Project to Improve Communication About Serious Illness - Pilot Study

"The intervention has 4 steps: use electronic medical record (EHR) to identify seriously ill, hospitalized patients with no documentation of a goals-of-care (GOC) discussion during their current admission; the enrolled patient or his/her surrogate completes a survey assessing preferences for discussions about GOC, barriers to having such discussions, and current GOC which is used to create a Jumpstart form designed to prompt and guide a GOC discussion between the patient or surrogate and the clinicians caring for the patient; use natural language processing/machine learning (NLP/ML) approach to identify GOC discussions or advance directives in the EHR that occurred prior to admission and include this information on the Jumpstart form; and, deliver the Jumpstart form to the primary clinician team. The patient or surrogate is also provided with a version of the form."