Triggering goals of care conversations in heart failure patients

Goals of care conversations (GoCCs) are essential discussions, for those with chronic diseases, to identify a health care surrogate, initiate and review advance directives, and refer for palliative care. Prognosis with pulmonary hypertension (PH) related to heart failure (HF) remains challenging due to variation in trajectory of disease progression. The Gagne Combined Comorbidity score, an electronic prognostication score (E-Gagne), can be used to identify patients with high (>10%) 1-year mortality.

Implementation of E-Gagne tool to identify HF patients with high 1-year mortality risk and trigger GoCCs.

Plan-Do-Study-Act cycles were used throughout nine-week pre- and postintervention in an outpatient setting. Descriptive statistics and Chi-square analysis were used to compare GoCCs pre and post intervention.

Using the E-Gagne tool, PH patients with high mortality risk were identified, within 1 week of their scheduled appointments. GoCCs education was provided to all stakeholders. Medical records were reviewed for four aspects of GoCCs: presence and review of advanced directive, documented health care surrogates, and referral for palliative care.

Documentation of GoCCs was greater postintervention compared with preintervention (0%, n = 0/47 and 88%, n = 35/40 respectively, p < .001). Documentation of each of the four aspects of GoCCs was variable with the greatest improvement in documentation of health care surrogate and review of advance directives. There were no referrals for palliative care (0%, n = 0/47 and 0%, n = 0/40).

Implementation of the E-Gagne tool, an electronic prognostication tool, identified high-risk PH HF patients and was effective in increasing documentation of GoCCs.