April 1, 2024
Begin the new year strong by encouraging your patients to obtain their 360 comprehensive assessment. As you know, this exam can be key to the early detection and treatment of potential health conditions. It can act as a springboard to creating a personal preventive care plan for your patients, as well as provide them with an important gateway to other preventive screenings. Typically, people with Medicare plans who do not complete this visit do so due to barriers to care or because they don’t understand the purpose of the visit.
Help educate your patients
Often, people don’t understand that this exam differs from — and does not replace — an annual physical exam. Whereas the annual physical is a hands-on exam that typically includes blood work and other tests, the 360 comprehensive assessment is an additional exam that focuses on preventive care and wellness planning.
In-home and telehealth options are available
Most 360 comprehensive assessments are performed in the primary care provider’s (PCP’s) office. However, eligible patients may have them performed in the home setting, which can give a unique perspective that encompasses health indicators observed there.
If an individual with a Cigna Healthcare Medicare Advantage plan faces transportation barriers to completing an onsite 360 comprehensive assessment with their PCP or doesn’t have a PCP, they may be able to have their 360 comprehensive assessment performed by network-participating providers in-home or via a telehealth visit.
Advantages of in-home visits for patients and PCPs
What Cigna Healthcare Medicare Advantage plans cover
Our plans cover 360 comprehensive assessments, which can be conducted in-office — or via telehealth or in-home care for eligible customers — in addition to a routine physical exam.
We also cover certain preventive health screenings, such as eye exams, bone mineral density tests for women who have experienced a fracture, and A1C screenings. Our in-home 360 comprehensive assessments are conducted at no additional cost to the patient. In addition, when patients complete certain screenings and exams, incentive rewards may be added to their Cigna Healthy TodaySM card.
Is your patient eligible for a telehealth or in-home annual wellness visit?
Patient eligibility requirements vary depending on the benefit plan. To learn more, or to refer a patient for an annual wellness visit, contact your Provider Performance Enablement Representative.
Patient preventive screening incentives
To learn more about patient preventive screening incentives, read the Patient Health Incentives flyer. For more information on the 360 comprehensive assessment, please visit Medicareproviders.cigna.com > Health Assessment Tools and Information.
* Beth Carter. “Annual Wellness Visits: Usage Rates among Medicare Advantage Enrollees.” AARP. 14 May 2019. Retrieved from https://blog.AARP.org/thinking-policy/awv.
** “Achieving Large-Scale Quality Improvement in Primary Care Annual Wellness Visits and Hierarchical Condition Coding, National Institutes of Health (NIH), Journal of General Internal Medicine, May 2022. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8768436/.
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