Heterogeneity in Billing for Medicare’s Advance Care Planning Codes Among Physicians and Advanced Practitioners in 2016 and 2017

Excerpt

Advance care planning (ACP), the process of discussing and recording patient preferences for goals of care in the event of the patient losing capacity has been widely acknowledged as key to ensuring care delivery concordant with patient preferences.^{1, 2} Provider-perceived barriers to ACP have been documented, such as lack of time or reimbursement.³ Medicare began reimbursing providers for ACP in 2016. Previous studies found overall low rates of ACP billing, with wide variation by patient socio-demographics and physician specialty.^{4, 5} Very little is known about the physician or practice characteristics associated with ACP billing, and no study has examined ACP billing among non-physician providers. We used a nationally representative sample to identify the characteristics of physicians and advanced practitioners (APs) associated with billing for ACP. …