How do Patients Access Bariatric Surgery? An Analysis of Referrals to a Large Academic Medical Center

Excerpt

Despite the evidence supporting bariatric surgery as the most effective treatment for obesity, fewer than 1% of eligible patients ever undergo this treatment [1]. Prior work has demonstrated multiple barriers to bariatric surgery at the level of referring providers. These include reluctance to refer to surgery due to a lack of knowledge about the available procedures, uncertainty about patient eligibility, and concerns about long-term safety [2‐5]. Other barriers to accessing bariatric surgery include individual patient factors (e.g., ineligibility due to current smoking status), insurance factors (e.g., inadequate insurance coverage and requirement for prolonged trial of medically supervised weight loss), and bariatric program-specific factors (e.g., number of specialist evaluations) [2, 3]. …