|
|
Electronic POLST Registry to Ensure Wishes and Serve as National Model
January 14, 2008
Oregon's groundbreaking Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment (POLST) forms will go online by 2009 in a project under way at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) in Portland. The university is building a computer registry of POLST patients in the Portland area, with the intent that the Oregon registry will stand as a national model. As of August 2007, 33 states had either been endorsed, are developing or have identified a contact as a POLST Paradigm Program. An electronic registry would enable paramedics and other emergency medical workers access to a central hot-line at OHSU to find out immediately if a patient had a POLST form and, if so, get access to its medical orders. In one out of four cases, an OHSU survey found, the ambulance crew could not find the POLST form in time to act on it. www.oregonlive.com/oregonian/stories/index.ssf?/base/news/119802756221960.xml&coll=7
|
|