Increasing the feasibility, impact, and equity of the Medicare Annual Wellness Visit (AWV) with a practice tailored AWV intervention: A stepped wedge clinical trial protocol

Derjung M Tarn, Wilson D Pace, Kurt C Stange, Chi-hong Tseng and Neil S Wenger

PLOS ONE, 2025, vol. 20, issue 8, 1-12

Abstract: Background: Older adults vastly underutilize evidence-based preventive health services and screenings that reduce illness, morbidity and mortality. The free-to-patient Medicare Annual Wellness Visit (AWV) is an opportunity to enhance preventive healthcare use, but also is underused. Objectives: To evaluate the effect of a practice-tailored intervention on the sustained use of Medicare AWVs and on guideline-recommended preventive services and racial/ethnic disparities in 3 types of practice settings. Methods: This is a stepped wedge cluster randomized controlled trial. The intervention will be implemented at the practice level in 24 primary care practices across the country (8 community-based, 8 academic, and 8 serving medically underserved populations). Electronic health record data will be used to assess changes in AWV and preventive service delivery rates and racial, ethnic, and gender disparities. Semi-structured interviews will be conducted with clinicians/staff and patients, and clinicians will be surveyed to assess the process and acceptability of the intervention. The protocol is registered on clinicaltrials.gov (NCT05910736). Results: Analyses will determine the effect of the intervention on AWV visit and preventive health services use at 12- and 24-months post-intervention implementation. Additional analyses will evaluate the effect of the intervention on reducing racial/ethnic disparities. Conclusions: A practice-tailored intervention has the potential to increase use of AWVs and preventive health services, and reduce racial/ethnic disparities, in diverse practice settings.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0329004 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 29004&type=printable (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0329004

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0329004

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone ().