Obtaining referrals for specialist appts scheduled before new marketplace plan (NY)

Since this sub has very helpful mods, and I bet this is not a rare scenario that I’m dealing with, I thought I would turn to you all to make sure I am handling this properly.

My marketplace plan in NY was discontinued at the end of 2022 (l am guessing because it was a new plan in 2022 and did not turn out to be profitable), so I had to pick a new plan which is active as of January 1, 2023.

My old plan did not require referrals to see a specialist (which I am aware is very uncommon for NY marketplace plans), but my new one does. I am in treatment for a long standing chronic disease for which I have an endocrinologist appointment scheduled on January 27, and a spine injury, for which I have a follow up appointment with a spine surgeon on January 10.

These appointments had to be scheduled before the new plan became active, because otherwise I would be waiting until April to see these specialists. However, the appointments were not scheduled with a referral from my PCP.

I luckily have an appointment with my PCP this week, where I’m going to have an opportunity to request these referrals for these appointments. My plan, which I am coming here to get feedback on from the experts, is currently to (1) request referrals from my PCP for both of those appointments, both of which she is aware of and in fact she helped me find both of the specialists anyway, and (2) call the offices of both of the specialists and somehow ask them to add the referral information to my upcoming appointment at the same time as I call and update my insurance information for the appointment with them.

Is this a good plan? Am I likely to run into issues? Is there maybe a way to do this digitally (i.e., through MyChart)?

Thank you for helping me prepare!