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Nurses can add annual wellness visits to existing appointments, helping practices improve preventive care and their quality metrics.

Fam Pract Manag. 2026;33(1):14-18

This content conforms to AAFP criteria for CME.

Author disclosures: no relevant financial relationships.

Medicare annual wellness visits (AWVs) provide opportunities for regular, comprehensive assessments of a patient’s health as well as evidence-based screenings, immunizations, and health education. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) recommends that all patients with Medicare coverage receive an AWV each year. But practices often face challenges that include appointment availability, scheduling constraints, documentation burden, and patients’ lack of understanding of the importance of these visits. This article will explain how our practice overcame these challenges and improved AWV capacity and completion rates by using registered nurses (RNs) to provide annual wellness co-visits.

KEY POINTS

  • When Medicare patients are scheduled for an established patient visit with their primary care physician, practices can offer them a same-day RN annual wellness co-visit if they’re due for an AWV.

  • RNs can perform most of the required AWV components, requiring the physician to only review the data the nurses collected, discuss the prevention plan with the patient, and bill for the visit.

  • After the physician reviews the AWV information with the patient, they can then perform the previously scheduled visit and bill for an E/M service as well.

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