Hospice is comprehensive care for people who are terminally ill. Hospice includes pain management, counseling, respite care, prescription drugs, inpatient care, and outpatient care, as well as services for the terminally ill person’s family. Understanding the Medicare hospice benefit can help you avoid Medicare fraud while you or your loved one receives the most appropriate care during this difficult time. The tips below are from the Medicare Minutes program.

Step 1: Understand how and when Medicare covers the hospice benefit.

You must meet the following criteria to receive the Medicare hospice benefit:

• The hospice medical director and your doctor certify that you have a terminal illness, meaning that your life expectancy is six months or less;
• Elect to have Medicare pay for palliative care treatments; and
• Receive care from a Medicare-certified hospice agency.

Hospice services are always covered under Original Medicare, even if you had a Medicare Advantage plan before electing hospice.

Choosing to elect hospice is a significant and private decision between you, your family, and your primary care physician. Most hospice providers provide very important and beneficial care to people with Medicare, but a small minority tries to recruit patients who clearly lack a terminal condition.

Beware of any hospice that says it provides curative care or that offers gifts or other payments if you elect to receive hospice.

Ask your dentist about the best ways to reduce your risks and limit dental decay.   To prevent your teeth from decaying, you can do three things:    Strengthen your teeth’s defenses with fluoride, sealants and agents that contain calcium and phosphate ions.   Have your dentist or dental hygienist place sealants on your back teeth.      Reduce the number of bacteria in your mouth.

Researchers analyzed data from international studies that included 1,000 esophageal cancer patients, 2,000 Barrett’s esophagus patients and thousands of people without either condition.

Men shorter than 5 feet 7 inches and women shorter than 5 feet 2 were about twice as likely to have Barrett’s esophagus or esophageal cancer than men who were taller than 6 feet and women who were taller than 5 feet 5.

Medicare per capita spending for beneficiaries with traditional Medicare over age 65 peaks among beneficiaries in their mid-90s and then declines, and it varies by type of service with advancing age. Between 2000 and 2011 the peak age for Medicare per capita spending increased from 92 to 96. In contrast, among decedents, Medicare per capita spending declines with age.

Medicine has recently been at the forefront of technological advancement and telemedicine is the latest, and potentially most significant, area of advancement when it comes to access and quality of care. Telemedicine is the use of technology and electronic communications across distances to expand access to care, enhance care options for patients, improve patient and provider education, and streamline health administration processes.

Before patients are diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, they often experience biological or psychological symptoms such as depression, according to a new study. Results were published online in Neurology.

This study included 2,416 adults who were at least 50 years old and had no cognitive problems when they first visited an Alzheimer’s disease center in the United States. Researchers gathered the information from the National Alzheimer’s Coordinating Center Uniform Data Set from September 2005 to March 2013.

As a patient, one of the most tenuous experiences is being admitted to a hospital. In the course of treating the condition and heading toward recovery, patients are often seen by several different providers – many of whom have never seen the patient before.

In addition, patients undergo various procedures and are subjected to transfers between units or even facilities. Upon discharge, patients and their families receive various, often complicated instructions, which they are expected to retain and then carry out at home.  As an example, a typical Medicare patient could be given a handful of new prescriptions to fill along with educational materials related to the condition, reminders of appointments to make within the coming weeks, and various referrals.

When patients and their doctors have multiple care options for a health problem, solid evidence is the compass that guides them toward the best decision. Yet despite amazing advances in medical research, patients and their doctors far too often must make critical choices without good evidence, basing their decisions on a combination of anecdotes and educated guesswork.

This is why the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) was created: to fund more studies that help patients, families, and clinicians make better-informed health decisions by comparing which clinical options will be most effective given their individual needs and preferences.

My fourteen year old son needs to have braces but my current dental insurance plan does not provide orthodontic benefits.

Answer:  There are still many good dental insurance plan that provide benefits for orthodontic services.  You can buy another dental insurance plan that will help you with the cost for braces on your son without canceling your current dental plan if you do not want to.  I suggests that you review any HMO dental insurance plan options available. Generally on HMO dental insurance plan you do not have any long term waiting periods that many PPO dental insurance plan will for orthodontic care.

 There don’t appear to be any companies left selling home care only long term care insurance policies in California. In fact, many of the companies selling long-term care insurance have withdrawn from the market, although some are still some left and selling in California. I suggest you contact an agent in your community who has taken the required training to sell long-term care insurance and work with him or her to find a package of benefits that will wrap around what you already have. I agree with your assessment to keep what you already have and supplement it in some way. It doesn’t seem reasonable to forfeit the premiums you have already invested in this policy if it provides at least some benefits for future care.

It’s important to know that today most long-term care starts at home, and many people never move beyond home care to institutional care.  But, institutional care can be an impoverishing event so having benefits for it is still very necessary.

One option, depending on the company that issued your previous coverage, is to ask if that company would be willing to upgrade you to a more current policy and give you some premium credit for what you have already paid.  In California, if a company does that and it’s the same company that issued the previous policy they may be required under state law to give you such a credit.  You’d have to pass medical underwriting, but you would have to for a home care only policy anyway if it was available.

You can go on the insurance department website and look for companies selling in California. Click on sample rates and fill in the information to get a look at what is being sold. You can also contact your nearest Health Insurance Counseling and Advocacy Program (HICAP) for free, local help.  They won’t be able to recommend a company or agent, but they can help with information to help you make a decision.

Questions: I have dry mouth and it has been really bugging me and I not sure how to get rid of having dry mouth issues.

Answer: There are a few simple things you can do to help relive dry mouth such as:

* Drinking more water

* Chewing sugar free gum

* Artificial saliva

* Use of a humidifier

* Eating waterlogged snacks as celery sticks

* Also talk to your doctor and dentist in order to see what else can be done

Invisible braces know as ‘iBraces (not to be confused with invisaligns) are the only braces that are 100 percent customized bracket available on the market today designed to work behind the teeth so that no one will know that you are wearing braces unless you tell them.  iBraces are available for both teens and adults.

Below is a recent alert from the IRS on 5 easy ways to identify phone scams. Medicare and other health insurance related phone scams have similar elements and can often be spotted by the same 5 tips the IRS provides below. If you or someone you know suspects a Medicare or other health insurance scam, call our Senior Medicare Patrol at 855-613-7080.

Scam Phone Calls Continue; IRS Identifies Five Easy Ways to Spot Suspicious Calls

The Internal Revenue Service issued a consumer alert today providing taxpayers with additional tips to protect themselves from telephone scam artists calling and pretending to be with the IRS.

These callers may demand money or may say you have a refund due and try to trick you into sharing private information. These con artists can sound convincing when they call. They may know a lot about you, and they usually alter the caller ID to make it look like the IRS is calling. They use fake names and bogus IRS identification badge numbers. If you don’t answer, they often leave an “urgent” callback request.

“These telephone scams are being seen in every part of the country, and we urge people not to be deceived by these threatening phone calls,” IRS Commissioner John Koskinen said. “We have formal processes in place for people with tax issues. The IRS respects taxpayer rights, and these angry, shake-down calls are not how we do business.”

The IRS reminds people that they can know pretty easily when a supposed IRS caller is a fake. Here are five things the scammers often do but the IRS will not do. Any one of these five things is a tell-tale sign of a scam. The IRS will never:

1. Call you about taxes you owe without first mailing you an official notice.

2. Demand that you pay taxes without giving you the opportunity to question or appeal the amount they say you owe.

3. Require you to use a specific payment method for your taxes, such as a prepaid debit card.

4. Ask for credit or debit card numbers over the phone.

5. Threaten to bring in local police or other law-enforcement groups to have you arrested for not paying.

If you get a phone call from someone claiming to be from the IRS and asking for money, here’s what you should do:

• If you know you owe taxes or think you might owe, call the IRS at 1.800.829.1040. The IRS workers can help you with a payment issue.
• If you know you don’t owe taxes or have no reason to believe that you do, report the incident to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) at 1.800.366.4484 or at www.tigta.gov.
• If you’ve been targeted by this scam, also contact the Federal Trade Commission and use their “FTC Complaint Assistant” at FTC.gov. Please add “IRS Telephone Scam” to the comments of your complaint.

Remember, too, the IRS does not use email, text messages or any social media to discuss your personal tax issue. For more information on reporting tax scams, go to www.irs.gov and type “scam” in the search box.

Additional information about tax scams are available on IRS social media sites, including YouTube

Invisalign aligners are made through a combination of orthodontic expertise and 3-D computer imaging technology. Teen aligners include a compliance indicator to report the amount of time the aligners are worn.  One major benefit of invisaligns is that they are convenient. Invisalign provides a road-map that leads to a great-looking smile without looking like you are wearing braces. Invisaligns provides cutting-edge technology with minimal interference to your comfort and lifestyle that can be applied no matter what your age!

With invisaligns an orthodontic dentist can offer an invisible way to straighten your teeth.  An orthodontic dentist achieves results little by little week by week until your teeth are straightened to the final position prescribed on your upper and or lower arches.  The Invisalign process uses advanced computer technology to finely calibrate a sequence of aligners for your teeth, which could mean as few as 10 or as many as 30 aligners.