New Rules for Medicare: Policy and Practice

Join us for a valuable free presentation at 10:30 am on October 10, 2019, at Montgomery Place in Hyde Park. During this hour-long program Deborah Hart, one of Chicago’s leading health-care advocates and CEO of Montgomery Place, will explain the new Medicare provisions and take your questions on all things Medicare-related.

Complimentary Valet parking will be available at:
Montgomery Place, 5550 South Shore Drive.

Deborah Hart has more than 30 years’ experience in the senior living industry. “In that time, I’ve seen other major changes in Medicare, and I understand the government’s goals. But I then have seen the practical implications for the provider community and for the end customer, the patient. And anytime we go into this sort of change, behavior modification has to occur all around. Specifically, patients will need to develop a different set of expectations about the services they will receive.”

In with the new

The biggest Medicare change concerns a new reimbursement pricing plan—the Patient Driven Payment Model, or PDPM. CCRCs such as Montgomery Place receive reimbursement from the government for providing rehab and skilled nursing care. Until now, the government calculated payments for these services primarily on the basis of days spent receiving such therapy.

One size does not fit all

For some people, that’s an inadequate measure of care. Many people have a confluence of conditions that require more than physical, occupational and speech therapy—care that does not fit neatly into those areas and was thus ineligible for reimbursement.

This one-size-fits-all model has limited the number of communities that could afford to treat therapy patients who also had chronic conditions, and in theory, the PDPM would dramatically expand options for Medicare recipients.