Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment Paradigm
The Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment (POLST) Paradigm program is designed to improve the quality of care people receive at the end of life. It is based on effective communication of patient wishes, documentation of medical orders on a brightly colored form and a promise by health care professionals to honor these wishes. Read more >
In conjunction with The Retirement Research Foundation, the Oregon Health & Science University Center for Ethics in Health Care will provide one year grants to approximately ten states that are developing or expanding their POLST Paradigm Programs. The grants are intended to enable states to move forward in ways that are innovative and can be shared with other states.
In 1990 the Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment (POLST) Paradigm Program began a quality initiative to improve patient care and reduce medical errors by creating a system that identifies and respects patients’ wishes for medical treatment throughout all health care settings. The system focuses on an increasingly growing segment of the United States health care population, those with advanced chronic progressive illness, and elicits, communicates, and honors their wishes through portable medical orders.
