Ask About What Matters: An Intervention to Improve Accessible Advance Care Planning Documentation.

Abstract

CONTEXT\nAdvance care planning (ACP) informs future medical decision-making, especially for patients with advanced age or serious illness. For clinicians to act on these preferences, or continue the ACP conversation as illness progresses, documentation of ACP discussions must be readily accessible within the electronic health record (EHR).\n\n\nOBJECTIVES\nDevelop an intervention to improve accessible ACP documentation for hospitalized patients and assess its impact on viewing and documentation of ACP conversations within a specific EHR location.\n\n\nMETHODS\nAdult patients age 75 or older or with serious illness discharged during a two-year period were included. The EHR s ACP Navigator was targeted as the intended location for documenting ACP-related activities. We implemented a hospital-wide, multi-pronged intervention that included increased ACP Navigator visibility and a process for workflow-congruent ACP documentation. Accessible ACP documentation was measured by documentation within the ACP Navigator and was analyzed by interrupted time-series analysis. ACP Navigator access was measured by user audit logs.\n\n\nRESULTS\nAfter the intervention, 6,703 of 16,117 (41.6%) patient encounters had accessible ACP documentation, compared to 3,689 of 13,143 (28.1%) pre-intervention (p<0.001). In the intervention s first month, accessible ACP documentation increased 5.3% (p<0.001, CI 2.9-7.6%), followed by a 1.3% monthly increase relative to the pre-intervention period (p<0.001, CI 1.0-1.6%). ACP Navigator access for patients with ACP documentation increased in the intervention period (52.2% vs 39.8%, p<0.001).\n\n\nCONCLUSION\nAn institution-wide intervention significantly increased accessible ACP documentation within a centralized location of the EHR. EHR usability changes improved rates of accessible ACP documentation and subsequent views of this documentation.