Researchers in California have launched a website that aims to help people make difficult medical decisions, FierceHealthIT reports (Hall, FierceHealthIT, 1/6).
The no-cost website, called PREPARE, was developed by physicians at the:
- San Francisco Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center;
- University of California-San Francisco Medical Center; and
- Veterans Health Research Institute (Krieger, San Jose Mercury News, 1/7).
Goals for the Website
Rebecca Sudore -- a geriatrician and palliative care physician at the VA hospital, as well as an associate professor of medicine at the UCSF School of Medicine -- said, "There are few resources which can adequately prepare patients and their families to face serious illness or a medical crisis -- situations which often involve complex decisions over time."
Sudore said the website aims to help families:
- Identify their priorities;
- Communicate their priorities with their family, friends and physicians; and
- Make informed medical decisions (FierceHealthIT, 1/6).
Details of the Website
The PREPARE website is written in plain English at a fifth-grade reading level. It provides:
- Voice-overs of all text;
- Large font for the visually-impaired; and
- Closed-captioning for the hearing-impaired.
The website is interactive and features videos of people discussing how they spoke about difficult issues with family and physicians (San Jose Mercury News, 1/7).
The website encourages users to:
- Determine their life priorities;
- Choose a medical decision-maker;
- Decide whether the decision-maker should follow only their guidance or have the flexibility to make other decisions;
- Tell others what medical decisions they have made; and
- Ask physicians the right questions (Painter, USA Today, 1/5).