July 15, 2024 | Ethan Simmons
The Audiology and Speech-Language Pathology Clinic at the University of Illinois, located at 2001 S. Oak St. in Champaign, was recently certified to provide services for patients covered by Medicare. To expand on this exciting change, The College of Applied Health Sciences spoke with Rabel Lohana, the clinic’s practice manager. This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Q: Could you explain in your own words what this Medicare certification means for the clinic?
The Medicare status change aligns perfectly with our clinic’s mission to provide accessible and high-quality health care to our community. By becoming Medicare certified, we can now serve a broader segment of our population, particularly older adults and those with disabilities, and ensuring that everyone has access to the medical care they need. So that’s the most important thing for us, that we are able to complete and fully accomplish the mission that the clinic runs with.
Q: Does this change mean that more people in the community can access the clinic’s services than before?
Absolutely. We can extend our services to Medicare beneficiaries who may have previously faced barriers to accessing care at our clinic because we were not Medicare certified. So this means a significant portion of our community, especially older adults, will now have more options for their health care needs.
Q: Has this change already taken effect, or is there still some time until these people can access the clinic?
It takes effect immediately. We are accepting Medicare patients and provide them with full range of services our clinic offers. We are good to go.
Q: For those who have never even heard of the clinic or been around it before, could you describe how the clinic functions and the people that are running it?
It’s a teaching facility, so we have students in our clinic. They are supervised by our ASHA-certified clinicians. We have staff members, me as practice manager, and a clinic business specialist who takes care of our billing, our pre-authorization for insurances. We have five SLPs and one audiologist right now. It’s a teaching facility. We provide a great experience for our students, a learning experience. But they are always supervised by our clinicians.
Q: For the students, how do you think this Medicare certification will affect their learning? What kind of opportunities do you think it’s going to afford them?
This change significantly enhances student opportunities to apply their learning in real-world scenarios. With a broader patient base, students will have the chance to encounter a wide variety of medical conditions and treatment scenarios. This will allow specifically seeing the older population that they were not able to see when we were not Medicare certified, which is invaluable for their education and professional development.
Q: Are you anticipating an increase in how many people are coming by to schedule appointments because of this change?
Yes, we do anticipate an increase in utilization of our services. We have a few patients on the waitlist in audiology and a few clients in speech-language pathology services, and we have scheduled them. And we do expect to see the increased flow of that population at our clinic.
Q: For people that are interested in using these services, how can they find out whether they’re eligible to use the clinic, whether they’re on Medicare or not?
We will be updating probably our website with that information. They can go to our clinic website, shsclinic.shs.illinois.edu, and look at the insurances we accept. And Medicare is one of those.
Along with that, we are trying to do some of our outreach events, where we would be educating our community by letting them know that this is what now we are accepting. Also, we do appreciate people calling us and knowing more about the services and the insurance benefits that they can get from a clinic. We are open to accept a variety of insurances. Please call us and find out at (217) 333-2205.
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