Improving Goal-Concordant Care in Intensive Care Unit Admissions from the Emergency Department in a Comprehensive Cancer Center

As patients approach the end of life, discussion of their treatment goals is essential to avoid unnecessary suffering and deliver care in a manner consistent with their overall values. Implement a multipronged approach to improve the rates of advance care planning (ACP) documentation among providers admitting patients with cancer to the intensive care unit (ICU) from the emergency department (ED). We developed multiple interventions including the development of a best-practice advisory to alert providers when patients had previous do-not-resuscitate orders; standardization of ACP documentation; early oncologist involvement in goals-of-care conversations with patients; a survey of ED providers to identify barriers to success; and positive reinforcement strategies aimed at improving the rates of ACP documentation in patients admitted from the ED to the ICU. Prior to our interventions, only 13% of patients admitted to the ICU from the ED had ACP notes. This percentage increased to 90% by the last month of our project. Through our multipronged approach, we significantly improved the rates of ACP documentation among providers admitting patients from the ED to the ICU.