Proper Use of POLST

Elder Law attorney and friend Morris Klein sent me the link to this article, Some NHs Use POLST Inappropriately; Practice, Policy, Research Considerations Can Help. In discussing the importance of advance care planning, the authors note "[o]ne [step] involves the POLST (Physician Orders for Life Sustaining Treatment) paradigm. POLST is intended for persons who are at risk of a life-threatening clinical event due to a serious life-limited medical condition. However, according to the authors of an article in the August issue of JAMDA, some nursing homes (NHs) are using it in potentially inappropriate ways with patients who are ineligible because they are not at such risk. They also make recommendations for NHs to implement the appropriate use of POLST."  The article, POLST Is More Than a Code Status Order Form: Suggestions for Appropriate POLST Use in Long-Term Care, can be found here.  The abstract explains

POLST (Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment) is a medical order form used to document preferences about cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), medical interventions such as hospitalization, care in the intensive care unit, and/or ventilation, as well as artificial nutrition. Programs based on the POLST paradigm are used in virtually every state under names that include POST (Physician Orders for Scope of Treatment), MOLST (Medical Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment), and MOST (Medical Orders for Scope of Treatment), and these forms are used in the care of hundreds of thousands of geriatric patients every year. Although POLST is intended for persons who are at risk of a life-threatening clinical event due to a serious life-limiting medical condition, some nursing homes and residential care settings use POLST to document CPR preferences for all residents, resulting in potentially inappropriate use with patients who are ineligible because they are too healthy. This article focuses on reasons that POLST is used as a default code status order form, the risks associated with this practice, and recommendations for nursing homes to implement appropriate use of POLST.

The article in pdf is available here.