Yes — and your surprise makes sense. This is a fairly new corner of Medicare, and it is quite different from the things Medicare agents normally get trained on.
Solace Health is a patient-advocacy company. It connects Medicare beneficiaries with experienced health-care professionals—often nurses—who can do things such as coordinate doctors, help straighten out bills and insurance problems, work on authorizations and appeals, find specialists, arrange appointments, and help a patient and family navigate a complicated diagnosis. (Solace)
The really interesting part is how Medicare pays for it.
This essentially started in 2024
Effective January 1, 2024, CMS created new Medicare Part B Physician Fee Schedule services called:
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Principal Illness Navigation (PIN)
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Community Health Integration (CHI)
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Principal Illness Navigation–Peer Support
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related care-management services
These allow physicians and certain other practitioners to bill Medicare when trained auxiliary personnel—including patient navigators, community health workers and peer-support specialists—do qualifying care-navigation work. And importantly, CMS specifically says those auxiliary personnel can be outside contractors working for another organization rather than employees of the doctor’s office. (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services)
That opened the door for a company like Solace.
How Solace appears to make it work
Solace isn’t simply saying, “Call us and Medicare pays us because we’re patient advocates.”
Their process is more structured:
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Solace verifies the person’s Medicare/insurance eligibility.
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The patient has an initial virtual visit with a Solace physician.
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That physician determines the patient’s needs and connects the patient with an advocate.
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The advocate then performs qualifying navigation/care-management services under the Medicare billing arrangement.
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Solace handles the Medicare billing infrastructure behind the scenes. (Solace)
That initial physician visit is significant. Medicare’s own rules say Principal Illness Navigation generally requires an initiating visit before the ongoing navigation services begin. (Medicare)
Who actually qualifies?
This is where I think Solace’s advertising can make the benefit sound broader than the Medicare rule actually is.
Medicare.gov says PIN is for somebody with a serious condition expected to last at least three months that places the person at significant risk of things such as:
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hospitalization,
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nursing-home placement,
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acute worsening of the condition,
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functional decline, or
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death.
Cancer is the obvious example, but it isn’t limited to cancer. (Medicare)
Community Health Integration is different. It deals with things affecting the person’s medical care such as:
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food access,
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housing/living environment,
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transportation or other social needs,
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health-system navigation,
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care coordination,
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patient self-advocacy and education. (Medicare)
So I would not describe Medicare as having an unrestricted benefit where anybody with Medicare can hire a personal advocate to do whatever they want. There has to be a Medicare-covered clinical basis for the service.
Does the beneficiary really pay nothing?
Not necessarily.
For Original Medicare, Medicare.gov says PIN is a Part B service. After the Part B deductible, the normal 20% coinsurance applies. (Medicare)
Therefore:
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Original Medicare alone → normally 20% coinsurance after the deductible.
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Original Medicare + many Medigap plans → Medigap could pick up that coinsurance, depending on the plan.
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Medicare Advantage → coverage, network rules and copays can vary by plan.
Solace advertises that covered members can pay “as little as $0,” and says it participates with Original Medicare and many Medicare Advantage plans. That’s quite different from saying every Medicare beneficiary gets Solace for free. (Solace)
So why haven’t you heard about this at Medicare training meetings?
I think there are four very good reasons.
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It’s new. These particular Medicare navigation codes only became payable in 2024.
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It’s a Part B provider-service issue, not a Medicare insurance-product issue. Your carrier certifications and broker meetings concentrate on Medicare Advantage, Part D, Medigap, enrollment periods, compliance, networks and benefits—not obscure Physician Fee Schedule billing codes.
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It isn’t a special Medicare Advantage supplemental benefit. That is the kind of new benefit carriers would normally trumpet to brokers. Instead, this developed on the provider/payment side of CMS.
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Solace itself is new. The company was launched only a few years ago and has expanded very rapidly. By February 2026 it reportedly had more than 2,000 advocates and had raised substantial venture-capital funding. (The Wall Street Journal)
So this has been developing almost completely outside the Medicare-agent ecosystem.
And there is a funny distinction here: you’ve undoubtedly been taught about care coordination dozens of times in Medicare Advantage presentations. What probably nobody told you is that CMS created FFS Part B billing mechanisms allowing independent organizations to effectively supply a patient’s own navigator.
I think this could actually be useful for your clients
This isn’t really competition with what you do. It’s downstream from you.
For example, suppose one of your Medicare clients calls you because:
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Mom has cancer and has five specialists who aren’t communicating.
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Medicare denied something and they don’t know whether the problem is the claim or the medical documentation.
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Dad is going from the hospital to SNF to home and the family has no idea who is coordinating things.
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Someone needs oxygen or DME and keeps getting bounced between the doctor and supplier.
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A family caregiver is overwhelmed with appointments and paperwork.
Those are calls where you can explain the insurance, but you can’t spend six hours calling doctors, facilities and DME suppliers.
That’s exactly the hole Solace is trying to fill.
And I think there’s potentially a very useful page for your Medicare website here: “Medicare Patient Advocates & Care Navigators — Medicare May Pay for Help.” It could link to the Medicare.gov PIN and CHI pages first, explain the 2024 rule, and then mention Solace as one example rather than making the page an advertisement for Solace.
I would particularly consider linking that page from your SNF, hospice, Medicare appeals/denials, DME, home health and caregiver pages. (Medicare)
If you’d like, I can dig one level deeper and determine exactly how Solace bills Original Medicare, what HCPCS codes they’re using, approximately what Medicare pays per month, and whether a client with Plan G would normally owe anything. That part is especially interesting from an insurance-agent standpoint.