Commentary: Opportunities for Innovation and Improvement in Advance Care Planning Using a Tethered Patient Portal in the Electronic Health Record

In the last 20 years, progress has been made to develop resources for advance care planning (ACP). Several ACP delivery tools have demonstrated progress, but more are needed to improve ACP delivery systems. Providers continue to indicate that increasing patient volume, increasing patient complexity, and an increasing paperwork burden have adversely affected quality ACP delivery. An increasing and ubiquitous use of health information technology, such as electronic health records and electronic health record-tethered patient portals, affords opportunities for innovation to streamline communication methods between providers and patients. In a medical culture that provides only limited time for physician and patient interactions, physician-patient communication using electronic health record-tethered patient portals may provide a time-efficient, low-cost mechanism for effective ACP.