Transplants: blood test to test for rejection

Hi @gingerw 😊 It's great to hear from you! Thanks so much for jumping into the conversation. Yes, that's the test! It's Allosure by CareDx. I had a mobile lab technician come to my house too. Do you remember what your husband's result numbers were. For kidney transplant patients it says the median average stable patient is .21 and anything over 1.0 is showing concern. My last result was .18 which was classified as stable.
I am excited that your husband was part of the study. It sounds like Allosure is getting a lot of attention from the transplant community which is wonderful!

@hello1234 I'll check with him to see what the numbers were. What had us so concerned, was the call came from out-of-the-blue, scheduling the mobile nurse. No warning from the doctor. So we called in a panic, not knowing if something had showed up in labwork that we weren't privy to. From what we gathered, his doctor was signed on to supply patients for the testing. Didn't give us an option to decline, but Bill wouldn't have anyways!

About 1.5 years after his transplant, he had to go through emergency testing, as the recipient of the second kidney from same deceased donor showed Hep C. Turns out it wasn't the donor, but the recipient with an issue. Bill was okay. And I went through a vaccine series to make sure, too. Can you believe my dr wasn't going to do that; I had to threaten to take him to the administration of the hospital!
Ginger

@gingerw It sounds like you both had a series of scary occurrences. I can only imagine being told that mobile labs were scheduled to come to my house and I had no idea why. They definitely should have told you the details of the study along with an opt-out just in case your husband didn't want to participate. The other incident with the Hep C sounds very concerning too. How is your blood pressure doing after incidents like that? Not good, I am sure!

Hi @scottij 😊
Happy New Year and I hope all is well! I remember you mentioned that in the beginning you had some challenges getting the health insurance company to pay for your CareDx Allosure blood tests. Well, it looks like my insurance company is rejecting coverage too. Do you remember how you finally got the test approved? Did your doctor get involved or did you supply certain documentation, or something else? It looks like I need to begin the appeal process and I would love to know your process since you had some success.
Many thanks!!

Hello @hello1234 !

I really did not do much. I was notified by my nurse team that insurance may not approve but they would handle it. I then got a letter from Mayo reassuring me that I would not be responsible. And if they could not resolve it they would "write it off" I did ask how they were going to approach it and they said that the Care DX test was safer than surgery to get samples for analysis. I think that is the approach they used.

I just returned home from Bahrain, island nation in the Persian Gulf where my son is stationed in the Navy. Wonderful trip though I was totally masked during air travel.

Best always,
s!

Thanks so much @scottij 😊
Good info! By the way, your trip sounds wonderful. I love to hear that you had such an exciting travel opportunity to see your son. (It definitely makes me feel like I should start to expand my horizons!) Thank you again for jumping in to help me regarding my Allosure insurance challenge. I am going to reach out to my local nephrologist who suggested the test to see if he may be able to assist too. Welcome back home and keep enjoying!

When I first started. with Allomap, my insurance company denied coverage as well. I called Care DX directly and asked a few pertinent questions and was told that they would never charge a patient for this important blood draw. They also commented on how slow the insurance plans were to pick up the tab for this test.
Now I use both Allomap and Allosure and I don't worry about it.
Perhaps speaking directly to them will ease your mind.
Ellen

Thank you so much @estrada53 😊
That's a good idea to call CareDx directly. Do you have a private commercial insurance company policy or do you have Medicare for your health insurance?