Medicare focus changes sought

Ninety-five percent of Medicare funding is being used to treat people after they become sick, say officials from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, while only one out of 10 Medicare beneficiaries access its full scope of preventative services.

“This needs to change,” said Jack Cheevers, communications director for the Southwest region of CMS. “If we don't take action now, costs associated with long-term disease and disability will balloon as baby boomers age.”

Medicare offers services aimed at combating chronic disease, including screenings for diabetes, cholesterol, colorectal cancer, breast cancer, cervical cancer, prostate cancer and glaucoma. Medicare also pays for flu and pneumonia shots, bone mass measurements for osteoporosis, smoking cessation counseling and training for diabetes self-management.

Yet less than 35 percent of beneficiaries have ever had a bone mass measurement. Only 33 percent of female beneficiaries had a Pap smear in the past year, and less than 59 percent have ever checked for colon cancer.

And although 200,000 Americans are hospitalized annually for flu or its complications, Cheevers said, less than 65 percent of Medicare beneficiaries got a flu shot in the past year - which are free under Medicare.

To combat the prevention gap, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is launching a nationwide campaign to inform seniors of available preventative health services. HHS will conduct a bus tour and will partner events in 48 states with a campaign that will reach California, Arizona and Nevada in late August.

“We need to make sure people understand the preventative services covered under Medicare because they're greatly expanded from what they used to be,” said Jeff Flick, regional administrator for CMS's Southwest region. “We need to tell the story about why these preventative benefits are so important, and what it can mean to the quality of life and the quality of health care.”

Flick said it's one thing to tell somebody that Medicare offers flu shots, but another thing to say there's almost 200,000 people hospitalized every year because of flu complications and another 36,000 that die from complications.

“We know that if people take the time to get a flu shot, to take the time to get their cardiovascular and diabetic screenings, that we can prevent these illnesses from happening,” Flick said. “When we do that, we're not only improving the health of these individuals. We're also saving taxpayer dollars.”

If more people used Medicare's preventative services, the health care provider's future might look brighter and health care costs might drop lower.

“It will put Medicare on a better financial footing for the future,” Flick said. “We have large numbers of baby boomers that will start coming into the Medicare program about three years from now, so anything we do for Medicare will become vitally important in the future.”

The Southwest region, which includes California, Arizona, Nevada and Hawaii, is in a unique position because it has more ethnic groups that don't always access preventative health services equally, Flick said.

Fifty-nine percent of whites have been vaccinated for pneumonia, for example, while only 38 percent of blacks and 30 percent of Latinos had the vaccination. While diabetes strikes 14 percent of the white population, the disease has higher rates among blacks and Latinos.

“It's a bigger issue for Region 9 (the Southwest region) because it has a higher Hispanic population than the rest of the country,” Flick said. “It's even more important for these populations to take advantage of the programs.”

source:www.mohavedailynews.com