The effect of Medicare's Annual Wellness Visit on preventive care for the elderly

Abstract

The study aim was to assess the effect of receiving an Annual Wellness Visit (AWV) between 2011 and 2013 on the annual rate of eight preventive services recommended for the Medicare population following the AWV. We used retrospective Medicare claims from 2009 to 2014 for a 5% national sample of fee-for-service beneficiaries in the United States. Propensity score-adjusted logistic regressions were performed to estimate the log odds of the probability of receiving the preventive services between beneficiaries who received AWVs during 2011-13 and those who did not during the same period. The average marginal effect was also reported. Among 845,318 patients who met the inclusion and exclusion criteria, 23% had an AWV in 2011-2013. In a propensity-matched sample of 381,934 patients, AWV participants are more likely to undergo subsequent preventive services within a year (adjusted odds ratio ranges from 1.46 (95% CI, 1.44, 1.49) to 2.43 (95% CI, 2.38, 2.49). The findings are consistent using secondary outcomes or with subgroups defined by baseline primary care provider visits or baseline preventive services. These analyses showed that AWV is associated with a significant increase in all the preventive services examined. As Healthy People 2020 has established a target goal to increase the proportion of older adults who receive a core set of clinical preventive services by 10%, AWV represents a promising opportunity to facilitate the delivery of preventive care for the elderly and to advance our knowledge about effective strategies for healthy aging.

Keywords: Annual Wellness Visit; Healthy aging; Medicare; Preventive care.