Assessment of First-Year Use of Medicare’s Advance Care Planning Billing Codes

Abstract

Advance care planning (ACP) conversations occur infrequently among patients and their health care professionals, and when they do occur, the context is often a stressful clinical situation. 1,2 Advance care planning conversations that occur too late (or not at all) can result in care that is invasive, expensive, and not aligned with patients' wishes. To encourage health care professionals to initiate ACP discussions, Medicare began reimbursing for ACP services on January 1, 2016, under a separate billing code. Our study aims to characterize the first year of ACP code use and to describe beneficiary characteristics associated with receipt of ACP services.