Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Medicare Rx Mobile Office Tour
The Challenge
In December 2003, passage of the Medicare Modernization Act introduced a major new program to Medicare beneficiaries. The Medicare Rx Prescription Benefit was designed to lower prescription drug costs for beneficiaries and help protect them against higher drug costs in the future.
The Strategy
Because of our unique campaign-based outreach approach, Nahigian Strategies, LLC was retained to develop, implement and manage a “Mobile Office” tour on behalf of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to educate Medicare beneficiaries, caregivers, and partner organizations on the benefits of the new coverage and to learn how to enroll for it. The tour specifically targeted the 48 contiguous states and provided enrollment information and assistance to Medicare beneficiaries. It featured multifaceted events that built community support and partnership, and also drove earned media for CMS’ prescription drug coverage messages.
The Results
In less than a year, the tour logged over half-a-million miles, deployed in over 300 cities, and generated nearly 500 million media impressions, including hundreds of print articles, television broadcasts and radio broadcasts. In addition to generating substantial media coverage at each tour stop, the tour also helped to build key relationships in each city and region between government officials, aging organizations and community organizations that assisted beneficiaries understand and enroll for Medicare Rx prescription drug coverage.
The tour was a major success and a driving force that helped enroll over 39 million beneficiaries in the program – far exceeding CMS’ expectations for the campaign. It also demonstrated the Nahigian Strategies team’s ability to coordinate and manage logistics for multiple and often simultaneous events across the country with little lead time, generate significant earned media coverage in local markets, enlist and engage local and national partners, and develop and execute a multi-media awareness campaign aimed at a hard-to-reach population.