2025 Southeastern Residency Conference

Authors: Abby McCurry, Emma Williams, Tasha Woodall
Background: Patients who have had Medicare Part B for over 12 months are eligible for a yearly “Wellness” visit to create or update a personalized prevention plan. These annual wellness visits (AWVs) are generally covered by the Medicare plan at no cost to the patient, making it an easier and more affordable process for eligible patients to access critical preventive screenings and address medication and health-related problems. The reimbursement for these visits ranges from $120-160, making this beneficial as well for the providers to complete. Despite this, completion rates of AWVs tend to be suboptimal, particularly for homebound patients. The objective of this quality improvement study was to determine if pharmacists can increase the AWV completion rate for eligible patients by creating chart reminders for providers.
Methods: Patients met criteria to be included in this quality improvement study by being a home-based primary care (HBPC) patient at Mountain Area Health Education Center (MAHEC), being eligible and due for a Medicare Annual Wellness Visit, and having an appointment for a HBPC visit scheduled in the selected time frame. HBPC patients who had upcoming visits had their charts reviewed the weekend before their visit to determine if they met eligibility criteria. If criteria were met, a note was added in the "reason for visit" portion of the note and a message was sent to the providers performing the visit to alert the providers that the patient was due for an AWV. At the end of each week, a retrospective chart review was performed to determine if AWVs were completed and track overall completion rate.
Results: There were a total of 4 AWV due in the 17-day time frame with 2 (50%) being completed. This was an increase from the control time frame where 20% (1 of 5) AWV were completed.
Conclusion: Putting notes in the "reason for visit" section in addition to messaging involved providers were successful ways to increase the number of AWV completed for home-based primary care patients at MAHEC.