New Jersey SHIP to provide education and assistance to Medicare-eligible individuals, their families and caregivers inorder to make informed health insurance decisions. - The State Health Insurance Assistance Program (SHIP), under the direction of the New Jersey Division of Aging Services, provides free, unbiased, and comprehensive information and counseling on Medicare through a statewide network of 350 certified counselors at 21 locally based SHIP agencies, a toll-free NJ Medicare Information and Referral Hotline (800-792-8820), and a NJ SHIP website where detailed NJ Medicare plan information is posted and updated each year (www.aging.nj.gov). NJ SHIP aligns its goals with the ACL mission for SHIP, focusing on strategies that promote service excellence, capacity building, operational excellence, and innovation. Goals are proposed. • #1: To consistently and confidentially provide locally based, accurate, objective, and comprehensive information and assistance about Medicare to beneficiaries in New Jersey, their caregivers, or advocates. •#2: To promote awareness, knowledge, and visibility of the SHIP program throughout NJ via various channels. •#3: To recruit, train, and retain a diverse, sufficient, and effective counseling workforce at various administration levels. • #4: To develop and strengthen the program structure and organization, including policies, processes, and procedures, to enable effective and efficient operations. Objectives and interventions outlined in the proposal will result in the following outcomes over the grant period: 1) one-on-one counseling to at least 40,000 clients in Year One, reaching an additional 1,000 clients in each of following four years; 2) 500 public education and outreach events annually, reaching at least 35,000 people per year; and 3) the production of new and updated products including annual detailed charts of various Medicare insurance products specific to NJ; mentoring guidelines; counselor evaluation tools; and advertising materials in both traditional and social media.
