Yale Approach Bases Decision-Making on Older Adults' Own Health Priorities

Studies published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society have demonstrated the need for an innovative healthcare approach for older adults with complex health challenges to be integrated into a real-world clinical practice, reports YaleNews . The strategy helps doctors and their customers focus decision-making and healthcare on older adults' own health priorities, which could improve healthcare and outcomes for persons with multiple chronic medical conditions. The collaborators developed a novel method to help older adults recognize their health priorities and help doctors render them as decision-making and care options. At a primary care practice in Connecticut, the team trained facilitators to elicit detailed health information from participating recipients in one or two structured dialogues. Such information included recipients' values, health goals, helpful versus burdensome care, perceptions of health trajectory, as well as a particular problem the older adults deemed most critical to achieving the health priorities that they most wanted doctors to concentrate on. After these priorities were documented, facilitators relayed the information via the electronic health record (EHR) to primary care providers, who used them to align care and treatment with what matters most to recipients. The researchers and members of the primary care practice cooperated to embed priorities care into the EHR and the clinical workflow. At the conclusion, the researchers determined the process of identifying, transmitting, and acting on priorities can be realized in a busy primary care practice.