Medicare Chronic Care Management--anyone with experience? Good? Bad?

Parent Cafe
1

Our local paper has an article on Medicare Chronic Care Management (CCM), which is available to people enrolled in Medicare or both Medicare and Medicaid AND having 2 or more conditions such as:

Asthma, atrial fibrillation, autism spectrum disorder, chronic kidney disease, COPD, depression, heart failure, hepatitis, hypertension, HIV/AIDS, ischemic heart disease, osteoporosis, psychotic disorders including schizophrenia, and stroke, or other chronic conditions.

CCM services may include:

At least 20 minutes/month CCM services

Personalized assistance to create care plan

Coordination of care among pharmacy, specialists, testing centers, hospitals, etc

Phone check ins between. Isitd

24/7 emergency access to healthcare professional

Expert assistance in setting and meeting health goals

Patients are responsible for their regular deductibles and copays.

More info at go.cmd.gov/CCM or call toll-free 800-MEDICARE.

Just wondering if anyone had tried this CCM and what their experiences have been, good, bad, or neutral. I plan to tell the folks at the COPD support group about it if they are interested, as I’m sure most have at least 2 health conditions.

2

I don’t have personal experience with this program but looked it up after reading your post. Here’s an article for 2015. It seems that physician participation might be an issue (that is, finding a doctor who does participate). http://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20151017/MAGAZINE/310179987

3

We will be having a SHIP (Medicare volunteer) speaker at an upcoming meeting next month. I’ve asked if we can talk about this during her presentation, since the folks in the group tend to have several chronic health conditions.

4

Here’s another article about it which says altho the CCM could be worth a lot to providers, as if the date the article was written, fewer than half the providers who submitted CCM claims had them approved and paid. Ugh!

http://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/chronic-care-management-cms-built-it-did-providers-come =((