Speaker: Deanna Alexander, O.D.
How will recent changes in Medicare Advantage rules better help beneficiaries and doctors of optometry?
Deanna Alexander, O.D.: My office participates in both traditional and Medicare Advantage plans. And so we see many of those patients, our staff spends considerable amount of time talking to patients and explaining their benefits, both what's covered and not covered, especially when it comes to glasses and contact lenses. We're hopeful that these changes will increase transparency. So patients understand things better and that helps patients, staff and doctors.
It's a huge job running Medicare and Medicare Advantage. How did AOA get CMS to focus on supplemental vision benefits?
Deanna Alexander, O.D.: The AOA advocacy team has been working the past five years with CMS to educate them on our issues. With Medicare Advantage plans basically using supplemental vision plans as a marketing tool to enroll patients and patients often misunderstand what those benefits are. They don't understand that the provider for a vision plan might be different than the provider for their medical plan through Medicare. And they may not understand actually what their benefits include. So we're excited that CMS has listened to our pleas over the many years and we're hopeful that this will help paients.
For doctors who feel more work needs to be done on Medicare Advantage, how can they make their voices heard?
Deanna Alexander, O.D.: Feedback from doctors in the trenches is important for us to address these issues. Please take the time and go onto the website aoa.org [or email] your issues at stopplanabuses@aoa.org. We are interested in any vision plan abuses, health plan concerns. We can't work on problems if we aren't aware of what's happening. So talk to your staff if you hear something from patients that have told them things on the phone, Certainly if you're hearing things from patients, that's very important. So take a few minutes and do that. We want to be aware of what's going on out there. That's how we learn and can work to advocate to fix the problems.
