Medicare
is not supposed to pay for sequencing of randomly selected patients'
chromosomes, officials warn.
If you have older clients who are receiving
long-term care (LTC) services, or clients with older loved ones receiving LTC
services, here’s a new warning to give them: Strangers who come into LTC
facilities and collect samples of the clients’ or residents’ DNA may be up
to no good.
Officials at the Nebraska Department of
Insurance put out a warning about possible DNA collection con artists in a
notice issued last week.
Nebraska department officials said in the
notice that they and colleagues at the Nebraska Senior Health Insurance
Information Program have received multiple reports of groups going
to nursing homes, assisted living facilities and senior centers.
The groups are offering to collect material
for DNA testing by swabbing the insides of older people’s cheeks.
The groups say they will use the cheek swab
samples to check the residents’ DNA for signs of cancer, officials say in the
notice.
Medicare does cover DNA testing for patients
with cancer, but only when the providers and patients meet Medicare DNA testing
requirements, and not for the chromosomes of people picked for testing at
random, officials say.
“If a non-cancer patient is brought in for
genetic testing under the pretense that it would be covered by Medicare, this
may be a scam and should be avoided,” officials say.
Another possibility is that the groups
collecting the samples, or the testing labs, might try to bill people for
unnecessary DNA tests, officials warn.
Officials are asking members of the public to
call it at (402) 471-0888 if they run into groups that are trying to swab
seniors’ cheeks.
Resources
A link to a copy of the Nebraska elder cheek
swabbing warning is available here.
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