Nurse Practitioner’s Role in Medicare Annual Wellness Assessment 

Nurse Practitioner’s Role in Medicare Annual Wellness Assessment 

Nurse Practitioner’s Role in Medicare Annual Wellness Assessment

Nurse Practitioner’s Role in Medicare Annual Wellness Assessment Sample

            Nurse practitioners play crucial roles in the promotion of optimum health and wellbeing of their populations. They advocate the utilization of best practice interventions to optimize the patient care outcomes such as safety, quality, and efficiency. One of their crucial roles in healthcare is seen in the Medicare Annual Wellness Assessment (AWV). The AWV are annual appointments for the elderly patients or those suffering from chronic illnesses for updating their individualized disease prevention plans (Simpson et al., 2021). Therefore, the purpose of this essay is to examine the role of nurse practitioner in the Medicare annual Wellness Assessment for elderly adults in the primary care settings with respect to their scope of practice, risk assessment, Medicare billing, and best practices for screening.

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Role of Nurse Practitioners in Respect to their Scope of Practice

Nurse practitioners play several roles in AWV. One of them is ensuring the protection of data integrity in the provision of AWV services. The nurse ensures that the patients’ data is kept private and confidential and free from access by unauthorized parties. They ensure data integrity when offering care services such as telephone calls, health assessment, diagnosis, and delivery of community-based interventions for health promotion (Kubota, 2020). Data integrity ensures the delivery of AWV care that aligns with local, state, and national regulations of safe and quality patient care.

The elderly patients may have challenges in accessing the care that they need due to the effect of social determinants of health. Issues such as cost, socioeconomic status, and disability among the elderly may lower their access to and utilization of the available care services. As a result, nurse practitioner’s role in AWV also encompasses the identification of potential barriers or social determinants of health that may affect the elderly access to the care that they need (Watkins & Astroth, 2021). The nurse collaborates with the elderly and their significant others to come up with effective strategies to address the identified issues for their optimum health and wellbeing.

Nurse practitioners also collaborate with other healthcare providers in ensuring the provision of high-quality care to the elderly during the AWV assessments. For example, nurse practitioners utilize referral systems should the elderly demonstrate the need for specialized care to address their health needs. The elderly patients are increasingly predisposed to health problems such as dementia and depression (Simpson, 2019). As a result, the nurse practitioner initiates client referrals to ensure effective care coordination and the realization of the optimum health needs of the elderly populations.

Role of Nurse Practitioners in Risk Assessment

The other role of nurse practitioners in AWV is patient risk assessment. Nurse practitioners perform comprehensive assessment of the elderly patients to identify their actual and potential health needs. They utilize the assessment data to develop patient-centered health promotion plans that minimize the risk of diseases among the elderly (Watkins & Astroth, 2021). An example is undertaking cognitive assessments to determine the risk of the elderly developing neurocognitive problems that are likely to affect their health and wellbeing. Risk assessment is crucial in facilitating the identification of the actual and potential health issues that must be prevented for the optimum health and wellbeing of the elderly.

Nurse practitioners also collect and document accurate data from their elderly patients during their AWV visits, as part of the risk assessment. The data includes those related to their health issues, physical, socioeconomic, psychological, and emotional status. They also document data such as those related to weight, height, and blood pressure among others and match them with AWV domains and evidence-based metrics for the determination of the health needs and plans for the elderly patients (Simpson, 2019). The data facilitates the tracking of the elderly patients’ health and wellbeing and early identification and treatment of potential issues.

Role of Nurse Practitioners in Respect to Medicare Billing Regulations

            Nurse practitioners contribute to AWV by participating in Medicare programs. This includes caring for Medicare beneficiaries affected by complex healthcare needs at the rates that are similar or exceed those of the physicians. The currently acute physician shortage being experienced in the USA increased the need and relevance of nurse practitioners to offset its impact and increase access to healthcare for all (Huang et al., 2021). As a result, healthcare organizations have embarked on delivery and payment reforms for the nurse practitioners to expand their role in primary care, including the delivery of AWV services to the elderly populations.

Role of Nurse Practitioners in Respect to Best Practices for Screening

            The elderly patients are increasingly predisposed to complex health problems secondary to their advancing age. As a result, it is important for nurse practitioners to adopt effective patient assessments to identify and prevent health problems. One of the ways in which they achieve this outcome is by adopting best practices for screening the elderly patients. Evidence-based screening tools such as Abbreviated Mental Test Score, Prueba cognitive de leganes Beck Depression Inventory, and Depression Anxiety Scales help nurse practitioners to detect mental health problems among the elderly (Abd Razak et al., 2019). Best practices in screening promotes quality, safety, and efficiency in elderly care and AWV by enabling the adoption of preventive and treatment services for the elderly.

Conclusion

            Nurse practitioners play several roles in AWV among the elderly. Their roles include patient assessment, diagnosis, treatment, and referrals for optimum care outcomes. Nurse practitioners also collaborate with other healthcare providers in the delivery of the care that the elderly clients need. They also utilize best practices for screening, align their practices with Medicare billing, and undertake risk assessment for the elderly in AWV. Therefore, health organizations should implement measures that strengthen nurse practitioners’ involvement in addressing the needs of their populations.

References

Abd Razak, M. A., Ahmad, N. A., Chan, Y. Y., Kasim, N. M., Yusof, M., Ghani, M. A., Omar, M., Abd Aziz, F. A., & Jamaluddin, R. (2019). Validity of screening tools for dementia and mild cognitive impairment among the elderly in primary health care: A systematic review. Public Health, 169, 84–92.

Huang, N., Raji, M., Lin, Y.-L., Chou, L.-N., & Kuo, Y.-F. (2021). Nurse Practitioner Involvement in Medicare Accountable Care Organizations: Association With Quality of Care. American Journal of Medical Quality: The Official Journal of the American College of Medical Quality, 36(3), 171–179. https://doi.org/10.1177/1062860620935199

Kubota, I. (2020). Increasing Access to Medicare Annual Wellness Visits in Primary Care; Utilizing Registered Nurses as part of an Interdisciplinary Team Based Approach. https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/medicare-annual-wellness-visits-primary-care/docview/2487473955/se-2

Simpson, V. (2019). Policy and practice recommendations for nurse practitioner–led medicare annual wellness visits. Public Policy & Aging Report, 29(1), 13–19. https://doi.org/10.1093/ppar/pry046

Simpson, V., Edwards, N., & Kovich, M. (2021). Enhancing Annual Wellness Visit Outcomes: Patient Perceptions and Provider Practices. The Journal for Nurse Practitioners, 17(5), 628–631. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nurpra.2020.12.018

Watkins, S., & Astroth, K. S. (2021). Medicare Annual Wellness Visits: A Primary Care Nursing Population Health Opportunity. AAACN Viewpoint, 43(1), 5–9.

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What is the Nurse Practitioner role in the Medicare Annual Wellness Assessment (AWV) for elder adults in the primary care setting with respect to scope of practice, Medicare billing regulations, risk assessment, and best practices for screening?