Medicare Coverage for Advance Care Planning

Charlie Sabatino reports:

Yesterday,  CMS pre-posted the 2000+ page physician payment final rule and comments on the OFR website.  Formal publication in the Federal Register is projected to be Nov. 29.  The final rule includes reimbursement requirements for the new annual wellness/preventive care exam under the Medicare changes that were included in the healthcare reform bill.  In response to comments urging CMS to require that physicians offer voluntary advance care planning as part of the annual exam, and CMS agreed!

You'll recall that a legislative provision to offer voluntary ACP every 5 years was dropped from the healthcare reform bill because of hysteria over government encouraged euthanasia.  This approach to the annual wellness exam restores some sanity to the picture.  ACP has already been a required part of the "Welcome to Medicare" since the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003, and since ACP requires an ongoing effort, it makes a lot of sense to revisit it at least annually.  This is a big step forward in normalizing advance care planning.  The relevant pages [of the final regulation] are 766-768 for the commentary and 1488-1494 for the reg language.