Change without Change? Assessing Medicare Reimbursement for Advance Care Planning

In January 2016, Medicare began reimbursing clinicians for time spent engaging in advance care planning with their patients or patients’ surrogates. Such planning involves discussions of the care an individual would want to receive should he or she one day lose the capacity to make health care decisions or have conversations with a surrogate about, for example, end‐of‐life wishes. Clinicians can be reimbursed for face‐to‐face explanation and discussion of care and advance directives and for the completion of advance care planning forms. Although it seems that political barriers to reimbursement for such planning have largely faded, the Medicare policy's impact on provider billing practices appears to be limited, suggesting other barriers to clinician engagement in advance care planning. Additionally, the effects of this policy on patient behavior and the clinician‐patient relationship are not yet known

Advance care planning · Business · Face (sociological concept) · Health care · MEDLINE · Palliative care · Political science · Politics · Reimbursement · Sociology · Geriatric Care and Nursing Homes · Healthcare Decision-Making and Restraints · Law · Medicine · Nursing · Palliative Care and End-of-Life Issues

• Approximately One In Three US Adults Completes Any Type Of Advance Directive For End-Of-Life Care

  Kuldeep N Yadav, Nicole B Gabler et al.•Health Affairs•2017

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