Moving the Advance Care Planning Needle With Community Health Workers
Calista, Joanne ; Tjia, Jennifer
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Abstract
This issue of Medical Care presents a study by Litzelman et al,1“Impact of community health workers on elderly patients’ advance care planning and health care utilization:moving the dial,” that reports the results of an innovative model at the Indiana University Center for Aging Research’s Aging Brain Care (ABC) Program in which community health workers (CHWs) are trained to initiate and conduct advance care planning (ACP) conversations with elderly patients and their caregivers during home health visits.Investigators found that they were able to increase ACP documentation from <5% to almost 50% and that ACP documentation was associated with a significantly lower risk for hospitalization and emergency department visits. These impressive results should provide hope to health care systems nationwide who are actively working to engage their patient populations in the important act of discussing and documenting ACPs.
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Med Care. 2017 Apr;55(4):315-318. doi: 10.1097/MLR.0000000000000705. Link to article on publisher's site