Advault and eHealth Exchange Deliver Advance Care Plans Directly Within EHRs

Overwhelmed Providers Can Now Find Person-Generated Goals of Care and COVID-19 Statements in Real-time

eHealth Exchange, one of the nation’s largest health information networks, recently announced its newest network participant, ADVault, Inc, the creators of MyDirectives. The MyDirectives platform allows individuals to upload or create, store, and share their advance directives, advance care plans, and portable medical orders like POLST forms. Now integrated into eHealth Exchange, the ADVault Exchange global repository is accessible by any health care provider participating in the eHealth Exchange for the patients they treat. This reduces the burden health organizations face in trying to get this critical information directly from patients or their caregivers during times of crisis.

ADVault also announced that personal COVID-19 statements can now be added as a type of advance care planning document that consumers can store for free in the ADVault Exchange. Now, more than 75% of all US hospitals, including the USNS Comfort in Los Angeles and USNS Mercy in New York City, have immediate access to advance care plans including, possibly, updated details such as desires to be cared for “in place,” for a ventilator or other specific health care wishes.

“During this pandemic, people are frequently alone without an advocate in the room and potentially unable to speak for themselves, and hospitals are resisting paper documents from patients for risk of infection,” explains Scott Brown, cofounder and president of ADVault. “So now it is more critical than ever for people to have confidence our health care system cares enough about you to hear your voice, access your goals of care, and talk to the people you’ve asked to speak for you. We are honored to work with eHealth Exchange to help more people have such confidence.”

Dallas-based ADVault is a global, person-generated health data company credited with inventing digital advance care planning in 2007. MyDirectives.com and MyDirectives MOBILE allow people to upload paper advance directives (eg, Caring Conversations, Five Wishes, and the Veterans Administration’s form 10-0137), digital advance care plans such as MIDEO and the MyDirectives uADD, the new COVID-19 personal statements and portable medical orders such as POLST and MOLST forms. The service is entirely free to consumers. The platform is financially supported by providers and health insurers such as Humana and UnitedHealthcare who want to help their members have a voice in their care.

“Even before the current pandemic, we as a health care community understood that advance care plans are imperative to better serve people by understanding their wishes for care,” says Jay Nakashima, executive director of eHealth Exchange. “ADVault’s addition of personal COVID-19 statement functionality is a significant addition to the value that eHealth Exchange is bringing to our health care ecosystem. We thank ADVault and its integration partner Zen Healthcare IT for putting this collaboration on the fast-track so our participating hospitals and health information organizations can help more people during this intense global crisis.”

In normal circumstances, providers and caregivers use the eHealth Exchange to access patient information from outside their own facility to ensure a complete clinical picture and to make more informed decisions for better care. Advance care planning documents, including the COVID-19 statements that individuals are recording with their doctors, nurses, and loved ones, on file with MyDirectives are now being pulled into electronic health records to empower caregivers with vital information to help guide clinical decision-making.

“Everyone at eHealth Exchange and at Zen moved quickly in recent weeks as the global health crisis caused leaders to realize the growing importance of advance care plans,” says Mike Munoz, ADVault’s director of product. “We are impressed with the entire team’s effort to focus on behalf of consumers and their goals of care.”

Source: eHealth Exchange