Documentation of goals of care discussions: Lessons from the Improving Goal Concordant Care Collaborative.

166 Background: Patients with advanced cancer do not reliably receive care consistent with their goals and values. Goal-concordant care requires effective, efficient and timely communications between patients and their providers, as well as systems to capture patient goals and ensure future accessibility. Currently, electronic health records (EHR) in most oncology settings do not adequately support structured documentation that is most relevant to goals of cancer care. Methods: The Alliance of Dedicated Cancer Centers (ADCC) initiated the Improving Goal Concordant Care (IGCC) Initiative in 2019. ADCC members are 10 U.S. freestanding, academic cancer hospitals, which are also the IGCC participants. In 2019 and 2020, we convened palliative care and oncology experts in the IGCC’s planning phase, via a series of structured consensus building sessions. We employed modified Delphi processes - including literature review, brainstorming, voting, and refinement - in conceptualization four core components considered essential to improving goal concordant care for cancer patients. One of these core components is EHR documentation of GOC discussions; an additional EHR workgroup created detailed recommendations. The three-year IGCC implementation phase launched in September 2020. Results: We achieved consensus on minimum desired fields for GOC documentation: intent of the current treatment, physician's estimated prognosis, prognosis disclosed/discussed with patient, patient prognostic awareness, patient goals, recommendations. Further, GOC documentation must be discrete and structured whenever possible to ease entry and facilitate retrieval/reporting. As GOC discussions evolve over time, documentation may be iterated over multiple encounters. GOC documentation is distinct from, but may rely on, advance directives or other ACP documentation, such as code status, POLST/MOLST, and healthcare agents. At IGCC collaborative launch, none of the 10 cancer hospitals had EHRs that were fully compliant. Progress toward development, training, and use of structured GOC documentation is ongoing. Conclusions: Establishing feasible and useful expectations for electronic documentation of GOC discussions by oncologists presented unique challenges for the IGCC. Ongoing and planned work in this area includes: Facilitating collaborative learning and promoting sharing of best practices; Measuring the presence of GOC documentation among priority patients, as well as other measures including patient and family reported outcomes; Assessing quality of the GOC documentation; Ongoing engagement of patient and family advisors, including regarding patient access to records containing GOC documentation; Potential application of natural language processing/artificial intelligence in prompting GOC documentation and facilitating retrieval.