Coding Intensity Through Health Risk Assessments and Chart Reviews in Medicare Advantage: Does It Explain Resource Use?

Medicare Advantage (MA) plans increase their risk-adjusted payments through intensive coding in health risk assessments (HRAs) and chart reviews. Whether the additional diagnoses from HRAs and chart reviews are associated with increased resource use is not known. Using national MA encounter data (2016–2019), we examine the relative contributions of three health risk scores to MA resource use: the base risk score that excludes diagnoses from HRAs and chart reviews; the incremental score added to the base score from diagnoses in HRAs; and the incremental score added from diagnoses in chart reviews. We find that the incremental risk scores explain 53.5% to 64.5% of resource use relative to the base risk score effect—that is, 35.5% to 46.5% of the incremental risk scores are not accompanied by increased resource use. While HRAs and chart reviews contribute to more complete coding of diagnoses, they are sources of intensive coding not accompanied by resource use.