Department of Medicine
Opportunity Sponsor

Patients with serious illness and their families face difficult decisions when diseases progress, or when complications and hospitalizations occur. Patients’ wishes closer to the end of their life are not often known, communicated through the health system continuum or honored. This proposal is aimed at creating an electronic decision making tool that will help patients and families with planning for treatments and procedures related to advanced illnesses. It will also help in identifying surrogate decision makers and will develop an interface with Apex. 

Aim:

1)      To reduce redundant and unnecessary  specimen collection from patients with a new order entry strategy

Background:

Physician note-writing is an opportunity to teach, share ideas, and solidify clinical decision-making.  Yet as billing requirements and copy-paste functionality have increased in recent years, the utility of writing and reading these notes has declined steeply.  In addition to the dehumanizing "tyranny of clicks and auto-populated fields," (Rosenbaum, "Transitional Chaos or Enduring Harm?

There is increasing interest in the use of telehealth initiatives nationally.  Simultaneously, Medicare and other payors are increasingly recognizing that home-based care can be effective, cost-saving, and more person and family centered.  To date, opportunities for trainees to learn about home-based care are limited by current funding mechanisms.  For example, the primary care exception that allows residents to see patients in clinic and bill medicare, does not apply to the home setting.