Palliative Care Planner (PCplanner)

Duke University

Status: Completed

Conditions: Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis; Interstitial Lung Disease

Treatments: Behavioral: PCplanner

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT05095363

Pro00108264

Details and patient eligibility

About

The purpose of this research study is to determine the feasibility, acceptability, and evidence for clinical impact of a mobile app-based program called Palliative Care Planner (PCplanner) in addressing needs and promoting advance care planning discussions among patients with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis and their clinicians.

Full description

Interstitial lung disease (ILD) affects roughly 6.3 to 76 per 100,000 people of predominantly older adult patients worldwide and is associated with high morbidity and mortality. Patients with such idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis suffer symptom burdens similar to patients with cancer and commonly experience long, costly hospitalizations that often include care in an intensive care unit (ICU). Despite the presence of numerous unmet needs, ILD patients uncommonly receive palliative care because of lack of symptom recognition, supports to provide advanced care planning (ACP) and symptom control, and processes to promote collaboration between primary teams and palliative care specialists to deliver the appropriate level of care. To address this important clinical gap, we propose adapting our existing needs-targeted PCplanner (Palliative Care planner) mobile app platform to the outpatient setting. PCplanner Outpatient will allow patients to report their needs, provide video content to stimulate knowledge of and discussion about more advanced care planning, and assist primary physicians in recognizing the optimal timing of specialist palliative care referral.

Enrollment: 43 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18+ years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Patient has diagnosis of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis
• Patient has GAP (gender, age, physiology) index score ≥ 4
• Patient is established in interstitial lung disease clinic (i.e., has had at least 1 previous clinic visit)

Exclusion criteria

• Patient lacks fluency in English sufficient to complete study surveys
• Patient is already seeing palliative care or enrolled in hospice
• NEST score <10 at baseline T1

Trial design

Primary purpose: Supportive Care

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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43 participants in 2 patient groups

PCplanner mobile app platform

Experimental group

Description:

Participants who are randomized to the intervention arm will complete surveys at 3 timepoints and will be given resources on advance care planning via PCplanner, the mobile app platform. They will receive a telephone call by the study team about a week after enrollment to answer any questions about the resources provided. If needs and questions are not resolved quickly after the clinic visit, then another layer of patient support with a telephone call by a palliative care specialist will be provided to the participant to help develop potential management plans.

Treatment:

Behavioral: PCplanner

Usual Care

No Intervention group

Description:

Participants who are randomized to the usual care arm will complete surveys at 3 timepoints and receive usual care by pulmonary clinician.