Health Benefits of Quitting Smoking

Help your Patients Kick the Habit!

Smoking leads to multiple diseases and potentially death, but this is preventable – anyone at any age can benefit from quitting smoking.

Medicare covers tobacco cessation counseling services. Consider making this a part of your time spent with patients who use tobacco products. All health care providers, especially those with direct patient contact, have a unique opportunity to help tobacco users quit. Smokers cite a doctor's advice to quit as an important motivator for attempting to stop smoking. It’s never too late to speak with your Medicare patients about the benefits of quitting their tobacco habit.

Tobacco counseling can also be done via telehealth and currently can be provided via audio only. Using telehealth services may improve access to tobacco cessation services and can be billed on the same day as an E/M service.

In addition to tobacco cessation counseling, Medicare covers a wide array of preventive services.  Visit the interactive MLN® Educational Tool: Medicare Preventive Services to learn more about this important preventative service and many more!

In partnership with CMS, National Government Services is focused on increasing the utilization of tobacco cessation counseling to improve health outcomes and reduce costs for Medicare beneficiaries and the Medicare Program. Join us for our webinar series on Medicare’s preventative services, "Counseling to Prevent Tobacco Use" which includes information on telehealth via tobacco counseling.

During these webinars, we’ll focus on Medicare coverage, coding, billing and documentation guidelines for tobacco use counseling for outpatient and hospitalized beneficiaries. Visit our Events page or register below. You may attend as many sessions as you’d like.

Counseling to Prevent Tobacco Use Webinars

Can’t attend the above webinars? We have some options:

• We offer these Tobacco Counseling sessions monthly along with many other Medicare Part B topics. Visit the Events page for upcoming educational opportunities.
• The NGS POE team created a free Tobacco Cessation “On-Demand” video offering our providers the ability to watch or listen to this prerecorded live educational webinar. This forum offers providers in all time zones the ability to join us for this important education at your leisure, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Select Counseling to Prevent Tobacco Use to take advantage of this free educational offer.

Related Content

• MLN® Educational Tool: Medicare Wellness Visits
• Tobacco Cessation

Posted 2/20/2024