5 Things to Talk About

Conversation Guide Series for Consumers and Care Providers

Handy guides to have effective planning conversations from simple to serious illness.

Graphic shows different phases of health: Wellness, Chronic Illness and Serious Advancing Illness

The "5 Things to Talk About" series offers both consumers and care providers an easy place to start to have a simple care planning conversation to stay well, and build on your conversations to manage health needs and chronic illness, and live well with serious illness.

The Consumer Conversation Guides 1-4 mirror the same topics and sample questions in  Care Provider Conversation Guides 1-4 for more effective conversations.  Each handy one-page guide has 5 topics to explore with suggested sample questions. The 5 topics stay the same over the conversation guide series, while the sample questions deepen to reflect on changing health needs and care preferences.   

For Care Providers & Medicare Reimbursement. These guides can help staff engage patients in early and on-going conversations that are Medicare reimbursed.  Use CPT® code 99497 for the first 16 to 30 minute conversations. Use CPT® code 99498 for each additional 30 minutes. There is no limit on the number of conversations. Read more.

To Get Started:  Select either the Consumer or Care Provider Conversation Guides below. Begin with Guide 1: Start a Simple Conversation to Stay Well, or anywhere that's right for you.

Information & Tools: