(Spirit Lake)– Lakes Regional Healthcare and the Senior Health Insurance Information Program, or SHIIP, are once again teaming up to assist Medicare recipients.
The open enrollment period for Part D drug coverage and Medicare Advantage plans gets underway October 15th and runs through December 7th. Jennifer Gustafson, Vice President of Marketing at Lakes Regional Healthcare, says they have five SHIIP counselors to assist Medicare recipients with what can be a complicated process…
“And every year Medicare Part D and Medicare Advantage can change their premiums, deductibles, co-payments, benefits, and the drugs they cover. You will always want to know what plans you should sign up for for the coming year. So to help with that, we have a number of SHIIP, we have five SHIIP counselors. SHIIP stands for Senior Health Insurance and Information Program, and we have five SHIIP counselors that meet with people to help them identify what plans they should be in for 2027.”
Even though the enrollment period doesn’t open until October 15th, Gustafson says they’re encouraging Medicare recipients to sign up for appointments now…
“We are taking appointments already for open enrollment, and believe me they fill up so fast. It’s really easy to make an appointment. All you have to do is call 712-336-6698 and leave a message. Then we have five additional SHIIP volunteers that are schedulers and they will return your call and schedule the appointment with the counselor, and then the actual appointment is held within Lakes Regional Healthcare, people just have to come in our west entrance, kind of by our ER, our main entrance, door A, and we have offices upstairs that they have these private meetings with, so. And then the counselors will help them out and a lot of times save people money.”
Gustafson adds the SHIIP counselors are specially trained…
“They go to training literally all year long and so they know what all the changes are, what’s covered, what’s not. And so it’s really important that the people who have appointments they bring in their medications so that they really have an idea to know what plan would be the best to cover them at the lowest cost and with the least amount of restrictions.”
Gustafson says the counseling services, which are free and confidential, are available year-round, but she says they get especially busy during the open enrollment period.
