Timing of POLST Form Completion by Cause of Death.

The physician orders for life-sustaining treatment (POLST) paradigm allows health care professionals to document the treatment preferences of patients with advanced illness or frailty as portable and actionable medical orders. National standards encourage offering POLST orders to patients for whom clinicians would not be surprised if they died in the next year. To determine the influence of cause of death on the timing of POLST form completion and on changes to POLST orders as death approaches. This was a cohort study of 18,285 Oregon POLST Registry decedents who died in 2010-2011 matched to Oregon death certificates. The median interval between POLST completion and death was 6.4 weeks. Those dying of cancer had forms completed nearer death (median 5.1 weeks) than those with organ failure (10.6 weeks) or dementia (14.5 weeks; P < 0.001). More than 90% of final POLST forms indicated orders for no resuscitation and 65.1% listed orders for comfort measures only. Eleven percent of the sample had multiple registered forms during the two years preceding their death, with the form completed nearest to death more likely than earlier forms to have orders for no resuscitation and comfort measures only, although some later forms did have orders for more treatment. More than half of POLST forms were completed in the final two months of life. Cause of death influenced when POLST forms were completed. POLST forms changed in the two years preceding death, more frequently recording fewer life-sustaining treatment orders than the earlier form(s).

Zive DM ，Fromme EK ，Schmidt TA ，Cook JN ，Tolle SW ... -  《-》

Physician orders for life-sustaining treatment (POLST): lessons learned from analysis of the Oregon POLST Registry.

Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment (POLST) has become a common means of documenting patient treatment preferences. In addition to orders either for Attempt Resuscitation or Do Not Attempt Resuscitation, for patients not in cardiopulmonary arrest, POLST provides three levels of treatment: Full Treatment, Limited Interventions, and Comfort Measures Only. Oregon has an electronic registry for POLST forms completed in the state. We used registry data to examine the different combinations of treatment orders. We analyzed data from forms signed and entered into the Oregon POLST Registry in 2012. The analysis included 31,294 POLST forms. The mean Registrant age was 76.7 years. 21,396 (68.4%) had Do Not Attempt Resuscitation (DNR) orders and 9900 (31.6%) had orders for "Attempt Resuscitation". The 6 order combinations were: Do Not Resuscitate (DNR)/Comfort Measures Only 10,769 (34.4%), DNR/Limited Interventions 9306 (29.7%), DNR/Full Treatment 1211 (3.9%), Attempt Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR)/Comfort Measures Only 11 (0.04%), Attempt CPR/Limited Interventions 2281 (7.3%), and Attempt CPR/Full Treatment 7473 (23.9%). The most common order combinations were DNR/Comfort Measures Only, DNR/Limited Interventions and Attempt Resuscitation/Full Treatment. These three makes sense to health professionals. However, other order combinations that require interpretation at the time of a crisis were completed for about 10% of Registrants. These combinations need further investigation.

Schmidt TA ，Zive D ，Fromme EK ，Cook JN ，Tolle SW ... -  《-》

Life-sustaining treatment orders, location of death and co-morbid conditions in decedents with Parkinson's disease.

End-of-life care in Parkinson's Disease (PD) is poorly described. Physician Orders for Life Sustaining Treatment (POLST) forms specify how much life-sustaining treatment to provide. This study aims to better understand end-of-life care in PD using data from the Oregon POLST and Death Registries. Oregon death certificates from the years 2010-2011 were analyzed. Death certificates were matched with forms in the Oregon POLST Registry. Descriptive analyses were performed for both the full PD dataset as well as those with POLST forms. There were 1073 (1.8%) decedents with PD listed as a cause of death and 56,961 without. Three hundred and seventy three (35%) decedents with PD had a POLST form. POLST preferences were not significantly different between those with or without PD, however location of death was; hospital (13% PD vs 24% without p < 0.01), home (32% vs 40% p < 0.01) and care facility (52% vs 29% p < 0.01). Compared to those without a POLST or those without a Comfort Measures Only (CMO) order, decedents with PD and a CMO order were less likely to die in a hospital (5.4% vs 14.7% p < 0.01) and more likely to die at home (39.1% vs 29.1% p < 0.01). In those with PD, dementia was the most common comorbid condition listed on death certificates (16%). Decedents with PD die less frequently at home than the general population. POLST forms mitigate some of this discrepancy. While not often thought to be terminal, PD and its complications are commonly recorded causes of death.

Tuck KK ，Zive DM ，Schmidt TA ，Carter J ，Nutt J ，Fromme EK ... -  《-》

Changes Over Time in the Oregon Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment Registry: A Study of Two Decedent Cohorts.

Zive DM ，Jimenez VM ，Fromme EK ，Tolle SW ... -  《-》

Association between Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment for Scope of Treatment and in-hospital death in Oregon.

To examine the relationship between Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment (POLST) for Scope of Treatment and setting of care at time of death. Cross-sectional. Oregon in 2010 and 2011. People who died of natural causes. Oregon death records containing cause and location of death were matched with POLST orders for people with a POLST form in the Oregon POLST registry. Logistic regression was used to measure the association between POLST orders and location of death. Of 58,000 decedents, 17,902 (30.9%) had a POLST form in the registry. Their orders for Scope of Treatment were comfort measure only, 11,836 (66.1%); limited interventions, 4,787 (26.7%); and full treatment, 1,153 (6.4%). Comfort measures only (CMO) orders advise avoiding hospitalization unless comfort cannot be achieved in the current setting; 6.4% of participants with POLST CMO orders died in the hospital, compared with 44.2% of those with orders for full treatment and 34.2% for those with no POLST form in the registry. In the logistic regression, the odds of dying in the hospital of those with an order for limited interventions was 3.97 times as great (95% CI = 3.59-4.39) as of those with a CMO order, and the odds of those with an order for full treatment was 9.66 times as great (95% CI = 8.39-11.13). The association with numbers of deaths in the hospital suggests that end-of-life preferences of people who wish to avoid hospitalization as documented in POLST orders are honored.

Fromme EK ，Zive D ，Schmidt TA ，Cook JN ，Tolle SW ... -  《-》