At a glance
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Behavioral Nudges to Improve Palliative Care Utilization in Advanced Cancer
In Brief
A clinical study evaluating Default Nudge for Cancer. Completed, enrolled 266 participants across 1 site.
Detailed Summary
Patients with cancer often undergo costly therapy and acute care utilization that is discordant with their wishes, particularly at the end of life. Despite early palliative care consultations being a National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) guideline-concordant practice in advanced cancer, palliative care referral rates for stage IV patients are low. In this project, the investigators will evaluate a health system initiative that uses behavioral nudges to prompt palliative care referrals among outpatients with advanced cancer in terms of successful palliative care referrals and downstream quality of life outcomes. In partnership with the health system, this will be conducted as a 2-arm pragmatic cluster randomized trial.
Study Details
Timeline
Interventions
For patients whose clinician pods are randomized to the intervention arm, the care team pod will receive a message indicating that the patient is eligible for palliative care and that a default referral order has been pended for that patient. Clinicians will be given an opportunity to respond if they do not want their patient to be referred to palliative care. For clinicians who do not respond, after the allotted time, the Clinical Research Coordinator will reach out to the patient to introduce palliative care and ask if staff can schedule an appointment. For clinicians who respond no, the pended order will be removed and no patient contact by the research team will occur.