Senior Medicare Patrol Michigan Program to empower and assist Medicare beneficiaries to prevent, detect, and report healthcare fraud, errors, and abuse through outreach, counseling, and education. - The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS), in partnership with community partners, will administer the Senior Medicare Patrol (SMP) program for Michigan’s 2.4 million Medicare beneficiaries. Our goal is to empower and assist Medicare beneficiaries to prevent, detect, and report healthcare fraud, errors, and abuse through outreach, counseling, and education. The objectives are: 1) Provide group education and one-on-one assistance to Medicare beneficiaries on a statewide basis, with a specific emphasis on those with greatest economic and social need. 2) Recruit, train, and retain a diverse, sufficient, effective, and representative workforce equipped to provide high-quality education and one-on-one support. 3) Assess SMP results through operational and quality measures. 4) Position SMP to nimbly and effectively respond to changes in the programmatic landscape. Anticipated outcomes include: 1) Create a regional network of SMP teams, serving the state and use geo-routed call data as indicator of contacts. 2) Require the SMP TRAX training curriculum for team members and track training qualifications. 3) Expand awareness of SMP as measured by innovative partnerships and outreach methods. 4) Gather data on participant satisfaction surveys to measure awareness and effectiveness. And 5) Assess outreach campaigns, partnerships and individual contacts using contact data and referral data to resolve issues. Products include a state SMP event calendar, a quarterly SMP newsletter highlighting activities and team members, and expanded referral capacity through new partnerships with agencies serving older adults, membership on Advisory Council, and shared referral resources. Through increased community partnerships, we will expand capacity, and ensure use of national resources, materials, metrics, and achieve SMP mission.
