Advance care planning (ACP) is planning that aligns the care an individual wants to receive if they become unable to speak for themselves with their values and goals. Prior research show that end-of-life wishes were more likely to be known and respected for people who received ACP. We used quantitative methods to examine the use of the ACP codes in Medicare fee-for-service and qualitative methods to supplement the results from this quantitative data analysis. We found low but increasing use of the ACP codes, with variation by practitioner type, beneficiary mortality, and place of service. Although barriers to ACP remain, we identified a wide variety of other interventions encouraging ACP.
