Oregon-Just Click for POLST

Kaiser Health News ran a story last week regarding electronic storage of POLST forms. In Oregon, End-of-Life Wishes Are Just A Click Away highlights a project at Oregon Health & Science University to make POLST forms available electronically. OSHU, working with a tech company, “allow[s] health care providers to electronically find any of the 172,000 active forms in Oregon’s POLST registry with a single click, no matter where they were filed.” In 5 months, OSHU doctors have accessed the forms 14,000, according to the story.

We all know the problems that may occur when health care providers don’t have ready access to  a patient’s advance directive documents.  This project is designed to alleviate the issue of access to POLST forms, regardless of whether the forms were signed at OSHU or elsewhere.  New York has something similar that is web-based allowing patients to complete and access forms throughout New York.  End of life wishes of patients in Oregon are more likely followed than any other state in the US according to the article. Making completed POLST forms easily accessible by providers is one step in making that outcome more possible.

Research suggests that POLST forms guide end-of-life care, whether patients die at home or in a health care facility. A 2014 study of deaths among Oregon POLST users found that 6.4 percent of patients who specified comfort-only measures died in a hospital, compared with 44.2 percent of those who chose full treatment — and 34.2 of people with no POLST form on file.

A recent analysis found that seriously ill patients in Oregon are more likely to have their end-of-life wishes honored than those in nearby Washington state — or the rest of the U.S.