Improving PCP Advance Care Planning for People With ADRD

This project will test an advance care planning (ACP) toolkit for primary care teams caring for patients living with Alzheimer's Disease and related dementias (AD/ADRD) in a cluster randomized control trial. In 20 primary clinics, the advance care planning practices, including goals of care discussions will be examined as the primary outcome, with secondary outcomes including health care utilization, and implementation outcomes. The AD ACP intervention will be tested to determine whether it can enable primary care teams to better conduct goals of care (GOC) discussions more efficiently and thus increase the number of GOC discussions held as compared to controls. The AD ACP Toolkit will be delivered to 10 intervention primary care clinics and usual care to 10 control clinics using a computerized case-finding algorithm within a large integrated health care system. The primary aim is to conduct a trial comparing the AD ACP Toolkit to usual care on GOC discussions and other ACP measures. The second aim is to examine the 18-month healthcare utilization outcomes for all PLwD with >50% 5-year mortality risk between intervention and control. Secondary analyses will be conducted to examine outcomes by key patient and team characteristics. Lastly (aim 3), implementation will be assessed via surveys in the intervention clinics followed by interviews to explain variations in those outcomes. This work will improve how to incorporate ACP approaches for aging-related conditions by primary care teams and may be adaptable to other outpatient specialties such as oncology or cardiology.

Inclusion criteria

Primary care team member (PCTM) eligibility:

• Must be an MD/APP, employed at a primary care clinic within UNC HEALTH clinics with ≥60 PLwD encounters per year, who sees older adult patients, along with their associated nurses and social workers.
• Eligibility for training with AD ACP Toolkit will include the above and the provision of care at an intervention clinic.
• For Aim 3, only the trained intervention site primary care team members will be eligible for the implementation surveys or the interviews.

PLwD eligibility:

• Must be a PLwD age 65 years or older seen by either the intervention or control sites' primary care teams' MD/APP in the 18-month intervention window for Aim 1.
• PLwD will be eligible only after we confirm the presence of the AD/ADRD diagnosis.
• All PLwD with a ≥50% 5-year all-cause mortality risk seen by the PCTM MD/APP over the 18-month intervention period will be eligible for the healthcare utilization analyses in Aim 2.

Exclusion criteria

Primary care team member exclusion criteria:

• We will exclude primary care team members who do not care for older adults (e.g. pediatricians or lactation nurses), are employed at geriatric specialty or dementia specialty clinics, or are without a primary care panel (e.g., only urgent care).

PLwD exclusion criteria:

• Patients will be excluded if they have not been seen in the past 18 months by their primary care team, or if they do not have a diagnosis of ADRD.