Ending Life Well: Conversations & Connections Advance Care Planning for Healthy Aging By McKenna Reinhard , Caregiving and End of Life Specialist options, determining what care is consistent with your personal wishes, and documenting and sharing those
wishes with your loved ones and healthcare providers. Although you can do this process on your own, it may bring up questions that you want to discuss with your healthcare provider, which is why we want to shed light on the fact that Medicare Part B covers advance care planning as part of a yearly wellness visit. To have these services covered, advance directives don’t actually have to be completed during the appointment (although we hope that you will at some point during the process!). Discussions with the health care provider and the patient, family member, or surrogate can be covered even if the documents are completed at a later time (or not completed at all). If you want to take advantage of this Medicare Part B benefit but are concerned about being able to do it all in one conversation, it might be helpful to know that advance care planning often takes place over multiple conversations and that your healthcare provider is just one resource that is available. PCOA offers several advance directive templates, and these documents (as well as presentations on end of life care planning and one- on-one appointments with Caregiving and End of Life Specialists) are available in English and Spanish at no cost to you. For some people, it
may make sense to talk to loved ones and one of the Caregiving and End of Life Care Specialists at PCOA before having this conversation with their healthcare provider at their annual visit. For others, they may start off by talking with a healthcare provider about advance care planning and then attend one of PCOA’s presentation about end of life care planning to get additional information on how to have conversations with loved ones and how to complete their advance directives. There is no one size fits all approach to advance care planning, and the right way is whatever way works for you. If you would like to prepare for an advance care planning conversation with your healthcare provider or loved one, you can schedule an appointment with one of our Caregiving and End of Life Specialists by calling (520) 790- 7262. If you have questions about your Medicare plan and coverage, you can get in touch with our Medicare Specialists by calling (520) 546-2011.
At PCOA, we believe that part of healthy aging and living well includes preparing well for dying and death. Luckily, this view is shared by others including the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, who have covered advance care planning under Medicare Part B since 2016. Although this service has been covered for 7 years, many people are unaware of it and because of that, don’t take advantage of it. Advance care planning, also called end of life care planning, is a process that involves learning about healthcare
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Pima Council on Aging
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