I’ve been getting a number of calls from Insurance Agents who are concerned that they cannot call their clients to review their Medicare Coverages for 2009 due to the new regulations from CMS.
HERE IS A LINK TO THE MARKETING REGS. mippa_marketing_regs_2009
If you refer to page 17 of the regs (Organizations CAN do the following). You will find on the 4th bullet down the following:
Agents/brokers who enrolled a beneficiary in a plan may call that beneficiary while they are a member of that organization.
This seems pretty clear to me, so I’m advising agents that they can call their clients to discuss their 2009 plan options.
Most likely, there will be a form developed by the various Health Plans which will allow you to document how you arrived at the appointment with the Medicare Beneficiary. I do not believe that the health plans will want to have a copy of this for each enrollment, but YOU WILL WANT TO HAVE THIS FOR YOUR CLIENT FILES.
If CMS audits a Health Plan, they CAN ALSO AUDIT YOUR RECORDS!!
Here is a Generic form I developed. I would recommend that you have this signed, IN ADVANCE, with each and every in-person appointment you conduct. Keep this in your client’s file for future use. I also included an authorization to contact in the future, so you will have a signed blanket authorization in case this regulation is interpreted differently in the future or changed.
I was not able to pull up the authorization form? Can you email me a copy?
Thanks,
Tim