Increasing the Feasibility, Impact, and Equity of the Medicare Annual Wellness Visit (AWV)

Older adults vastly underutilize evidence-based preventive health services that are proven to reduce serious illness, morbidity and mortality. In fact, fewer than half of adults aged 65 and older are up-to-date on evidence-based cancer screenings and vaccinations recommended by expert committees (e.g., the USPSTF and CDC/ACIP). Those at greatest risk for receiving poor preventive care include racial and ethnic minority groups and persons of low socioeconomic status. Yet interventions to remedy this underutilization in older adults have mostly targeted individual preventive health services, rather than the totality of services needed by patients. The 2011 Medicare establishment of the Annual Wellness Visit (AWV) is a great and underused opportunity to respond to the National Cancer Institute's calls for multilevel interventions that address both the supply and demand for vastly underutilized preventive health services. This free-to-the-patient AWV visit gives providers dedicated time to focus on preventive health services.

The investigators developed a multilevel intervention to increase AWV use that successfully increased AWV utilization in 3 small (2-5 provider) pilot practices. The intervention addresses the complexities of increasing AWVs at patient (demand for services), provider (supply of services), and practice levels. It combines electronic health record (EHR)-generated information and tools with practice redesign tools and approaches to inform providers and patients about the preventive health services needed by individual patients. This proposal's goal is to conduct a pragmatic trial to evaluate the effect of the intervention on increasing AWV and preventive health services utilization. The investigators will implement the intervention in geographically and racially/ethnically diverse community-based practices, Federally Qualified Health Centers, and academic health system practices. Practices include small to mid-size primary care practices (including solo practices), which typically are under-represented in research. Specific aims of this study are to: 1) Evaluate the effect of the intervention on use of a) AWVs and b) USPSTF and CDC/ACIP-recommended preventive services in 3 different types of practice settings; 2) Evaluate the effect of the intervention on reducing racial/ethnic disparities in AWV utilization; and 3) Evaluate factors affecting implementation and sustainability of the intervention tools and approaches, implementation strategies, and intervention effect in diverse patient settings. Implemented via video conferencing and remote deployment of EHR tools, this low-cost intervention could easily be disseminated to small and solo practices across the country. The anticipated increase in patient use of preventive health services will improve population health and lower mortality, particularly in at-risk racial/ethnic minority patients.

The intervention will be carried out sequentially in 24 primary care practices across the United States over 24 months. Every 3 months, 6 practices will receive the intervention. Many of the practices expected to participate in the study care for predominantly minority patients. Primary endpoints to be measured include: 1) rates of AWV use, and 2) completion of preventive health services recommended by the United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF), CDC, and ACIP. The investigators hypothesize that the intervention will increase rates of AWV use, and in turn will result in greater completion of recommended preventive health services. The investigators also expect it to decrease racial/ethnic disparities in AWV utilization.