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The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid have proposed a rules change that will finally reimburse doctors who conduct "end of life" discussions with their patients who are nearing death. The official title of this is actually called “advance care planning” and is due to go into effect on January 1, 2016.
You may recall hearing about this topic during the Obamacare debate, but you likely heard about it under a different name: death panels. That scary, yet wholly misleading, red herring torpedoed that proposed rule from making its way into the final wording of Obamacare, much to the chagrin of medical professionals.
The problem with that is that medical professionals then wouldn't get paid for their time when they have a conversation with their terminally ill patient and their family about what can be done to make the patient as comfortable as possible as they approach the end. Doctor's also wouldn't get paid for having a discussion with a patient who may not be approaching the end of their life, but has a condition, like dementia, that will eventually cloud their judgment so they have the discussion with that patient about their healthcare wishes before the dementia takes over completely.
So the only thing that is changing with this new rule is that doctors will finally be getting reimbursed for the work they are already doing. They were never prevented from discussing "end of life" decisions with any of their patients, they just didn't get paid for it. Come January 1, that will finally change.