• Deepika Mohan, Olivia A Sacks, James O'Malley, Mark Rudolph, Julie Bynum, Megan Murphy, and Amber E Barnato.
• Department of Critical Care Medicine, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA. mohand@upmc.edu.
• J Gen Intern Med. 2021 Jan 1; 36 (1): 697669-76.

BackgroundFewer than half of the US population has an advance healthcare directive. Hospitalizations offer a key opportunity for clinicians to engage patients in advance care planning (ACP) conversations. Guidelines suggest screening for the presence of "serious illness" but do not further specify how to prioritize the 12.4 million patients hospitalized each year.ObjectiveTo establish a normative standard for prioritizing hospitalized patients for ACP conversations.Design And SettingA modified Delphi study, with three iterative rounds of online surveys.ParticipantsMulti-disciplinary group of US-based clinicians with research and practical expertise in ACP.Main MeasuresIndirect and direct elicitation of short-term and 1-year risk of mortality that prompt experts to prioritize ACP conversations for hospitalized adults.Main ResultsFifty-seven of 108 (52%) candidate panelists completed round 1, and 47 completed rounds 2 and 3. Panelists were primarily physicians (84%), with significant experience (mean years 23 [SD 9.8]), who either taught (55%) and/or performed research about ACP (55%). In round 1, > 70% of panelists agreed that all hospitalized adults ≥ 65 years should have an ACP conversation before discharge, but disagreed about the timing and content of the conversation. By round 3, > 70% of participants agreed that patients with either high (> 10%) short-term or high (≥ 34%) 1-year risk of mortality should have a goals of care conversation (i.e., focused on preferences for near-term treatment), while patients with low (≤ 10%) short-term and low (< 19%) 1-year risk of mortality warranted an ACP conversation (i.e., focused on preferences for future care) before discharge.LimitationsUse of case vignettes to elicit clinician judgment; response rate.ConclusionsPanelists agreed that clinicians should have an ACP conversation with all hospitalized adults over 65 years in an ACP conversation, adjusting the content and timing of the conversation conditional on the patient's risk of short-term and 1-year mortality.

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