Challenges

Medicare pays for an annual wellness visit. It’s an opportunity to check in with your primary care provider, to go over your health risks and to make sure you’re doing everything you can to prevent illness. This visit — which isn’t the same as your annual physical — is also a good time to check up on things like your memory and thinking skills.
If you’re age 65 or older, Medicare will generally cover the cost of a cognitive assessment, or screening, as part of your annual wellness visit. Yet many older adults aren’t taking advantage of this free service.
A 2023 University of Michigan survey asked almost 2,600 people ages 50 to 80 about cognitive screening. Although 71 percent of a subset of people 65 to 80 were familiar with these tests and 80 percent considered them useful to inform medical care, more than half, 59 percent, said they’d never been screened.
What is a cognitive screening?
The cognitive assessment you can get at your annual wellness visit is a quick test your primary care provider uses to look for warning signs of thinking and memory problems. How it’s done depends on your provider, who may:
- Ask you about any cognitive concerns
- Watch the way you interact during the visit
- Ask your family or friends about your cognitive and mental health
- Take a medical history and do a physical exam
- Give you a short written or verbal test, such as the Mini-Cog, Memory Impairment Screen (MIS) or General Practitioner Assessment of Cognition (GPCOG)
The screening won’t tell you that you have dementia — only if you may have warning signs.
“It doesn’t provide a definitive diagnosis, but it’s an important first step to determine if further testing is needed,” says Morgan Daven, vice president of health care strategy at the Alzheimer’s Association.
What’s covered?
Medicare should cover the cost of cognitive screening once every 12 months as part of your annual wellness visit. As long as you’ve had Medicare Part B for more than a year and your provider participates in Medicare, you should be able to get this annual screening at no cost to you. Your doctor will generally use the billing codes G0438 and G0439 to get reimbursed for your visit. Check with your doctor or provider for specific details about your situation.
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