Annual wellness visits will get more prescriptive in 2012
Effective Nov 3, 2011
Published Nov 7, 2011
You must have patients complete more paperwork when billing annual wellness visits (AWVs) next year, thanks to the 2012 Physician Fee Schedule (PFS) final rule. CMS has gone ahead and finalized the requirement that patients complete a health risk assessment (HRA) as part of the AWV service.
The HRA is a form your practice will develop (CMS provides no ready-made template) for patients to complete either before or during an AWV. It’s intended to be a plain-English form that takes 20 minutes or less to complete, and asks patients a wide variety of questions to help determine their risk factors. CMS wants your providers to incorporate HRAs in their AWV, and specifically, in giving patients the personalized prevention plan that’s already a requirement of the AWV.
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