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by aaavl2821
2922 days ago
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This was a year ago so things may have changed, but a senior exec at one of the nations largest health systems told me they were looking to change their end of life care program and looked at dozens of AIs that predicted when patients would die. None of them came close to just asking doctors which patients they thought would die within 12-18 months The point of the project was to make end of life easier for patients and families. Many patients get transferred between multiple facilities in their last few months, and few end up passing in a place and manner they'd like. This project aimed to ask patients and their families how they'd like to spend their last few months. Initially the health system resisted this bc they wanted to keep patients in the hospital to make money off them, but then they realized these patients were in the hospital so long they weren't profitable. Then the plan was adopted quickly |
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at a conference, i once heard that the best single predictor of ICU patient mortality was reduction of doctor attentiveness. in other words, patients in ICUs whom doctors began to visit less, treat less, basically start to ignore -- those patients were the ones for whom death was imminent.
the challenge is that it's hard to untangle cause and effect. was it a self-fulfilling prophecy? etc.