What Are Annual Wellness Visits and What Are Their Benefits?

The Annual Wellness Visit is essentially an in-depth conversation between you and your doctor or medical practitioner to discuss your health history and any concerns you may have regarding your general health, be that physical or mental. Annual Wellness Visits are also the ideal opportunity to discuss and review your medications and any impending immunizations. This article has laid out some of the benefits of these visits, so be sure to read on for more information.

Preparing for Your Visit

Annual Wellness Visits are performed either by your physician or doctor, a nurse, or a nursing practitioner. These visits are an important way of ensuring you live a healthy and long life and are a covered benefit that comes at no extra cost to yourself.

Before your Annual Wellness Visit, there are certain preparations you should undertake to ensure you get the best out of the visit. These include:

• Make a list of any specific questions you have
• Ensure you bring your health insurance and Access cards
• Prior to your appointment, ensure you know exactly where you need to be, what time, and ensure your travel arrangements are in place
• Make a list of any medical conditions found in your immediate family history, as well as any medications you are currently taking and any physical and mental health conditions you currently have

The most important thing to remember ahead of your annual wellness visit is how important it is that you be as honest as you possibly can be. There is absolutely no benefit, and it would be to your absolute detriment to lie, fabricate or underplay any bad habits such as smoking or drug use, the volume of alcohol you consume, or how much exercise you do each day.

What to Expect?

As an initial start to the appointment, your personal healthcare provider will check your weight, your blood pressure and measure your height, as well as listen to your heart and check your lungs by asking you to exhale and inhale deeply more than once. They will certainly inquire about your extensive medical history as well as your smoker status, weekly alcohol consumption, and any legal or, indeed, illegal drug use. If available, it is more than possible that your PCP will offer you your annual vaccines, like the flu shot, and it is a good idea to bring along your immunization schedule to your appointment.

After the Visit

If you did not choose to take notes during the appointment, you should be sure to note down anything important immediately afterward. It is also a good idea to schedule your next annual wellness visit by contacting your PCP directly after your appointment.

After your Annual Wellness Visit, the most important thing to do is follow the plan you created and your medical doctor as closely as you can. This is by far the best way to stay as healthy as possible and prevent sickness.

If you manage a medical facility like chartspan that provides Annual Wellness Visits to patients, particularly through Medicare, consider outsourcing the program to an experienced and knowledgeable expert.

Outsource Your AMVs

An increasing number of medical professionals across the entirety of the United States and beyond recommend outsourcing a medical practice’s Annual Wellness Visits to a third-party medical provider. Chronic health conditions are steadily on the rise across the country, and the introduction of CCM programs in 2015 has genuinely directly affected those Americans suffering in a positive and long-lasting way.

There is a plethora of benefits of outsourcing your Annual Wellness Visit programs, both to the individual patients enrolled on the program and your medical practice as a whole. These include:

Reducing Administrative Strain

When any company, in particular a company whose business is solely involved in the medical profession, introduces a new regime, a new way of working, or indeed an additional program, it automatically places more strain on the medical staff, which in turn could directly affect, in a negative manner, the individual patients themselves. When a medical practice outsources such programs, this strain is transferred onto the qualified and capable third-party provider who immediately relieves your staff members of all kinds of responsibilities.

Patient Retention

American citizens currently living with a chronic, often painful, medical condition’s only concern, rightly so, is the quality of care they are receiving from their current provider. A certain dissatisfaction with the level of care provided accounts for, by far, the majority of patients who choose to part ways with their current CCM administrator.

Outsourcing your medical practice’s Chronic Care Management programs means that each individual patient receives the highest possible level of care and individual attention and will result in a higher overall patient retention level for your medical facility.

New Revenue

Now, more than ever after just coming through a worldwide pandemic, every cent counts when it comes to running and maintaining a financially solvent business. Moreover, medical facilities have themselves and their staff to consider and a moral obligation to stay afloat for their patients who rely on them as part of their daily lives.

Outsourcing your Annual Wellness Visit program to a third-party provider means that your medical facility instantly gains the potential to introduce an entirely new and naturally lucrative stream of revenue.

Medical reimbursements for such schemes can sometimes be in the region of $85,000 per annum, and this for each billing provider. Such a large amount of financial reimbursement results in a guarantee that your facility will be able to provide the incredibly high level of patient duty of care possible to justify and subsequently earn those reimbursements.

Outsourcing your Annual Wellness Visits to a third-party provider is the obvious and most sensible move forward for your medical practice, for the benefit of your patients old and new, as well as your medical professionals and other team members working for your practice. As a responsible medical facility, the welfare of your patients is of utmost priority, and a third-party provider will greatly enhance your chances of improvement.