Helpline

0:00 my name is Sam Carleton I’m a care and
0:02 service coordination supervisor at
0:03 Age Well I supervise several different
0:05 pieces of the care and service
0:06 coordination team including the options
0:08 counselors community health workers and
0:10 the two programs I’ll be talking about
0:11 today which is the State Health
0:13 Insurance Program more commonly known by
0:15 the acronym SHIP as well as the Helpline
0:18 so for starters SHIP is a federally
0:21 funded program designed to help Medicare
0:23 beneficiaries
0:25 figure out the quagmire that is Medicare
0:27 so it helps people deal with enrollment
0:30 periods compare plans
0:32 and really everything under the sun
0:34 related to Medicare we have two
0:36 full-time Medicare staff that generally
0:38 people generally speaking help people
0:39 over the phone the other component of
0:41 ship is that we also offer training
0:45 and
0:46 webinars related to beneficiaries who
0:48 are new to Medicare as well as
0:50 navigating the medicare.gov website and
0:52 the plan finder as well as Medicare
0:54 advantage plans the other program that I
0:56 supervise is the helpline the helpline
0:59 is staffed by four information and
1:01 assistance coordinators commonly called
1:03 I and A at Age Well the I and A staff receive the
1:06 same training as all the care and
1:08 service coordination supervisors so
1:10 they’re familiar with all state benefit
1:11 programs all programs that pertain to
1:14 older Vermonters in the community
1:16 and the other agencies as well their
1:19 role
1:20 is to act as a triage for anything that
1:24 comes into Age Well they either refer
1:25 internally to our services or externally
1:28 to services provided in the community by
1:31 other agencies they
1:32 average between 1,500 and 2,000 calls a
1:35 month
1:36 so they are quite busy my second call
1:38 that I ever received on the Helpline was
1:40 from a French Canadian woman who only
1:43 was looking for which channels on
1:45 Comcast were in French I simply Googled
1:48 that and was able to tell her but I like
1:50 to tell that story in the volunteer
1:51 trainings because it goes to show
1:54 the kind of varied calls that helpline
1:57 staff receive the sort of common calls
1:59 would be related to people looking for
2:02 services of course often it’s for a
2:04 loved one or you know it’s an adult
2:06 child who’s a caregiver who’s sort of
2:07 burned down at the end of the rope and
2:09 not really knowing where to turn those
2:10 are the more common calls however I like
2:13 that one
2:14 story because it really just goes to
2:15 show how
2:16 it can be anything that the Helpline
2:18 staff receives