Blair Senior Services, Inc. Seeking Volunteers for Medicare Open Enrollment Period
Blair Senior Services, Inc. is searching for volunteers to assist them during the Medicare Open Enrollment Period, which will be from October 15, 2019 to December 7, 2019. During this time, Medicare beneficiaries will be able to make changes to their Medicare coverage or enroll in Medicare for the first time. Blair Senior Services, Inc. offers the APPRISE Program, a free health insurance counseling program designed to assist Pennsylvanians with Medicare by bettering understanding their health insurance options.
This Open Enrollment period, however, has a new requirement: “Before consumers will be able to receive Medicare counseling through APPRISE, they will need to create a Medicare account,” said Melissa Hey, APPRISE Coordinator at Blair Senior Services, Inc. “It’s mandated that everyone who wants to receive Medicare counseling must have a Medicare account, and we are anticipating many consumers will not have one and will not feel comfortable making an account,” said Hey. “I’d like to recruit computer savvy individuals who have a basic knowledge of how to create a username and password, and who will be able to make the consumers feel comfortable through the whole process.”
To become a volunteer for the Medicare Open Enrollment Period, limited training will become available and will be able to be completed at home at the volunteer’s convenience. Once completed, Blair Senior Services, Inc. will be notified and interested parties can continue on the path of becoming a volunteer.
“Having volunteers help us with this process will save us a lot of time and will make the whole program run smoothly,” Hey said. “We’re expecting that this will take approximately 15 minutes per person to get the profile created, and this is before we can even start talking to the consumer about Medicare,” Hey said. “So having someone there to assist the consumers beforehand will be fantastic.”
To learn more information on becoming a volunteer for this Open Enrollment Period, please contact Melissa Hey, APPRISE Coordinator, at (814) 946-1235 Ext. 1016.
