Advance care planning

Political science

Intensive care medicine

Medical emergency

Palliative care

Medicine

Nursing

MEDLINE

JAMA Internal Medicine

Assessment of First-Year Use of Medicare's Advance Care Planning Billing CodesAdvance care planning (ACP) conversations occur infrequently among patients and their health care professionals, and when they do occur, the context is often a stressful clinical situation. 1,2 Advance care planning conversations that occur too late (or not at all) can result in care that is invasive, expensive, and not aligned with patients' wishes.To encourage health care professionals to initiate ACP discussions, Medicare began reimbursing for ACP services on January 1, 2016, under a separate billing code.Our study aims to characterize the first year of ACP code use and to describe beneficiary characteristics associated with receipt of ACP services.Methods | For this retrospective observational analysis, we used Medicare fee-for-service Parts A and B claims, the Medicare coverage and denominator files, and US Census Bureau data.All beneficiaries in New England (Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and V...

Early Utilization Patterns of the New Medicare Procedure Codes for Advance Care Planning