Advance care planning billing practices and documentation quality for cancer patients requiring hospitalization.
Berkowitz, C; Ma, J; Lowe, JR; Dolor, R
Published in: Journal of Clinical Oncology
e24000 Background: Advance Care Planning (ACP) is an important component of comprehensive cancer care, yet barriers exist to successful implementation. In 2016, Medicare introduced billing codes to provide reimbursement for ACP discussions. Our aim was to evaluate the usage of ACP billing codes and quality of accompanying documentation in patients with a prior oncology admission at an academic medical center. Methods: Using an electronic health record data warehouse tool, we identified a cohort of cancer patients who had been admitted to the inpatient oncology service and had an ACP billing encounter (CPT codes 99497 or 99498) over a 4-year period (8/1/2016 to 8/1/2020). We collected patient and provider demographics and performed descriptive statistics. We assessed ACP documentation quality for 30 patients selected at random based on 5 domains (healthcare proxy, health values or goals, scope of treatment/code status, prognosis/illness understanding, and end of life [EOL]care planning/hospice) previously identified from a literature review. Results: We identified 170 unique patients (180 ACP encounters), representing a small fraction (170/5636, 0.03%) of hospitalized oncology patients over the study period. Patients were 52% female with mean age of 64 (SD 12.9). Mean number of oncology hospitalizations was 2.6 (SD 1.96). ACP encounters took place in both inpatient (135/180; 75%) and outpatient (45/180; 25%) settings. In the outpatient setting, the majority of billing encounters were in palliative care (27/45; 60%), followed by oncology (12/45;27%) and primary care (5/45;11%). Of the sample of patient charts reviewed (n = 30), provider documentation frequently included scope of treatment (27/30; 90%), prognosis (27/30; 90%), EOL planning (21/30; 70%), and health values (19/30, 63%); healthcare proxy was infrequently included (4/30, 13%). Conclusions: ACP billing remains infrequently utilized for a cohort of oncology patients requiring hospitalization at a large academic center. In cases for which an ACP discussion is billed, the accompanied documentation is of high clinical utility and meets several key quality domains. This work lays a foundation for future research and quality improvement efforts to improve ACP and documentation.[Table: see text]
