STARTING THE CONVERSATION

Advance Care Planning

Advance Care Planning (ACP) should be a priority for all individuals, wherever one is in their life’s journey. Simple tasks like identifying someone to speak on your behalf should a catastrophic, irreversible medical condition occur is central to delivering quality, patient-centered care. But this is just the beginning.

“Advance Care Planning is a process that supports adults at any age or stage of health in understanding and sharing their personal values, life goals, and preferences regarding future medical care.”

CURRENT PROGRAMING

Opportunities to Participate

  • Enroll in a Death Over Dinner educational event

  • Host an Advance Care Planning Kiosk in your department

    • Have Advance Care Planning Kiosks in your department to direct connect with employees patients about Advance Care Planning. ACP Kiosk offer opportunities to learn about the importance of having a healthcare decision maker, collect information about advance care planning, fill out your HPOA and share ‘what important to you’. To schedule, email HDSI.

  • Complete your HPOA and upload it into MyChart

VOICES FROM THE COMMUNITY

From our Idea Incubator

The Center for Healthcare Delivery Science & Innovation hosted two “Idea Incubators” to identify barriers and opportunities in current ACP practices across the health system. Exploration into cultural differences in the community were raised and opportunities to empower employees to become more comfortable with the topic were discussed.

Over 75 people participated in the dialogue and represented the following departments:

  • Community Health Workers
  • Data Scientists
  • Employee Benefits
  • Medical Students
  • Nursing
  • Patient Education Specialists
  • Physicians
  • Quality Performance Improvement Managers
  • Residents
  • Social Scientists
  • Spiritual Care

UChicago Medicine’s ACP Vision

  • Bring the conversation to the community
  • Train leaders to match patient values and goals during medical decision making
  • Provide Healthcare Power of Attorney (HPOA) education as an employee benefit
  • Have employees serve as champions for the ACP process
  • Give all UCM patients access to ACP information
  • Normalize this topic along the entire patient journey

With all this information and a diverse and engaged team of stakeholders, HDSI has embarked on a health system-wide initiative to change the culture of Advance Care Planning. Spearheaded by Monica Malec, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine, UChicago Medicine’s new approach focuses on creating easy clinical workflows founded in education, training and technology.

Leadership

Monica Malec

Monica Malec, MD
Section of Palliative Care
Assistant Professor of Medicine

UChicago Medicine will highlight its progress annually on National Healthcare Decision Day, April 16th

If you have questions, please reach out directly to the HDSI team.