Medicare End of LIfe Consults

Kaiser Health News recently ran a story about the end of life consultations now covered by Medicare. End-Of-Life Advice: More Than 500,000 Chat On Medicare’s Dime  offers some interesting statistics on the number of consults.  “In 2016, the first year health care providers were allowed to bill for the service, nearly 575,000 Medicare beneficiaries took part in the conversations, new federal data obtained by Kaiser Health News show.” In fact, that number is almost double of what the AMA projected for 2016.  Although those numbers are good news for the proponents of the law, when compared to the numbers of Medicare beneficiaries overall, the percentage is quite low.

[O]nly a fraction of eligible Medicare providers — and patients — have used the benefit, which pays about $86 for the first 30-minute office visit and about $75 for additional sessions…. Nationwide, slightly more than 1 percent of the more than 56 million Medicare beneficiaries enrolled at the end of 2016 received advance-care planning talks, according to calculations by health policy analysts at Duke University….

The article explores some explanations for these numbers, including lack of knowledge of the benefit by doctors and lingering concerns over the “death panels” controversy.