Will Your Medical Insurance Pay for Support Hose?

Helpful Tips for Successful Reimbursement

While Medicare does not cover compression hosiery except for treatment of Venous Stasis Ulcers ( more info ), we've heard from many of our customers that they have found the "recipe" for success.We've posted a couple of new items in our knowledgebase that might help you get reimbursed for your support hose.

The first is a document from Aetna that outlines the criteria that must be met for reimbursement from some of their plans ( more info ). Overall, if your physician has prescribed at least a compression of 20mmHg for one of their listed medical conditions, they would cover compression hose in their listed medical plans.

While we can't guarantee success for everyone, just sending this document with your claim may help. If you have any questions about this document, just send us a message ( email for document questions ) and we'll do our best to help.

Medicare and Insurance FAQ can be found here.

Eat wisely, fly safely

Advice on eating to avoid DVT while Traveling

The sheer immobility of sitting in a plane (or coach, train or car) for more than four hours slows down the blood flow, and flying in a pressurised cabin can cause a further problem because some of the fluid component of your blood moves into surrounding tissues (the process which causes our ankles and feet to swell when we fly).

This makes our blood thicker and more prone to clotting.
If you add a meal rich in saturated fat into the mix, the problem may intensify, because saturated fats raise the levels of blood-fats after eating, which activates a substance called Factor 7 — a central component of the blood-clotting mechanism.

“While no specific clinical research has been done to find out if one-off fatty meals in-flight will push you over the edge and trigger DVT,” says the nutrition scientist Sarah Stanner of the British Nutrition Foundation, “in theory, eating fatty meals could make a difference”.

Many airlines have responded by offering lighter food options — indicated by their Well-Being symbol — which include dishes lower in fat, salt and sugar and higher in fibre (BA does this).
It is also a good idea to contact the airline before you fly and order a special meal. Virgin airlines offer a “low fat/low cholesterol” option, for example, which is well worth looking for.

If this is not possible, and you find yourself confronted with a standard in-flight main meal, then try to cut down on one of the following: the relatively harmless-looking cheese and biscuits, the extra butter that goes with your bread roll, the synthetic puddings and treats like ice cream that many airlines offer between meals.

Doctors Unite In Their Fight Against Economy Class Syndrome

Doctors Unite In Their Fight Against Economy Class Syndrome

Air travel is associated with a two- to threefold increased risk of developing thrombosis, experts said at the 12th Congress of the European Hematology Association (EHA) in Vienna (Austria). Doctors urge the EU and national governments to help make air travel safer by supporting research into preventing travelers' thrombosis.

The case of a young English woman who died shortly after a long haul flight from Australia in 2000 has gradually faded from public consciousness. That is unfortunate. Her death highlighted a problem that has long been grossly neglected: the risk to air travelers of venous thrombosis. A contributing factor to the cramped seating in economy class flights may be specific to the cabin environment, i.e. the low air pressure.

With two billion people boarding a plane annually, the danger venous thrombosis presents should be taken very seriously, says Professor Frits R. Rosendaal, from the Leiden University Medical Center (NL), at the European Hematology Association Congress meeting in Vienna from 7 to 10 June 2007. A recent WHO project (the WRIGHT, or WHO Research Into Global Hazards of Travel, project), the results of which are about to be made public, has shown that air travel is associated with a two- to threefold increased risk of developing blood clots in the legs, (deep vein thrombosis or DVT) or in the lungs (pulmonary embolism or PE)."

The risks of developing thrombosis when traveling are higher for people with certain common abnormalities in the blood, for women who use birth control pills, or people who use sleeping pills on a flight, as well as for people who are very tall, very short, or overweight", Professor Rosendaal says. "There may be a 50 to 100-fold increase in risk for people with combinations of those factors."