Increasing Advance Care Planning in Primary Care
Author
McGee, Shelby
Abstract
Advance Care Planning (ACP) discusses and documents end-of-life healthcare wishes with a medical provider. Having a documented ACP has been shown to decrease Medicare spending while increasing patient quality of life and end-of-life care. There was no quality measure or standard policy for implementing ACP at the project site, a small Federally Qualified Healthcare Center (FQHC) in rural North Carolina. The purpose of this project was to increase ACP in the primary care setting by implementing a new staff process of identifying Medicare patients that did not have a documented Medical Orders for Scope of Treatment (MOST) form in their electronic medical record (EMR) and dispensing an educational handout about MOST in English or Spanish. Completed MOST forms were uploaded to the patient’s EMR and returned to the patient. The population, intervention, comparison, and outcomes (PICO) framework was used to evaluate the implementation of this project. Weekly informal staff check-ins were performed to assess compliance with implementation. During the five weeks of implementation, Medicare patients with a completed MOST form in their EMR increased from less than 1% to 10%. Barriers included project site merger and highly stressed staff with poor engagement. Continued support with increasing ACP discussions in the primary care setting is necessary as it can positively influence patient quality of life and reduce healthcare costs.
Date
2023-07-10
Citation:
APA:
McGee, Shelby.
(July 2023).
Increasing Advance Care Planning in Primary Care
(DNP Scholarly Project, East Carolina University). Retrieved from the Scholarship.
(http://hdl.handle.net/10342/13096.)
MLA:
McGee, Shelby.
Increasing Advance Care Planning in Primary Care.
DNP Scholarly Project. East Carolina University,
July 2023. The Scholarship.
http://hdl.handle.net/10342/13096.
April 30, 2024.
Chicago:
McGee, Shelby,
“Increasing Advance Care Planning in Primary Care”
(DNP Scholarly Project., East Carolina University,
July 2023).
AMA:
McGee, Shelby.
Increasing Advance Care Planning in Primary Care
[DNP Scholarly Project]. Greenville, NC: East Carolina University;
July 2023.
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