high-need Medicare patients

New Medicare payment practices that took effect on January 1 will improve payments to physicians who care for high-need patients in the hope that those enhanced payments will improve the care such seniors receive. Among those improved payments are: payments to physicians for the time they spend working with specialists, families, pharmacists, caregivers, and others to coordinate services for seriously ill patients improved payments for time spent coordinating seniors’ transitions between different care settings and home and connecting those patients with additional resources separate payments to perform cognitive impairment assessments payments for time physicians spend reviewing patient records and talking [...]