Improving completion of advance directives in the primary care setting: a randomized controlled trial.
BACKGROUND
Since 1991, hospitals have asked patients whether they have advance directives, but few patients complete these documents. We assessed two simple interventions to improve completion of advance directives among elderly or chronically ill outpatients.


METHODS
We conducted a cluster randomized controlled trial involving 1079 patients from five general medicine clinics that were affiliated with an academic medical center. Patients were either > or =70 years of age or > or =50 years old with a chronic illness. The study comprised three arms: physician reminders recommending documentation of advance directives, physician reminders plus mailing advance directives to patients together with educational literature, or neither intervention (control). The main outcome measure was completion of an advance directive.


RESULTS
After 28 weeks, 1.5% (5/332) of patients in the physician reminder group, 14% (38/277) in the physician reminder plus patient mailing group, and 1.8% (5/286) in the control group had completed advance directives. In multivariate analyses, patients in the physician reminder plus patient mailing group were much more likely than controls to have completed advance directives (odds ratio [OR] = 5.9; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.5 to 22), whereas patients in the physician reminder-only group were no more likely than controls to have completed advance directives (OR = 0.88; 95% CI: 0.21 to 3.7).


CONCLUSIONS
Mailing health care proxy and living will forms and literature to patients before an appointment at which their physicians received a reminder about advance directives yielded a small but significant improvement in completion of these documents. A physician reminder alone did not have an effect.
Heiman
Heather
H
Division of General Internal Medicine, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago, Illinois, USA.
Bates
David W
DW
Fairchild
David
D
Shaykevich
Shimon
S
Lehmann
Lisa Soleymani
LS
D000328:Adult; D032722:Advance Care Planning / Q000592:standards* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D002908:Chronic Disease; D015709:Correspondence as Topic; D005260:Female; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D006801:Humans; D016015:Logistic Models; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D017063:Outcome Assessment, Health Care; D010342:Patient Acceptance of Health Care / Q000523:psychology* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D010820:Physicians / Q000523:psychology* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D010818:Practice Patterns, Physicians' / Q000592:standards / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D011320:Primary Health Care / Q000592:standards*; D017010:Reminder Systems / Q000592:standards*; D012737:Sex Factors; D017749:Total Quality Management / Q000458:organization & administration