Perhaps you’ve been waiting a while and you want to know the status of your Kaiser Permanente Application for Individual and Family health insurance coverage. Applications have been taking on average 3 to 6 weeks for underwriters to process. The processing time of your application depends on several factors.

1. Did you apply online or with a paper application?

Paper applications are taking a week or two longer to process. They must first be entered into the electronic system before they are seen by underwriters. This added step can hold up the processing of your application for weeks.

2. Did you include prior doctor information?

Applicants who do not include prior doctor information may end up waiting longer for their applications to be processed. When this information is not included, Kaiser underwriters must do detective work to find the information. Connecting with former doctors and getting medical records is hard enough, but when they do not have the doctor’s contact information, it really slows them down.

3. Do you have many pre-existing health conditions?

Applications with more pre-existing health conditions are simply more complicated to process. At times, underwriters have to seek additional information from clients or former doctors in order to know how serious these conditions are and whether or not they are cause for denial.

If you are waiting to find out the status of your Kaiser Permanente health insurance application, do not cancel your existing coverage until you know that you are approved. If you find out days or weeks after your effective date, you may want to move your effective date up a month, so you do not end up paying for coverage you did not actually receive.