If your patient shows signs of cognitive impairment during a routine visit, Medicare covers a separate visit to more thoroughly assess your patient’s cognitive function and develop a care plan – use CPT code 99483 to bill for this service.
Effective January 1, 2021, Medicare increased payment for these services to $282 (may be geographically adjusted) when provided in an office setting, added these services to the definition of primary care services in the Medicare Shared Savings Program, and permanently covered these services via telehealth. Use CPT code 99483 to bill for both in-person and telehealth services.
How Do I Get Started?
Detecting cognitive impairment is a required element of Medicare’s Annual Wellness Visit (AWV). You can also detect cognitive impairment as part of a routine visit through direct observation or by considering information from the patient, family, friends, caregivers, and others. You may also use a brief cognitive test and evaluate health disparities, chronic conditions, and other factors that contribute to increased risk of cognitive impairment.
If you detect cognitive impairment at an AWV or other routine visit, you may perform a more detailed cognitive assessment and develop a care plan during a separate visit. This additional evaluation may be helpful to diagnose a person with dementia, such as Alzheimer’s disease, and to identify treatable causes or co-occurring conditions such as depression or anxiety.
Who Can Offer a Cognitive Assessment?
Any clinician eligible to report evaluation and management (E/M) services can offer this service. Eligible providers include:
- Physicians (MD and DO)
- Nurse practitioners
- Clinical nurse specialists
- Physician assistants
Where Can I Perform the Cognitive Assessment?
You can perform the assessment at any of these locations:
- Office or outpatient setting
- Private residence
- Care facility
- Rest home
- Via telehealth
What’s Included in a Cognitive Assessment?
The cognitive assessment includes a detailed history and patient exam. There must be an independent historian for assessments and corresponding care plans provided under CPT code 99483. An independent historian can be a parent, spouse, guardian, or another individual who provides patient history when a patient isn’t able to provide complete or reliable medical history.
Typically, you would spend 50 minutes face-to-face with the patient and independent historian to perform the following elements during the cognitive assessment:
- Examine the patient with a focus on observing cognition
- Record and review the patient’s history, reports, and records
- Conduct a functional assessment of Basic and Instrumental Activities of Daily Living, including decision-making capacity
- Use standardized instruments for staging of dementia like the Functional Assessment Staging Test (FAST) and Clinical Dementia Rating (CDR)
- Reconcile and review for high-risk medications, if applicable
- Use standardized screening instruments to evaluate for neuropsychiatric and behavioral symptoms, including depression and anxiety
- Conduct a safety evaluation for home and motor vehicle operation
- Identify social supports including how much caregivers know and are willing to provide care
- Address Advance Care Planning and any palliative care needs
Notes
Data reflect NCQA’s 2019 ratings of Medicaid managed care plans. The plans included in the NCQA data do not always match the MCOs in other tables in the Medicaid Managed Care Market Tracker, or they may appear under different names. Discrepancies may be due to differences across reports and sources, timeframes, and other factors. MCOs not accredited or rated by NCQA may be accredited or rated by other organizations.
The NCQA plan overall rating scale is 0-5 (0 is lower performance, 5 is higher performance). NCQA accreditation is as of June 30, 2018. For more information about how NCQA rates plans, please see NCQA’s methodology.
Sources
NCQA Health Insurance Plan Ratings 2018-2019 – Summary Report (Medicaid). Special Data Request, October 2019.
Definitions
Partial Data Reported: Plans with partial data do not receive a rating, but NCQA lists them in the ratings and shows their scores on the measures they report. A plan is considered to have partial data if it submits HEDIS and CAHPS measure data for public reporting, but has insufficient data for one or more measures, submits HEDIS data for public reporting but does not submit CAHPS data, or vice versa, or earned NCQA Accreditation without HEDIS data (health plan accreditation standards only) and did not submit HEDIS or CAHPS data for public reporting.
No Data Reported: Plans that submit results but do not report data publicly, or plans that report no HEDIS, CAHPS or accreditation information to NCQA, are given a rating status of “No Data Reported”.
Insufficient Data: Plan has “missing values” (i.e., NA or NB) in more than 50 percent of the weight of the measures used in the methodology.