Medicare Changes Will Improve Care for Alzheimer Patients

April 2, 2002

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Advocates for Alzheimer's patients are praising a change in Medicare regulations as a step toward improving their care.

"The new policy should begin to eliminate the discrimination people with Alzheimer's had been experiencing," Leslie Fried of the Alzheimer's Association's Medicare Advocacy Project said in a statement on the organization's Web site.

The policy essentially says carriers that review claims for the government can no longer code their computers automatically to deny speech, occupational, physical and other therapies to Alzheimer's patients.

About 40 percent of Medicare carriers had their computers set to deny coverage of those therapies immediately, because there was a belief that treatment would not benefit patients with an incurable disease like Alzheimer's.

Patients could have appealed the denial, but that often was a long and cumbersome process, said Tom Scully, head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

"You could get it paid, but you'd have to fight for it," Scully said Monday.

Advocates complained that the earlier policy was discriminatory.

"We agreed and said this kind of blanket denial wasn't appropriate," Scully said. "We shouldn't be making sweeping judgments that if someone has Alzheimer's they can't benefit."

Officials at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services quietly made the change in September after months of lobbying by advocacy groups.

Copyright 2002 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.