"Billing for End-of-life Care Talks Grows, but Barriers Remain" - Timothy M. Smith
Advance-care planning is the keystone of goal-concordant care, enabling patients to state their treatment preferences while they still have the mental capacity to do so, according to researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. ACP billing is growing significantly, although most of the physicians who are likelier to engage in these conversations still don’t use the codes, suggesting there are barriers to initiating these end-of-life talks, or documenting them, or both. “Regardless, the low rates of utilization of ACP codes is alarming and highlights the need to create strategies to integrate ACP discussions into standard practice and build ACP documentation and billing in clinical workflow,” said authors Ankita Mehta, MD, assistant professor of geriatrics and palliative medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and Amy Kelley, MD, associate professor of geriatrics and palliative medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
— Ankita J. Mehta, MD, Assistant Professor, Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
— Amy S. Kelley, MD, Associate Professor, Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai