Raising Awareness of Medicare Member Rights Among Seniors and Caregivers in California

Many Medicare recipients do not understand their health care rights. Lumetra, formerly California's Medicare quality improvement organization, developed a multifaceted outreach program to increase beneficiary awareness of its services and of the right to file quality-of-care complaints and discharge appeals. Layered outreach activities to Medicare members and their caregivers in 2 targeted counties consisted of paid media, direct mailings, community outreach, and online marketing. Calls to Lumetra's helpline and visits to its Web site--measures of beneficiary awareness of case review services--increased by 106% and 1214%, respectively, in the targeted counties during the 4-month outreach period. Only small increases occurred in nontargeted counties. Increases in quality-of-care complaints and discharge appeal rates were detected during a longer follow-up period.