Senior Medicare Patrol Projects - Empowering Seniors to Prevent Health Care Fraud

The Senior Medicare Patrol (SMP) Program includes 54 project grants in all states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands. SMP projects have made great progress in recruiting and training volunteers on Medicare errors, fraud and abuse. These volunteers empower and assist Medicare beneficiaries, their families, and caregivers to prevent, detect, and report health care fraud, errors, and abuse through outreach, counseling, and education. SMP projects actively work to disseminate SMP fraud prevention and identification information through the media, outreach campaigns, community events and also working with beneficiaries who present with complex cases such as compromised Medicare numbers. Through these efforts, beneficiaries contact the projects with inquiries and complaints regarding Medicare, Medicaid and other health care or related consumer issues. With this funding opportunity ACL anticipates awarding up to 54 new cooperative agreements using two separate funding streams. One source of funding is for the base SMP project award using Older Americans Act funding and a second is for additional SMP activities using funds from the Health Care Fraud and Abuse Control Act (HCFAC) funds. Applicants will be required to submit a single comprehensive budget outlining their project activities under each funding stream. ACL anticipates awarding 54 new SMP cooperative agreements to be awarded using the following breakout: Base Award - Older Americans Act funds: at a federal share of up $180,000 per budget year for all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico Base Award – Older Americans Act funds: at a federal share of up to $75,000 per budget year for Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands HCFAC Funds: will be allocated to successful applicants based on the total Medicare beneficiary population in each state and the amount of frontier area in each state or territory. All awards will subject to the availability of federal funds and have a project period of up to three years. One SMP grant will be awarded to cover each state, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands.