Will Medicare’s Annual Wellness Visit enhance physical & cognitive health? Probably — if people go

The annu­al well­ness vis­it: An oppor­tu­ni­ty to improve rev­enue and patient care (Phys­BizTech):

“Medicare recent­ly intro­duced the Annu­al Well­ness Vis­it (AWV) to keep Medicare ben­e­fi­cia­ries healthy, or help Medicare ben­e­fi­cia­ries become health­i­er, by pro­mot­ing pos­i­tive health habits and a healthy lifestyle. Unlike much of med­ical care, which is pri­mar­i­ly direct­ed at treat­ing acute and chron­ic ill­ness­es, the AWV aims to pre­vent the onset of dis­ease and dis­abil­i­ty or to slow the pro­gres­sion and exac­er­ba­tion of exist­ing ill­ness­es… less than six per­cent of Medicare ben­e­fi­cia­ries received an AWV in 2011 (Edi­tor’s bold). Many ben­e­fi­cia­ries do not know to ask for the AWV, and providers fre­quent­ly do not pro­mote it. The real­i­ty is, how­ev­er, that AWVs can be effi­cient­ly deliv­ered by non-physi­cian prac­ti­tion­ers (NPPs) in a frac­tion of the time required for a tra­di­tion­al “phys­i­cal” through the use of inno­v­a­tive soft­ware. While most physi­cians believe they offer well­ness ser­vices, the real­i­ty is that most do not offer the AWV. A true Medicare AWV involves not only a review of med­ical his­to­ry and med­ica­tions, but also a con­ver­sa­tion about the patient’s func­tion­al abil­i­ty and lifestyle issues that impact health. A list of risk fac­tors, con­di­tions and treat­ment options must be estab­lished. Cog­ni­tive func­tion must be assessed, and a 5–10 year pre­ven­tive screen­ing sched­ule created.”