Illinois Senior Medicare Patrol Shares Experience and Expertise Nationwide
With the success of the Illinois Senior Medicare Patrol (SMP) team in recruiting volunteers and spreading its fraud prevention message throughout the state, Travis Trumitch, SMP coordinator, has found himself in demand to share methods and successes nationwide. Two of his recent speaking engagements were to SMPs in Hawaii and Kentucky. Unfortunately, perhaps, they were virtual.
Coordinated by AgeOptions, Illinois SMP is celebrating 25 years of empowering consumers throughout the state to prevent, detect and report health care fraud. It has been at the forefront of innovation and outreach in the national SMP network as the SMP staff at AgeOptions works with consumers, state and federal agencies and news organizatons to uncover and prevent fraud.
Travis Trumitch, Illinois Senior Medicare Patrol Coordinator, helped produce this video by the Administration for Community Living.
Click here to see the video and learn more about preventing, detecting and reporting health care fraud, errors and abuse, and to help others.
Some of Travis’ speaking requests came after he presented at a national SMP conference in July with Maria Alvarez of New York SMP on Turning Lemons into Lemonade: Reaching Underserved and Rural Communnities. The presentation focused on Illinois SMP’s Latino outreach, highlighting partnerships with the Consulate of Mexico and Latino organizations developed by SMP team member Jesus Armando Enriquez.
SMPs across the country reached out to Travis and his team after the presentation to learn more about how to reach Latino and rural populations. On October 30, Travis spoke on that topic to the Morehead (Kentucky) State University SMP. On October 27 he spoke to all volunteers and employees of the SMP program in Hawaii on how to manage their team remotely and engage volunteers during the pandemic.
The Administration for Community Living (ACL) asked Travis to chair a subcommittee for Managing Your Team and Program Remotely. He and a team of eight SMP, MIPPA (Medicare Improvements for Patients and Providers Act) and SHIP (State Health Insurance Assistance Programs) directors created documents that will be distributed to all 54 SMP programs across the US. In September, Travis spoke to all 54 SMP directors, and ACL and state health insurance commission personnel on what they determined to be best practices for managing teams and programs remotely.
Recognition for Illinois SMP, Travis says, “stems from the success we have had as a program. We are always ahead of the curve when it comes to innovation. Jason (Echols, former Illinois SMP coordinator and now AgeOptions manager of Special Initiatives and Fraud Prevention) gave me a great start to continue the success we have had.”
