Reading Time: 3 minutesPatients should never feel they have received suboptimal care or were treated differently because of their race, ethnicity, or socioeconomic status. However, healthcare disparities are an ongoing reality for minority and underserved communities throughout the United States. Findings from a 2019 report from the American Cancer Society revealed that although the overall cancer death rate[…]
Reading Time: 4 minutesShared decision making (SDM) in healthcare is a communication process that involves a patient and provider collaborating to determine the medical treatment that best fits the patient’s values and preferences. Although there is a preponderance of evidence to support the use of SDM, its adoption into routine medical practice has been slow. Even when a[…]
Reading Time: < 1 minuteClinicians can facilitate informed healthcare decision making and advance care planning with their patients by accessing ACP Decisions’ content through Epic EHR. This new capability enables providers to seamlessly prescribe relevant videos or documents that can be easily accessed by their patients. How it works Clinician chooses applicable decision aids from the ACP Decision content[…]
Reading Time: 3 minutesThe biggest hope to ending the COVID-19 pandemic is through mass-scale vaccinations to achieve herd immunity. This kind of public health initiative requires a majority of the public to be willing to receive a vaccine. However, a significant portion of Americans are “vaccine hesitant.” Vaccine hesitancy is defined as “the reluctance or refusal to vaccinate[…]
Reading Time: 3 minutesEvery day, some 53 million U.S. adults spend countless hours caring for a family member who requires medical care. These family caregivers make sure their loved ones get their medications, make it to appointments, manage activities of daily living, and stay safe at home. They do this without compensation or formal training, and often while[…]
Reading Time: 2 minutesAdvance care planning (ACP) is an ongoing conversation that involves shared decision making to clarify and document – through an advance directive – an individual’s wishes, preferences, and goals regarding future medical care. This comprehensive process is critically important to ensuring patients receive the medical care they want in the event they lose the capacity[…]
Reading Time: < 1 minuteIn the recently published U.S. News article Looking Ahead to Solo Old Age, several experts – including ACP Decisions co-founder Dr. Angelo Volandes – weigh in on the importance of planning early, especially for those approaching older age on their own (i.e. solo agers). Per the article, “the rate of childlessness among boomers now in their[…]
Reading Time: 2 minutesAlthough the benefits of hospice include high-quality end-of-life care for patients, lower caregiver depression and complicated bereavement, and less aggressive and costly care at the end of life, patients and their caregivers have substantial misperceptions regarding hospice, which contributes to its underuse. Only approximately 40-50% of patients in the United States die while under hospice care,[…]
Reading Time: < 1 minuteIn our White Paper, Implementing an ACP Program that Reduces Costs Without Compromising Care, we discuss the importance of a comprehensive advance care planning (ACP) solution, how it can contribute to a more sustainable care system, how to implement an ACP program, and how ACP Decisions can help in this process. But first – what is[…]
Reading Time: < 1 minuteFor patients with advanced renal disease, medical management without dialysis is an underutilized treatment approach that may better align with patients’ goals of care and ultimately offer better quality, improved patient experience, and reduced costs. These are all important factors to consider when building a comprehensive kidney care model. In the white paper, Building a Comprehensive Kidney[…]
Reading Time: 4 minutesShared decision making (SDM) in healthcare requires active participation by both patients and providers as they share information and jointly make decisions based on the individual needs of patients. This sounds simpler then it often is in practice. It is not uncommon for the adoption of shared decision making in clinical settings to be slow due[…]
Reading Time: 3 minutesMost of us live in a world full of choices – ranging from the most mundane to complex, life-changing decisions. Undoubtedly, healthcare decisions are among the most significant we may make at some point. Often, when the time comes to make important medical decisions, many people are overwhelmed and unable to fully comprehend all their[…]
Reading Time: 4 minutesWhether your healthcare organization has an advance care planning initiative in place or is still in the discussion phase, you may find the process has stalled and needs a jump-start. National Healthcare Decisions Day (NHDD) is a perfect time to focus on and reinvigorate an advance care planning program. National Healthcare Decisions Day (NHDD) National[…]
Reading Time: < 1 minuteThe Institute of Medicine (IOM) recently released a comprehensive report on care near the end of life in the United States entitled “Dying in America: Improving Quality & Honoring Individual Preferences Near the End of Life.” This report builds on the 1998 IOM report “Approaching Death: Improving Care at the End of Life.” The report[…]
Reading Time: < 1 minuteThe United States is the 5th largest Spanish speaking country in the world with over 37 million people who speak Spanish at home. We are committed to making our evidence-based offerings available to patients of diverse populations and are excited to announce 3 new additions to our library of video decision aides. We have recently[…]
Reading Time: < 1 minuteThe May 2013 edition of The Atlantic just released a feature article (“How Not to Die”) by Jonathan Rauch about Dr. Volandes and ACP Decisions™ “low-tech, high-empathy plan” to revolutionize end-of-life care. The article not only tells the story behind the creation of ACP Decisions™ but also describes its videos as “inexpensive and low-tech,” highlighting that[…]
