After more than a year of establishing advance care planning (ACP) systems within institutions, Honoring Choices Pacific Northwest is inspired by the progress health care organizations have made toward discussing, recording and honoring their patients’ wishes. This foundational phase concentrated on building a sustainable infrastructure to support advance care planning conversations and to lay the groundwork for future, accelerated expansion.
Commitment and investment has led to impressive results for the initiative’s beginning:
• Over 2,000 individual and group facilitated First Steps® conversations;
• Health care agents (or surrogate decisionmakers) are at 57% of the conversations;
• 85% of organizations established an ACP Dashboard to better store and retrieve advance care planning documents;
• Early adopters saw a 42% increase in completed advance directives over the state baseline when individuals participate in a facilitated conversation.
The next phase expands the initiative into community settings by partnering with community groups for greater education, outreach, and advance care planning. Community efforts coupled with the tremendous work by hospitals and medical groups will ensure Honoring Choices PNW’s vision can be realized, so that everyone in the region receives care that honors personal values and goals at the end of life. For more information please contact Bonnie Bizzell
