Do you help your clients with their Prescription Drug Plans each year? If so, here’s a time saving tip to help you save their list of prescriptions for future reference.
UPDATE: The Medicare.gov Plan Finder tool was revamped in October 2019. This overhaul no longer allows you to store client drug lists, so this video no longer applies. If clients create an account, they can store their own drug lists for future years, but agents won't have access to that information unless their client signs into their account.
We've updated our Part D Cheat Sheet and have put out an article about how to tackle the changes.
Video Transcript
If you’re not already familiar with the Medicare.gov website, you should visit and look around, as there’s lots of helpful information there, and it’s likely that your clients may visit it, so it’s good to know what they’re seeing.
For our purposes, we’re going to choose the “Find Health & Drug Plans” button. Next, we’ll see a General Search section, where we’ll enter the client’s zip code.
Now we get to Step 1 of 4, which asks us to choose how we get our coverage, and whether we get state help. For simplicity, just choose “I don’t know” for both questions, then press Continue.
Enter Your Client’s Drugs
In Step 2, we enter the name of your client’s drugs. Start typing in the drug field and it will attempt to auto-fill the field if a matching drug is found.
So I’ll start typing the word Simvastatin and it finds it. Then we need to choose the dosage and frequency. Click the button for “Add drug and dosage” to continue.
After you’ve added the first drug, notice over at the right, where it says “Retrieve My Saved Drug List”. This is our time-saving tip. Write down or copy the Drug List ID, Password Date, and Zip Code.
Save this info in your CRM, contact manager, or file folder. Next year when you go to help this client again, you can re-enter those 3 items into the website, and retrieve their list of drugs.
Now one drug is added to the list. We’ll continue and add one more. I type Warfarin, which auto-completes as Warfarin Sodium. Again choose the dosage and frequency. Repeat this for all the client’s remaining drugs. When you’re done, click the button at bottom - “My Drug List is Complete”.
When you’re all done, you have the option of printing the list, which does include the Drug List ID, Password Date, and Zip Code.
Step 3 takes us to the Select Your Pharmacies screen, where you can choose local pharmacies and find drug plans, but for this tutorial we’re only concerned with saving the drug list.
Retrieving the Drug List Later
Now, fast forward to next year. Let’s say you are meeting with your client again. We go to Medicare.gov and again choose “Find Health & Drug Plans”.
As before, we enter the client’s zip code, then answer “I don’t know” to both questions in Step 1.
Now we’re back at Step 2, but instead of entering a list of drugs again, we simply enter the Drug List ID from last year, and change the password date to the date we saved form last year, then press “Retrieve My Drug List”.
If you enter the correct ID and password, the list entered last year will appear. From here you can add to or edit the list as needed.
I hope that’s helpful. If you have questions, please ask in the comments section below and I’ll do my best to answer.
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