Annual Wellness Visits vs GRACE-augmented Annual Wellness Visits For Older Adults With High Needs - Phase 1

In the United States, 10% of patients account for half of health care costs. Many of these are older adults with complex health and social care needs (referred to as "older adults with complex needs"). They see a doctor on average 9.6 times per year, 3 times more often than older adults overall. Patients, caregivers/care partners experience care as confusing and disorganized (the investigators will refer to caregivers and care partners interchangeably here, reflecting preferences of our stakeholder reviewers). Clinicians in primary care practices and accountable care organization leaders (ACOs) face critical dilemmas about how best to care for older adults with complex needs. Patient stakeholders providing feedback on preferred care models worry about fragmented care. Many also prefer to be at home.

Evidence suggests that optimal care of older adults with complex needs involves an interprofessional team of doctors, nurses, social workers and other health care staff in partnership with patients and care partners to provide person-centered care plans, guided by evidence-based geriatric assessments. Few primary care practices provide this type of care, but Medicare ACOs and other value-based care models such as Medicare Advantage plans are well positioned to link clinicians and provide support for complex patients, their caregivers and care partners. ACOs are groups of clinicians, often housed in healthcare systems, who share in savings if they deliver high-quality care. Unlike traditional fee-for-service payment arrangements, the payment models in ACOs reward efficient, patient centered care that also minimizes unhelpful (and sometimes harmful) institutional care. ACOs are eager to optimize effective care for their patients with complex needs, but best strategies are unknown. ACO stakeholders working with us in the development of this proposal seek effective approaches to care for their older adult patients with complex needs and report readiness to engage in collaborative processes to develop alternate care models. Medicare Advantage (or Medicare Part C) is a capitated form of value based care, which is rapidly growing in market share among Medicare beneficiaries.

In 2011, Annual Wellness Visits (AWVs) were introduced as a Medicare Part B benefit on January 1st 2011. AWVs seek to incorporate routine geriatric assessments in primary care practices of older adults' to produce a Personalized Preventive Plan (PPP) to be reviewed with the patient by primary care clinical staff. AWVs have required elements which need to be addressed by a health provider, who then files charges to CMS for the administration of these services. However, there is wide variation in the approach to administration of the AWV (ranging from in-person interviews by physician and non-physician practitioners to completion by the patient or caregiver prior to the visit using self-report questionnaires. While uptake by clinicians has accelerated, uptake is lower for more older adults who face disparities in care due to income, race and ethnicity. In Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP) ACOs, 55% of beneficiaries received an AWV in 2021. Yet among adults 75-85 years old who were dually eligible for Medicaid and Medicare, fewer than half (42%) received an AWV (authors' analysis of Institute for Accountable Care Medicare Part B claims). In addition, office-based AWV's are not necessarily oriented to high-need, complex older adults, who warrant more nuanced attention to their living environment and longitudinal care needs. Few interventions have pursued the study of a more robust AWV conducted in patients' homes and linked to clear geriatric care paths in an effort to more effectively navigate the biopsychosocial needs of this aging population.

The Geriatric Resources and Assessment for the Care of Elders (GRACE) Program offers an evidence-based approach to support geriatric assessment and care planning for complex patients receiving AWVs. GRACE is a protocolized interprofessional co-management model that was developed to improve the patient experience of care, provide patients and caregivers with a designated point of contact, reduce utilization costs, and support overburdened primary care providers by co-managing complex patients. The care plan was built collaboratively (including patients and family caregivers) using GRACE Protocols for common geriatric conditions and provides a checklist to ensure a standardized approach to care. GRACE protocols were also developed in partnership with primary care physicians and address 12 common geriatric conditions to support and complement primary care: advance care planning, health maintenance, medication management, difficulty walking/falls, malnutrition/weight loss, visual impairment, hearing loss, dementia, chronic pain, urinary incontinence, depression, caregiver burden. Even though GRACE has been demonstrated in a randomized controlled trial among patients at high risk for hospital to improve quality and decrease cost, GRACE has not been adopted by the majority of ACOs, in contrast to the more common use of AWVs.

Based on our hypothesis that patients with complex needs require annual wellness visits and an integrated program of complex care management (i.e., AWVs + GRACE) to achieve improved health outcomes and a commitment from our proposed study partners to fund additional staff to support AWV + GRACE care delivery, the investigators plan to study the intervention AWVs + GRACE as defined by the following components:

1. The investigators will apply a community-engaged approach and co-design an optimal implementation strategy for effectively delivering structured AWVs vs. AWVs with GRACE-augmented care (AWV GRACE). Stakeholder input from Vanderbilt Health Affiliated Network (VHAN) clinical teams, clinical and community leads and other health system collaborators will inform the formation and operation of implementation support communities, implementation coaching, and technical assistance. This process will guide specific adaptations of these implementation domains for high-need older adults within accountable care organization (ACO) and Medicare Advantage- supported primary care practices.
2. The investigators will assess existing ACO algorithms for identifying older adults with complex needs and determine which criteria are most appropriate for inclusion in the study for screening and enrollment at two primary care practices within the VHAN for a pilot trial to be performed (discussed below). Based on input from our stakeholder working groups, the investigators will build statistical models and referral pathways to more accurately identify high need older adult populations and refine our eligible populations and confirm our sample size requirements.
3. The investigators will determine the feasibility of conducting a clinical comparative effectiveness trial of structured AWV alone vs. AWV + GRACE at two primary care practices within Vanderbilt Health Affiliated Network (VHAN) by conducting a pilot trial. Designated VHAN primary care practices (N=2) will be randomized to the intervention (AWV GRACE) or the control arm (AWV) and practice staff will be trained to deliver the assigned intervention per protocol.