Raising awareness of Medicare member rights among seniors and caregivers in California.
Many Medicare recipients do not understand their health care rights. Lumetra, formerly California's Medicare quality improvement organization, developed a multifaceted outreach program to increase beneficiary awareness of its services and of the right to file quality-of-care complaints and discharge appeals. Layered outreach activities to Medicare members and their caregivers in 2 targeted counties consisted of paid media, direct mailings, community outreach, and online marketing. Calls to Lumetra's helpline and visits to its Web site--measures of beneficiary awareness of case review services--increased by 106% and 1214%, respectively, in the targeted counties during the 4-month outreach period. Only small increases occurred in nontargeted counties. Increases in quality-of-care complaints and discharge appeal rates were detected during a longer follow-up period.
Olson
Rebecca
R
Lumetra, One Sansome St, San Francisco, CA 94104, USA. rolson@lumetrasolutions.com
Grossman
Ruth M
RM
Fu
Patricia L
PL
Sabogal
Fabio
F
D000368:Aged; D002140:California; D017028:Caregivers / Q000193:education*; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D006293:Health Promotion / Q000191:economics / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D020407:Internet; D008402:Mass Media; D006278:Medicare / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence; D010353:Patient Education as Topic; D028701:Patient Rights; D015397:Program Evaluation; D011787:Quality of Health Care; D014481:United States