Advance care planning during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

Advance care planning (ACP) is especially important during the COVID-19 pandemic. Previously identified barriers to ACP include lack of time during patient visits, billing, clinician and patient discomfort and lack of resources, and difficulties with documenting and accessing ACP documents. Here we describe new challenges and new opportunities for ACP that have arisen from the COVID-19 pandemic, both due to the complexities of the illness and expedited changes in some of the stagnancies in the health care system. The shared risk for COVID-19 that all people face brings urgency to institutional policy changes to ACP form completion. However, research should assess acceptability and effectiveness of these strategies.