Since 1995, Ohio-based Summa Health System and its partners have led a collaborative, the SAGE Project (Summa Health System/Area Agency on Aging, 10B/Geriatric Evaluation Project), which has worked to improve care for the state’s most vulnerable elders by integrating the aging network, and its social services, with health and medical care. The project aims to integrate a comprehensive hospital-based clinical program with the community aging network to improve the health and functional status of older adults, and prevent institutionalization for those at risk for nursing home placement.
More recently, members from the SAGE project have been working on the PEACE Trial (Promoting Effective Advanced Care for Elders), an initiative funded by the National Palliative Care Research Center and the Summa Foundation. In addition to Summa and the AAA, the project involves the University of Akron, Kent State University, and the Northeastern Ohio Universities Colleges of Medicine and Pharmacy. The randomized controlled pilot study features a geri-palliative care case management intervention for Ohio consumers who are participants in the state’s long-term care Medicaid waiver program, PASSPORT. The intervention involves collaborative care between a hospital-based interdisciplinary care team, the AAA, and the consumer’s own primary care provider.
Like other older adults throughout the nation, Ohio’s community-dwelling patients who had poor symptom control and coordination of care often experienced exacerbations that led to hospitalizations. Frequently, these elders have not documented their advance care preferences, and so arrive in the hospital, where family members are left to make critical decisions for which they are unprepared.
The PEACE Trial seeks to change this dynamic by focusing on health coaching and patient activation for self management, while promoting advance care planning discussions with primary care providers. The target population includes new PASSPORT enrollees over the age of 60 who are living with one of 9 life-limiting conditions. Nurse assesssors—care managers—from the AAA screen patients at the time of their initial PASSPORT assessment; patients are then randomized to the control or intervention group.
AAA nurse or social worker care managers engage with consumers in a variety of activities. Care managers make two home visits, for example, centered on symptom assessment and advance care planning. They review findings with an interdisciplinary team, which makes appropriate recommendations for the patient and the primary care provider. The care manager next accompanies the consumer to one visit with the primary care provider to discuss advance care goals. Following this, the care manager and the palliative care nurse supervisor make an additional home visit to begin to implement the care plan. The consumer then receives up to one year of monthly follow-up visits from the care manager.
Researchers are tracking outcomes, measured at 3-, 6-, 9- and 12- month intervals. Outcomes include symptom management, quality of life/death, relationships, patient activiation and decision making, and depression and anxiety.
An initial challenge was in getting buy-in from care managers, and in changing the culture of the AAA. However, all care managers eventually expressed their appreciation of the value of the project for improving consumer outcomes. The project is working to get more “top-down” support from the AAA so that participating care managers receive the support they need to work with consumers, including education and skills to engage them. The researchers and case managers also realized they needed more formal curriculum to teach effective methods and skills for advanced care planning discussions and goal settings. A second project was developed to create an online learning curriculum through the support of the First Merit Foundation and led by the University of Akron College of Nursing. A key challenge has been to avoid “medicalizing” the care plans, making sure that they attend to human/emotional factors as well as health and medical status.
The program’s strength lies in the strong working relationship among all the partners, particularly in the commitment of the AAA to improve care for frail elders. Partners report that they are “becoming bilingual”, that culture sensitivity and knowledge sharing between the aging network and acute care providers has grown.
For more information, see Results of the promoting effective advance care planning for elders (PEACE) randomized pilot study (2014) by Dr. Skip Radwany et al.
Key words: PEACE trial, palliative care, geriatrics, AAA, collaboration
