definitely cover at least some of the costs of your ostomy supplies. If you have great insurance, it should cover all of the costs of your ostomies supplies, but you have to go through your insurance. You have to go through a company too, that will accept and bill your insurance for you.
Well, that is a relief that insurance will, will help on. It’s not all out of pocket. Do I have to go somewhere in particular to buy my supplies, to make sure that the insurance will pay? Yes, you need to buy your ostomy supplies from a medical supply company that will accept your insurance. Generally speaking, your insurance will cover some.
All the, hopefully all of the costs of your ostomy supplies, but you do need to make sure that the supply company that you use can accept your insurance and bill it for you. Okay. That’s not too surprising or disturbing. That’s like anything else you would use your health insurance for, but is there a cap?
Can you get as many supplies as you need? Generally speaking, you can get your supplies once a month or once every three months that’s up to personal preference and your insurance company sets limits on how many supplies you can order at a time. Usually they try to give you enough to. Follow along with your routine of changing your ostomy bags.
So for example, say that you change your ostomy bag your appliance every few days, every three to four days. So what that means is your insurance will say, okay, we’ll give you one barrier per every three to four days, plus the little for overage, or if you accidentally cut it too much, or you have a leak and you need to do some extra.
In my case, I get 20 ostomy barriers a month, which is actually a lot. I don’t actually use, I don’t use 20 barriers a month, but I do have that option that if I go through a bad period, if I need more surgery, if I. Experienced a lot of leaks or if my stoma shrinks or grows suddenly, then I have those extras to help carry me through until I get my next order of supplies.
This is so specific and practical. I really appreciate it. Are there things I need that the insurance will not cover? Yes. Unfortunately, there are some things that you might like that won’t be covered by insurance. Those are things. Ostomy underwear or ostomy wraps, those things you’ll have to buy out of pocket.
And generally speaking, they can be a little bit pricey. So I will look around to the various online internet retailers and do a search for ostomy underwear. Or stoma underwear. And those will lead you to places where you can buy those products that you find make you feel more confident and comfortable.
But like I said, you’ll have to pay out of pocket for it, since they’re not exactly medical, they’re more personal preference. I get it. I’m so glad to help. One last thing I need to warn you about with insurance is that if you are going through a lot of barriers, if you feel like you’re running low, that might signal a problem that you need to take back to your wound and ostomy care nurse or an ostomy coach, which you can find here at Better Health. They can help you troubleshoot to identify some issues that you might be having when you change your barriers.
Making sure you get the right fit with your barrier. All of those things impact how well your barrier holds up and will also impact, you know, how often you need to change it. So that way you can keep within the amount of supplies that you have.
Excellent for more information about all things. life with an ostomy, the ins and outs of nutrition, diet activities, exercises and even the products themselves stay tuned for this video series. We’ll touch on all of those things and we’ll make it fun and interesting.
