Medicare Annual Wellness Visit

What Is a Medicare Annual Wellness Visit Checklist?

A Medicare Annual Wellness Visit (AWV) Checklist is a comprehensive resource, effective for healthcare providers to use in their annual patient health assessments. It guides the assessment of a patient's overall health, providing a manageable step-by-step guide to 

a thorough health risk assessment (HRA) and developing personalized prevention plans (PPP). Ensuring a comprehensive HRA is imperative to identifying patient health concerns and potential risks for developing future injuries or illnesses, which can then inform an effective PPP to mitigate these risk factors and help patients achieve optimal health and well-being. 

Implementing a Medicare Annual Wellness Visit Checklist in your future, yearly patient consultations can transform your approach to patient health and wellbeing. It prompts a comprehensive assessment of a patient's current health, including measures of height, weight, blood pressure, and previous medical history. Additionally, patients have the opportunity to voice any health concerns or symptoms they have been experiencing, encouraging a collaborative relationship between patients and healthcare providers. This empowers healthcare providers to provide their patients with the greatest care while also allowing patients to be self-determined in their health. 

As a primary prevention strategy, a Medicare Annual Wellness Visit can help healthcare providers identify health concerns before they become unmanageable or impact patient’s daily activities. This can significantly reduce future healthcare costs, increase provider reimbursements, and provide time for effective interventions. Additionally, early detection of health risks can provide more treatment options, allowing patients to make more informed decisions with their loved ones and healthcare providers.

Using this checklist, healthcare providers can proactively manage their patient’s health. This ensures early detection, development of PPPs, and early intervention that provides patients with the best care to manage their health.

How Does It Work?

The Medicare Annual Wellness Visit Checklist is a user-friendly tool that breaks down AWVs into manageable actions. Designed to be a guide for best practice habits, it can be adjusted to fit the needs and concerns of patients, empowering healthcare providers and patients to be proactive when it comes to their health.

Step 1: Accessing Your Checklist

To begin, you can access the Printable Medicare Annual Wellness Visit Checklist here or download the free Medicare Annual Wellness Checklist PDF.

Step 2: Verify Patient Eligibility

Ensure the patient’s eligibility for the Medicare Annual Wellness Visit. Communicate with patients to identify the services that Medicare covers to avoid any complications or miscommunications. This ensures Medicare compliance, protecting claim rejections, penalties, or financial burdens.

Step 3: Communicate Requirements and Expectations

Prior to the AWV, patients should be aware that the visit is covered once every 12 months and that patients will not be required to pay contingent on providers accepting the procedure. Additionally, discuss that the purpose is to develop or update PPPs and perform HRA’s. It does not include a physical exam or diagnostic procedures.

Step 4: Health Risk Assessment (HRA)

Prior to the AWV, encourage patients to complete a self-reported HRA either online or in the office. This may include demographic information, current health status, psychosocial risks, behavioral risks, and activities of daily living (ADLs).

Step 5: Identify Current Medical Providers

Create a list of the patient’s current healthcare providers, including equipment suppliers, behavioral care providers, and pharmacies. This can help you understand their current medical needs.

Step 6: Routine Measurements

During the visit, complete routine measurements of height, weight, body mass index (BMI), blood pressure, and other appropriate measurements based on the patient’s previous medical and family history. These can help track changes in patient health.

Step 7: Cognitive Assessments

Assess cognitive functioning to detect any changes or decline, this can help identify risks of cognitive impairments and future conditions such as dementia or Alzheimer’s and maintain independence. This may involve gathering information from caregivers and loved ones.

Step 8: Develop a PPP

After considering the information from the HRA, routine measurements and cognitive assessments, you can develop a PPP to address any concerns or risks. This could involve further screening, consultation or interventions.

When Would You Use This Checklist?

The Medicare Annual Wellness Visit Checklist can be used across many contexts. It is essential during AWV procedures for Medicare beneficiaries, critical to ensure a thorough and precise assessment in accordance with the specific guidelines and requirements of Medicare. Scenarios that may benefit from this checklist include: 

• Annual Wellness Visits: Guides a thorough health assessment and yearly updates of medical records. 
• Comprehensive Medical Records: This checklist ensures a thorough assessment of wellness, meticulously tracking patient records and family medical history. These records may be beneficial in the future to develop interventions or identify health concerns, from which the healthcare provider can implement an effective PPP to mitigate risks and symptoms.
• Pediatric Wellness Exams: Enables healthcare providers to meticulously track progress and changes during the health and development of children, a crucial resource for pediatric care providers.
• Risk Assessments for Older Adults: This checklist ensures a thorough health examination, which may identify areas that may require further screening or intervention. For older individuals, this may involve proactive screening for conditions such as high blood pressure or risks of cognitive decline, where healthcare providers can begin interventions to reduce the effects or risks, beneficial to guide their transition into older age and help maintain their independence. 
• Primary Prevention: the checklist prompts early detection of health conditions and illnesses, providing individuals time to consult with their healthcare providers, caregivers, and loved ones to make informed decisions around treatment. 

