— from Tom Eversole for Orcas Senior Center —
Dr. Mike Alperin, Chief of the UW Medicine Orcas Island Clinic discussed Medicare Annual Wellness Visits with seniors on April 24. These visits allow seniors to discuss health risks and prevention measures with a medical professional. Medicare covers the cost of the visit, and there is no co-pay for the patient.
Dr. Alperin explained that the visit focuses on health promotion and is not a physical exam. The first annual visit is in-depth and may include a consideration of screening tests as well as advance care directives. Seniors who want a physical exam, diagnosis or treatment of existing health problems, should schedule a separate, problem-focused visit, so that billing to Medicare and any supplemental programs is clear and handled successfully. When in doubt about coverage or costs, patients should ask.
We thank Dr. Alperin and UW Clinic staff for their efforts supporting seniors and healthy aging in our community.
Yes AND..
Home Health nurses work in tight collaboration with your Primary Care Provider.
They/we’re specifically trained as the eyes and ears of the medical profession and are available much more frequently than once a year and thus able to catch impending health concerns more timely than a random once-a-year visit and relay them if needed to your PCP. Further we are available to provide ongoing in-home teaching for medication management, specific health skills, home safety, and coordination of care that cannot be done in a rare/short clinic visit. We can see things in a home visit that cannot be seen in the clinic. We don’t give you “white coat syndrome.”
This is a desperately needed aspect of our broken Orcas healthcare system that can avoid and ameliorate unnecessary disease progression and urgent/emergent calls. It is a *normal* part of health management available most everywhere but on Orcas. It is not an offshoot of emergency care, and is a normal collaborative effort within the healthcare professions and one which every medical intern learns to rely on after their bacon has been saved -just once- by an observant nurse. Ask your Doc. I’m that nurse, and can work with him/her seamlessly, confidentially, and without regard to local politics or your finances.
Tom put out a call for participation in anticipation of the ‘Tsunami,’ but healthcare advocacy is:
*THE* Appropriate* Professional* First* Response*.
We have a long long way to go. In other communities, Nurse advocates are the first line of defense recognized in medical research as the nervous system that connects where connections are weak, and broken where patients are at risk. [no joke, see IOM research.] -this is not a commercial message! ..truth.
It is a mystery why our clinics and UW triage do not mention Home Health as a necessary part of a healthy community response to 24/7 healthcare in a rural setting with an aging populace. I’m here, I’m proficient, and I’m ready. Check me out in person .. not as a figment of what you think you’ve heard.. -LeifRN