Article Excerpt: While medical visits that address disease prevention and the promotion of health and wellness are important parts of medical care for older adults, when Medicare was introduced in 1965, it did not address this important component of health care. Medicare took an important step to correct this deficit when it initiated Medicare annual wellness visits (AWV) ten years ago. AWV’s emphasis on disease prevention and health promotion for older adults was a huge step forward, however the current “one size fits all” approach does not adequately meet the wellness needs of a diverse population of older adults. In their recent special article in the Journal of American Geriatrics Society, Patrick P Coll, MD, medical director for senior health and associate director for clinical geriatrics at the UConn Center on Aging at UConn Health, and John A. Batsis, MD, associate professor in the division of geriatric medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and colleagues reviewed the need to redesign AWV’s in order to optimally identify issues that are important to each individual patient.
Full Article: https://tinyurl.com/2bxppd3n
Article Source: UNC Health News