This resource is applicable in scenarios requiring a comprehensive and standardized wellness assessment. It can enhance the delivery of primary interventions and proactive care by healthcare services and establish thorough records of patient medical history, which can inform future treatments and care.

What Do the Results Mean?

Conducting a Medicare Annual Wellness Visit Checklist can have a range of benefits and results across various health contexts. It is an instrumental resource that can enhance health practitioners’ approach, ensuring best practices, compliance with Medicare guidelines and requirements, and a seamless experience for Medicare beneficiaries. Though results may differ amongst medical bodies, here are some common experiences:

• Enhanced care: Our checklist breaks down the Medicare Annual Wellness Visit into simple, manageable steps that allow practitioners to conduct a thorough assessment. Conducting a meticulous assessment is essential to identifying the patient’s needs, health concerns, and risk factors involved in devising an effective PPP that enhances patient health.
• Accurate patient records: In healthcare contexts, such as pediatric care and family general practitioner services, this checklist proves its value by not only enhancing the quality of care, but also ensuring accurate recording of developmental milestones and annual updates to patient health records. This promotes comprehensive patient management and a thorough record of individual patient wellness journeys.
• Improved communication: The checklist emphasizes a transparent collaboration between patients and healthcare providers, which allows patients to make informed decisions when it comes to their health. Furthermore, crucial steps within the checklist, such as verifying patient validity and communicating requirements and expectations, can help ensure practitioners and patients are on the same page, reducing miscommunications, unmet expectations, and protection against rejected claims.

To enhance your practice and provide your patients with optimal care, you can access the Free Medicare Annual Wellness Visit Checklist here or download the PDF copy to use as a reference.

Research & Evidence

The Medicare Annual Wellness Visit Checklist is a practical, standardized resource for practitioners conducting yearly wellness visits. The checklist was developed to guide patients and practitioners in the Medicare AWV, an evidence-based preventative care and identification procedure (Ganguli et al., 2020). 

With the various time and resource strains on the health system, primary prevention strategies are crucial to ensuring the sustainability of healthcare systems and improving health amongst aging populations (Beran & Craft, 2015). Implementing the Medicare Annual Wellness Visit Checklist can inform best practices amongst healthcare practitioners, which can aid early detection of health risks and treatment plans to mitigate further health complications, such as chronic illnesses. This can reduce future costs to individuals and the health system, as well as provide time for patients to make informed decisions in accordance with appropriate medical advice (Medicare Learning Network, n.d.)

The checklist reflects a growing understanding of the importance of maintaining wellness and independence through early detection, with screening for cognitive decline and functional abilities supported by research into the impact of these conditions. Having a clear, comprehensive checklist ensures that patients receive comprehensive evaluations, and subsequent treatment plans to address their health concerns and the tools to maintain and enhance their overall health (HCRpath, 2023).

References

Beran, M. S., & Craft, C. (2015). Medicare annual wellness visits: Understanding the Patient and Physician Perspective. Minnesota Medicine, 98(3), 38-41. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Cheryl-Craft-3/publication/275054301_Medicare_annual_wellness_visits_Understanding_the_patient_and_physician_perspective/links/569fb0c908ae4af52546c339/Medicare-annual-wellness-visits-Understanding-the-patient-and-physician-perspective.pdf

Chartspan (n.d.). Ultimate Medicare Annual Wellness Visit Checklist for Providers. https://www.chartspan.com/blog/ultimate-medicare-annual-wellness-visit-checklist-for-providers/

Ganguli, I., Souza, J., McWilliams, J. M., & Mehrotra, A. (2020). Association of Medicare’s Annual Wellness Visit with Cancer Screening, Referrals, Utilization, and Spending. PubMed Central, 38(11), 1927-1935.

doi: 10.1377/hlthaff.2019.00304

HCRpath, (2023). Medicare Wellness Exam Checklist for Providers. https://www.hcrpath.com/medicare-wellness-exam-checklist-for-providers/

Medicare Learning Network (n.d.). Medicare Wellness Visits. https://www.cms.gov/Outreach-and-Education/Medicare-Learning-Network-MLN/MLNProducts/preventive-services/medicare-wellness-visits.html

Metrocarephysicians (n.d.). Annual Wellness Visit (AWV) Practice Checklist. https://www.metrocarephysicians.com/images/AWV_VISIT_WORKFLOW_CHECK_LIST_with_screens.pdf