Nashville, Tenn.-based Vanderbilt University Medical Center updated its web-based online patient portal to make it easier for patients to add and care teams to access end of life care plans, according to a Dec. 2 news release.
Four details:
1. The need for end-of-life care plans in the EHR has been underlined by the COVID-19 pandemic, said Shubhada Jagasia, MD, chief of staff of Vanderbilt University Adult Hospital and Clinics.
"This need has been accentuated during the COVID pandemic, as limited hospital visitation policies and lack of consistent family presence at the patient's bedside makes reliable knowledge of the patient's end-of-life wishes even more important," she said.
2. The hospital is altering various aspects of its end-of-life care plan feature, including making it easier for patients to find in the portal and offering materials to guide them when they are making decisions for their plans.
3. When a VUMC care team member is accessing the EHR, they are now prompted to ask both hospitalized patients and those at outpatient clinics whether they have completed their end-of-life care plan. If the patient says no, they are then given instructions on how to complete it and upload the information to the patient portal.
4. VUMC's patient education office worked with patient portal developers at the hospital to simplify both the language and accessibility of the end-of-life care information. VUMC interpreter services also worked with developers to make the portal viewable in Spanish.