Regional Variation in Billed Advance Care Planning Visits.

ABSTRACT:

Background/objective

Advance care planning (ACP) is associated with improved patient and caregiver outcomes, but is underutilized. To encourage ACP, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services implemented specific ACP visit reimbursement codes in 2016. To better understand the utilization of these ACP reimbursement codes, we explored regional variation in billed ACP visits.

Design

We performed a retrospective cross-sectional analysis using a randomly sampled 5% cohort of Medicare fee-for-service (FFS) beneficiaries' claims files from 2017. Region was defined by hospital referral region.

Setting

National Medicare FFS.

Participants

A total of 1.3 million Medicare beneficiaries aged 65 years and older.

Measurement

Receipt of billed ACP service, identified

SUBMITTER: Skolarus LE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8060899 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature