Medicare Annual Wellness Visits in Southlake, TX

The Medicare Annual Wellness Visit is a prevention and planning appointment that Part B covers in full once every 12 months. Magnolia uses the whole visit rather than working down a checklist in fifteen minutes, and you leave with a written screening schedule for the years ahead.

What we cover

• A health risk assessment and a full review of your medical and family history
• Every medication and supplement checked against each other for interactions and for drugs that no longer earn their place
• Height, weight, blood pressure and other routine measurements
• Cognitive screening for memory changes
• Depression and mood screening
• Fall risk, balance, home safety and hearing
• A list of every clinician involved in your care, so somebody has the whole picture
• A written personalized schedule of the screenings you are due for over the next five to ten years

Wellness Visit or annual physical?

They are genuinely different visits and Medicare treats them differently.

The Wellness Visit is a conversation and a plan. There is no hands-on physical exam and no routine lab work built into it. That surprises people who expected a checkup.

Most of our Medicare patients want both, so we often pair it with an annual physical exam. The physical covers the exam and the labs. What you pay there depends on your supplemental coverage, and we can tell you what to expect before you book.

The medication review is the valuable part

If you take more than five medications, this is where the visit pays for itself.

We look for drugs that interact, drugs that were started for a problem that resolved years ago, drugs on the Beers list that carry extra risk in older adults, and duplicates from different specialists who never spoke to each other. Deprescribing is real medicine. Stopping a medication that is causing dizziness can prevent the fall that breaks a hip.

Bring the actual bottles. A list written from memory misses things almost every time.

Falls, and why we ask so many questions about them

A fall that breaks a hip changes everything that comes after it, and the one-year mortality after a hip fracture is high enough that prevention is worth real effort.

We ask about balance, about whether you have fallen in the past year, about lightheadedness on standing, about your vision and your footwear and your stairs. We check blood pressure sitting and standing when the history suggests it, since a drop on standing is common, often medication-driven, and fixable.

Strength and balance work does more to prevent fractures than most people expect. We connect that to your bone health, covered under osteoporosis and fracture prevention.

Advance care planning

Medicare covers an advance care planning discussion during this visit and we offer it every time. It is entirely optional and there is no pressure.

A lot of people want to talk it through and have simply never been asked. If you would rather skip it, we skip it and move on.

When something new comes up

The Wellness Visit is not the venue for working up a new symptom, but symptoms do not wait for the right appointment.

If you mention chest tightness or a new lump, we deal with it. We also tell you that it becomes a separate billable service and we schedule proper follow-up rather than squeezing a workup into the last four minutes.

Ongoing conditions

If you are managing diabetes, blood pressure or thyroid disease, our chronic condition management runs on its own schedule with its own visits. It does not get folded into this one, because doing both properly in one appointment is not possible.

New here? Read about our primary care Southlake practice or what to bring as a new patient.