(Spirit Lake)– Lakes Regional Healthcare will hold a special event in May for those soon to be eligible or already on Medicare. Jennifer Gustafson, Vice President of Marketing and Retail Services at LRH says they’ll be holding a “Welcome to Medicare” program at 6:30 pm Tuesday, May 16th at the hospital. She says the information will be provided by SHIIP counselors…
“SHIIP stands for the Senior Health Insurance Information Program which is a service of the state of Iowa. We have a number of SHIIP counselors here that basically help people enroll in their Medicare Part D benefits every year and figure out which plan is the best for them. They go through a lot of education, a lot of training, to know all about the different plans for Medicare eligible people to know what is the best plan, and not just about Medicare. It could be about other plans as well. And so this is really, they save a lot of money for people every year and it’s something that we have literally hundreds of people utilize their services every October and November of every year, and this is another service that they provide in the spring.”
Gustafson says the topics will include Medicare Part A and Part B benefits, prescription drug, or Part D benefits, Medicare Advantage plans, Medicare supplement insurance and identifying Medicare fraud, errors and abuse. She says the May 16th program is free but those planning to attend need to sign up ahead of time…
“They need to do that by May 12th and they need to call 336-6698. The reason for that is because they need to order, the SHIIP counselors, need to order so many packets from the SHIIP offices in Des Moines and so we need to know how many to order ahead of time.”
Gustafson says the May 16th session will run about two hours.
