How long should it take my doctor to receive viscosupplementation drug.

I'm a 71 year old male and had a partial knee replacement a few years ago with excellent results. I developed pain in the other knee this year and my orthopedist's PA ordered a viscosupplementation drug three weeks ago. I do not know which brand. My insurance is traditional Medicare.

In your experience, how long should it take to receive the drug? A second PA, who said he would notify me when the drug arrives, does not know when to expect it. I have also asked, by email with no reply, why the drug needed to be ordered when other orthopedic practices seem to have the drug in stock.

Thank you for your help.

Thank you Susie. I'll let you know what I find out. I do know that two other group practices said that they keep this type of medicine in stock.

Post Edited (Helgramite) : 6/22/2017 9:34:40 AM (GMT-6)

I have a response from my doctor's PA: "The Supartz injections we have ordered for your knee should be covered in full by Medicare. For our patients with Medicare insurance, we order these injections in bulk. Shipments can take a few weeks to arrive, so we do expect one soon."

Here is some info about the drug from its internet site: "The physician’s office must buy and bill SUPARTZ FX for Medicare fee-for-service patients. Medicare fee-for-service does not require prior authorization; however, Medicare requires documented improvement from the first series for patients to receive a second series of treatment .

I think "buy and bill" is opposed to ordering from a speciality pharmacy where the non-Medicare patient would be billed by the pharmacy. Anyway, if they had told me it was going to be over three weeks to get some relief, I would have done something different.

At least you now know what the protocol is for the drs office. Since I was using private insurance at the time it was handled differently. Hopefully they will get their supply in soon. I am sorry to read you have had such a long wait. However, I honestly do not think there is anything different that you could have done in this situation. By the way, Supartz is what my ortho used on both of my knees. I have had 5 scopes on my knees for various problems & they would each time try to clean up the knee as they cannot just go in & clean out all of the arthritis. Something that helped me back then & even now is to get in a pool & exercise my knees. This helps my knees tremendously. You are weightless in the water & cannot injure the knees. I have much more mobility & have had more than my fair share of PT with them. Water therapy has helped more than anything. I sit on a noodle & do leg kicks around the pool in the summer. If you can get access to a pool I highly recommend it. Perhaps joining a YMCA.

To remove your sig line you have to go into your profile & edit it out. However, you would have to remake it when posting in the PC forum, which may be a pain.

Take care.