Do you live in fear of CMS? Many agents have questions about compliance, but there are resources to help you understand what is and isn’t appropriate! To help further answer your questions, we put together a list of materials and tips to help you with compliant marketing. Here at Senior Marketing Specialists, your business is our priority and we strive to help you be as confident about your business practices as possible!

CMS and Compliant Marketing

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is a section of the Department of Health and Human Services. While CMS administers many programs and offers a variety of materials, we most closely associate them with compliance. We look to CMS for guidance on the way agents, brokers, and FMO’s should operate. Here are few resources CMS offers to help you wrap your head around compliant marketing.

2017 Medicare Marketing Guidelines: This 125 page document has everything you need to know about staying compliant this coming year. Because of its length, we know it’s difficult to digest. That’s why we recommend using the table of contents to quickly look up specific areas you have questions about.

Agent/Broker Do’s and Dont’s: This one-sheet shows you acceptable and unacceptable behavior side-by-side. The organized table is a great way to brush up on common compliance knowledge and give you ideas about marketing to Medicare beneficiaries.

Senior Marketing Specialists and Compliant Marketing

Of course, if you still can’t find answers to your questions, look to SMS! We have several ways to get you the information you need to keep your business compliant. Here are our major compliance services.

SMS Compliance Compass: Find CMS resources, compliant forms, and more on our compliance page. Some of our favorites include the CMS Frequently Asked Questions and the compliant Multi-Product Scope of Appointment form.

SMS Compliance Team: Our compliance team, comprised of Senior Marketing Specialists’ Mary Seyer and Mike Gattorna, stays up to date on CMS regulations. If you have an important letter, a print ad, or anything else that needs checked for compliance, they can help! Simply send the piece you would like checked to your marketer and SMS will take it from there.

SMS AMP Program: Our Agent Marketing Porfolio (AMP) program offers SMS contracted agents compliant, professionally designed marketing pieces. You can customize these materials with your choice of style and color as well as your information and logo. We are always revising and updating our catalog. So be on the look out for our 2017 AMP Collection!

Carriers and Compliant Marketing

Many of our carriers offer free and compliant marketing materials that agents can customize for their needs! If you wish to have a carrier-specific marketing piece, you should order it from that company. Please do not create your own marketing materials! We discourage this because many companies have specific restrictions about how and where their name and logo can be used. Additionally, when you order a marketing piece through a carrier, it is sure to be compliant! Some of our favorite marketing pieces come from:

UnitedHealthcare
Aetna/Coventry
Mutual of Omaha
Medico

Whether it’s a compliance question about an email, a client meeting, or a radio ad, there are dozens of resources out there to answer it! When in doubt, please don’t hesitate to call Senior Marketing Specialists for additional assistance or to order from our AMP program. Our goal is to help you thrive, not just survive, in the senior market and giving you compliance resources is just one of the ways we do that.