Supportive End-of-Life Care Planning with Epic

To ensure that patients’ wishes guide their end-of-life care, clinicians at NYU Langone Health take a moment with seriously ill patients and their families to discuss needs and goals for treatment. With tools in Epic to guide these conversations, NYU Langone increased the number of advance care planning notes completed by 71%.
 
When patients are admitted with a potentially terminal illness, providers are prompted to have a conversation about goals of care. From the prompt, they can easily add an advance care planning note, orders for life-sustaining treatment, or palliative care consults to a patient’s Epic chart.
 
“It’s important to have conversations about a patient’s wishes up front so they’re available when they’re needed,” said Hardev Randhawa, NYU’s associate director of IT for inpatient provider workflows. “Our goal is to ensure our patient care plans are consistent with their stated goals for their care.”
 
Epic community members can learn more from NYU Langone Health’s XGM slides and audio on the UserWeb. Read more from Epic staff member Maggie Stack about Epic’s ongoing initiative to support community members as they improve end-of-life care.