Medicare Will Pay for Obesity Screening, Intervention, Says CMS

CMS' recent announcement that obesity screening and counseling will be covered by Medicare could prove to be a boon for FPs, but it is too early to gauge the full impact of the agency's decision.

Cynthia Hughes, C.P.C., an AAFP coding and compliance specialist, said that the implications of the Nov. 29 announcement will not be known until CMS publishes claims processing rules and fee schedule values for the codes that will be used for these services, which now join Medicare's existing portfolio of preventive services available without cost-sharing according to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

"If the services are going to be bundled with other services on the same date, there is little value," Hughes told AAFP News Now. "If the codes are only bundled with preventive services, there may be value. With several new national coverage decisions for preventive counseling out there, it may be awhile before we see more detail."

Although the rule change means that, technically, Medicare beneficiaries should immediately be able to start receiving the services without having to make a copayment, in the absence of billing or coding guidelines, it may prove difficult for physicians to provide or even refer patients for a particular service, Hughes said.

Patrick Conway, M.D., M.Sc., CMS' chief medical officer and director of the agency’s Office of Clinical Standards and Quality, called the decision "an important step in aligning Medicare's portfolio of preventive services with evidence and addressing risk factors for disease."

"We at CMS are carefully and systematically reviewing the best available medical evidence to identify those preventive services that can keep Medicare beneficiaries as healthy as possible for as long as possible," he said in a news release announcing the change.

According to the agency's decision memo, "The USPSTF found good evidence that body mass index, or BMI … is reliable and valid for identifying adults at increased risk for mortality and morbidity due to overweight and obesity," said the memo. "There is fair to good evidence that high-intensity counseling -- about diet, exercise, or both -- together with behavioral interventions aimed at skill development, motivation and support strategies produces modest, sustained weight loss in adults who are obese."

The memo defined intensive behavioral therapy for obesity as consisting of

Furthermore, said CMS, all such interventions should be consistent with the so-called 5-A framework highlighted by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, or USPSTF. This framework includes

CMS indicated in the decision memo that it will cover one face-to-face visit every week for the first month in the primary care setting, followed by one face-to-face visit every other week for the next five months and one face-to-face visit per month for a second six-month period. To continue to receive counseling beyond the initial six months, however, the beneficiary must have met a weight-loss threshold of at least 3 kg (6.6 lbs.).