Missoula Aging Services, in partnership with the Montana Area Agencies on Aging and key stakeholders, will build on its experience in outreach and education to Medicare/Medicaid beneficiaries on the issues of fraud, waste and abuse in healthcare. The overall goal is to identify, report, and reduce errors, fraud and abuse within the Medicare and Medicaid systems. The objectives are to: 1) inform and educate ten thousand beneficiaries statewide to identify potential healthcare fraud and abuse through individual and group education sessions; 2) recruit and maintain 100 older adults as educators and advocates for Medicare beneficiaries, their families and the public; 3) plan and facilitate five annual healthcare (Medicare/Medicaid) fraud prevention community education programs with relevant state, national and local agencies and organizations; and 4) produce a guide to track and resolve complex issues and simple inquiries.
Expected outcomes of this project are to: 1) achieve a higher level of understanding by beneficiaries, empowering them to identify and report healthcare waste, fraud and abuse; 2) increase volunteer work and training hours; 3) ensure successful integration into the statewide healthcare fraud network fostering program visibility and consistency; and 4) increase the number of complex inquiries, simple inquiries and dollar amount of issues referred for further action. The products from this project are: semi-annual reports as well as a final report; Montana specific SMP flyers and websites; a New-To-Medicare class; a template for Regional Fraud Summits; ads and articles for publication; a professional guide that improves both the efficiency and quality of results from volunteer efforts; abstracts for conferences; promotional materials produced with other state entities and media campaigns.