The Medicare Wellness Exam Can Have Benefits throughout the Year
Posted by Bennet S. Shenker, MD, MS, MSPH, FAAFP on July 1, 2020
As Medicare Annual Wellness Visits are becoming a more routine part of healthcare, providers are becoming aware of the advantages: patient attribution, opportunity to update chronic conditions to reflect the true complexity of the patient, and a review of health maintenance, screening tests, and vaccinations. What deserves attention, however, are the lesser recognized benefits. I have found a wellness visit helps me to provide better care for my patients throughout the rest of the year.
Allow me to explain. Medicare patients are often more complex. Chronic disease management and acute care needs are difficult enough to manage with limited time. Integrating health maintenance and screening into these visits is a challenge. Completing a wellness visit gives me the confidence that I have addressed these needs, and I can focus on disease management. We know the impact a fall, an unsafe home environment, cognitive decline, and unhealthy lifestyle can have on health, but busy providers may overlook them in favor of other data. The wellness visit forces us to address these other determinants of health, and, in doing so, allows us to be more comprehensive, lowerING the risk of costly, avoidable care.
Keeping on track during an Annual Wellness Visit can be difficult. Patients may try to veer the discussion to other concerns, but I try to keep focused on the elements of the wellness visit until it is complete. This is not to say that other issues cannot be addressed. In fact, providers can bill a wellness visit and regular E&M code together using a 25 modifier, if all of the elements of each are separately documented. I treat the wellness visit as an important part of patient care. I think the Annual Wellness Visit has been helpful to my patients, and I believe it has improved my care of them.
