LifeCourse: A Supportive Care Approach for Patients Late in Life

Allina Health System

Status: Completed

Conditions: Ongoing or Significant Medical Condition

Treatments: Other: Care team

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT01746446

38632

Details and patient eligibility

About

The purpose of the study is to test a new model of care for patients with an ongoing or significant medical condition.

Full description

LifeCourse is a late life care approach that promotes whole person care through a structured approach built upon an expanded set of palliative care domains and chronic illness care practices. It includes a trained lay healthcare worker as the primary contact who follows the patient across care settings and over time. The care guide asks patients and caregivers to articulate individualized goals and take part in decision making, and uses a family-oriented approach to understand needs, leverage strengths, and empower families to effectively support the individual living with serious illness.

Enrollment: 903 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18+ years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion and exclusion criteria

Inclusion criteria

• Patient has an Allina Health primary or specialty provider
• Patient's medical chart indicates an on-going or significant medical condition
• LifeCourse will invite vulnerable patients to enroll, including:
• Critically ill patients
• Cognitively impaired patients
• Elderly patients, some of whom may have cognitive impairment and/or be institutionalized

Exclusion Criteria

• Patient resides in a zip code which does not lie partially within a 45 mile radius from the Allina Health Commons in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
• Patient has not visited an Allina facility, affiliate, or community partner within the last year.
• Patient is eligible for hospice.
• Patient is actively dying.
• Patient is abusive or is discharged against medical advice (AMA).

Trial design

Primary purpose: Supportive Care

Allocation: Non-Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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903 participants in 2 patient groups

Care team

Experimental group

Description:

Patients are offered the support and services of the care team.

Treatment:

Other: Care team

Usual Care

No Intervention group

Description:

Patients receive usual care.