WASHINGTON — Adjusting medications before someone gets sick enough to visit the doctor. Updating outside specialists so one doctor’s prescription doesn’t interfere with another’s.

Starting this month, Medicare will pay primary care doctors a monthly fee to better coordinate care for the most vulnerable seniors — those with multiple chronic illnesses — even if they don’t have a face-to-face exam.

The goal is to help patients stay healthier between doctor visits, and avoid pricey hospitals and nursing homes.

“We all need care coordination. Medicare patients need it more than ever,” said Sean Cavanaugh, deputy administrator at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

About two-thirds of Medicare beneficiaries have two or more chronic conditions, such as diabetes, heart disease or kidney disease. Their care is infamously fragmented. They tend to visit numerous doctors for different illnesses.

Too often, no one oversees their overall health — making sure multiple treatments don’t mix badly, that X-rays and other tests aren’t repeated just because one doctor didn’t know another already had ordered them.

Medicare’s new fee, which is about $40 a month per qualified patient, marks a big policy shift. Usually, the program pays for services in the doctor’s office.

“We’re hoping to spur change, getting physicians to be much more willing to spend time working on the needs of these patients without necessitating the patient to come into the office,” Cavanaugh said.

To earn the new fee, doctors must come up with a care plan for qualified patients, and spend time each month on such activities as coordinating their care with other health providers and monitoring their medications.

Many primary care physicians already do some of that.

“Quite honestly, I just didn’t get paid for it,” said Dr. Robert Wergin, president of the American Academy of Family Physicians.

Wergin estimates he spends about two hours a day doing such things as calling elderly patients who have a hard time visiting his office in rural Milford, Neb.

The new fee could enable physicians to hire extra nurses or care managers to do more of that preventive work, Wergin said. Patients must agree to care coordination. Wergin plans to explain it as, “This is how we’re going to hopefully manage your illnesses better at home.”