On November 29, CMS announced that Medicare added coverage for preventive services to reduce obesity. Screening for obesity and counseling for eligible beneficiaries by primary care providers (family medicine, internal medicine, geriatric medicine, or pediatric medicine; or nurse practitioner, clinical nurse specialist, or physician assistant) in settings such as physicians’ offices are covered under this new benefit. For a beneficiary who screens positive for obesity with a body mass index (BMI) ≥ 30 kg/m2, the benefit would include one face-to-face counseling visit each week for one month and one face-to-face counseling visit every other week for an additional five months. The beneficiary could receive one face-to-face counseling visit every month for an additional six months (for a total of 12 months of counseling) if he or she had achieved a weight reduction of at least 6.6 pounds (or 3 kilograms) during the first six months of counseling. In a September 28 letter, the AAFP had strongly supported this CMS proposal and discussed this announcement in a recent AAFP News Now article.
