For those of you who could not attend the Medicare & USC Senior Care Panel, here is a video of the presentation given by our expert speaker, Aileen Harper, Center for Health Care Rights executive director, about changes in 2020 Medicare Part D drug coverage benefits and costs sharing, availability of Medicare Part D drug plans in LA County, and how to use the Medicare drug plan tool to select a plan. The USC Senior Care updates and future plans slide presentation is also included down here: 2020 USC Senior Care Slides.
The USC School of Pharmacy also hosted individual free personalized, one-on-one sessions with PharmD students to assist retirees with choosing a Medicare Part D Plan. Medicare Part D is the drug benefit for Medicare eligible recipients. USC pharmacy faculty, residents and students personally walked retirees through the online Medicare Part D Plan Finder tool and answered questions about Medicare and medications. Every year they save the retirees cumulatively, thousands of dollars and sometimes catch dangerous drug interactions. This year we had 55 students and 3 pharmacists participate in the event over the 4 days, which is an amazing amount of student power! In addition to this, two of our student organizations, Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy (AMCP) and the American Society of Consultant Pharmacists (ASCP) helped coordinate the event. The data from the event is shown below:
| Participants | 59 |
| Total number changed plans | 28 |
| Total Cost Savings | $15,919.35 |
| Range | $91 – 1642.95 |
| Average savings | $568.55 |