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A Needs-focused Palliative Care Intervention for Older Adults in ICUs

NCT04414787 · Status: COMPLETED · Phase: NA · Type: INTERVENTIONAL · Enrollment: 151

Last updated 2025-07-18

Study results available
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Summary

The quality of intensive care unit (ICU)-based palliative care is highly variable, particularly for the 2 million older adults admitted annually to ICUs. To address these care delivery barriers among older ICU patients, a mobile app platform called PCplanner (Palliative Care planner) was developed. PCplanner automates the identification of high-risk patients (e.g., dementia, declining health status, poor functioning) by directly capturing data from electronic health record (EHR) systems, cultivates family engagement with supportive information and a digital system for self-report of actual needs, and facilitates the delivery of care to those with a high burden of need by coordinating collaboration between ICU teams and palliative care specialists.

150 patients, 150 family caregivers, and 75 physicians from academic and community settings will be enrolled in a RCT designed to test the efficacy of PCplanner-augmented collaborative palliative care vs usual care. Family caregiver and clinician experiences will be explored using mixed methods to understand intervention mechanisms as well as implementation barriers within diverse case contexts. The key hypothesis is that compared to usual care, PCplanner will reduce family caregivers' unmet needs and psychological distress, increase the frequency of goal concordant treatment among older adult patients, and reduce hospital length of stay.

Conditions

  • Palliative Care
  • Critical Illness
  • Aging
  • Care Delivery Model
  • Informal Caregivers
  • Psychological Distress

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

PCplanner

PCplanner-augmented care. The PCplanner mobile app will allow patients / family members to report their needs in a platform viewable by ICU physicians. Should the needs not improve over time, the palliative care team will be activated to contribute to care.

Sponsors & Collaborators

  • National Institute on Aging (NIA)

    collaborator NIH

  • Duke University

    lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

  • Christopher Cox, MD · Duke University

Study Design

Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Purpose
SUPPORTIVE_CARE
Masking
DOUBLE
Model
PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age
50 Years
Sex
ALL
Healthy Volunteers
No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start
2021-02-22
Primary Completion
2023-09-26
Completion
2023-12-17

Countries

  • United States

Study Locations

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Entities

Companies

Read the full study record

This page highlights key information. For complete eligibility criteria, study locations, investigator contacts, and the full protocol, visit the original record on ClinicalTrials.gov.

View NCT04414787 on ClinicalTrials.gov