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Algorithm-enabled Goals of Care Communication (A-EPAC)

8 luglio 2026 aggiornato da: VA Office of Research and Development

Algorithm-Enabled Engagement of Patients With Advanced Cancer (A-EPAC) to Improve Goals of Care Communication Among Veterans With Advanced Stages of Cancer

In 2017, the VA launched the Life-Sustaining Treatment Decisions Initiative (LSTDI), a national program to promote Goals of Care communication between clinicians and patients regarding goals and preferences for care. Despite clinician training and standardized Life Sustaining Treatment (LST) notes in the electronic health record (EHR), 60% of Veterans with cancer have not engaged in such communication with their oncology clinicians before death. Over the past 10 years, the team developed and tested: 1) a lay health worker-led intervention to improve these conversations and reduce unwanted, intensive end-of-life care, and 2) an algorithm-driven approach to identify patients in need of urgent conversations with their clinical teams. This randomized study will evaluate the effectiveness of an intervention combining these two approaches across 7 VA oncology sites. The outcomes include LST documentation, Veteran-reported anxiety and depression, and the identification of factors to inform broad scale of Veteran-centric interventions to improve GoC communication.

Panoramica dello studio

Stato

Non ancora reclutamento

Condizioni

Intervento / Trattamento

Descrizione dettagliata

The investigators developed the Engagement of Patients with Advanced Cancer (EPAC) intervention - a 6-month telephone-based intervention in which trained lay health workers (LHWs) educate and empower Veterans with cancer to engage in goals of care conversations with their oncology clinical teams. To facilitate scale, the investigator propose Algorithm-Enabled EPAC (A-EPAC), which uses the VA Care Assessment Needs (CAN) score to automatically identify patients with cancer who could benefit from EPAC. This intent-to-treat randomized trial is conducted in collaboration with the NTO and the National VA Oncology Programs (NOP). The investigators will randomize 200 Veterans with cancer receiving care across 7 VA facilities to either the A-EPAC intervention (algorithm-based identification and referral to EPAC for 6-months) or usual cancer care alone (cancer care provided by oncology teams at the local site). Participants will be followed for 12-months post enrollment. The primary outcome is Life Sustaining Treatment documentation at 3 months post-enrollment. Secondary outcomes are patient anxiety and depression at 3 months measured by PROMIS® short forms. Exploratory outcomes include intensive end-of-life care, advance directive documentation, and acute care use. Using a quant-qual framework, the investigators will conduct validated surveys with 40 Veterans with cancer and Veteran and clinician interviews at 6 months to identify factors associated with feasibility, adoption, acceptability, and A-EPAC fidelity.

Tipo di studio

Interventistico

Iscrizione (Stimato)

200

Fase

  • Non applicabile

Contatti e Sedi

Questa sezione fornisce i recapiti di coloro che conducono lo studio e informazioni su dove viene condotto lo studio.

Contatto studio

Luoghi di studio

  • Stati Uniti
    • California
      • Palo Alto, California, Stati Uniti, 94304-1207
        • VA Palo Alto Health Care System, Palo Alto, CA
        • Contatto:
        • Investigatore principale:
          • Manali I Patel, MD MSPH

Criteri di partecipazione

I ricercatori cercano persone che corrispondano a una certa descrizione, chiamata criteri di ammissibilità. Alcuni esempi di questi criteri sono le condizioni generali di salute di una persona o trattamenti precedenti.

Criteri di ammissibilità

Età idonea allo studio

  • Adulto
  • Adulto più anziano

Accetta volontari sani

No

Descrizione

Inclusion Criteria:

  • Veteran patients with diagnosis of a solid malignancy with any cancer stage
  • English or Spanish-speaking
  • Can self-administer questionnaires in English or Spanish
  • Valid telephone number
  • Receiving oncology care at one of 7 sites

  • Receiving systemic anti-cancer therapy, defined as oral, injection, or intravenous therapy

    • chemotherapy
    • hormone therapy
    • targeted therapy
    • or immunotherapy defined by the National Cancer Institute A to Z List of Cancer Drugs)
  • CAN risk score ≥98th percentile (may be adjusted after examining site-level CAN performance)

Exclusion Criteria:

  • No capacity to consent
  • Actively receiving hospice care

Piano di studio

Questa sezione fornisce i dettagli del piano di studio, compreso il modo in cui lo studio è progettato e ciò che lo studio sta misurando.

Come è strutturato lo studio?

Dettagli di progettazione

  • Scopo principale: Ricerca sui servizi sanitari
  • Assegnazione: Randomizzato
  • Modello interventistico: Assegnazione parallela
  • Mascheramento: Triplicare

Armi e interventi

Gruppo di partecipanti / Arm
Intervento / Trattamento
Comparatore attivo: Usual Care
Participants will receive usual cancer care for 12 months or until death whichever is first.
Comportamentale: Usual Care
Usual care or standard of care as per the clinical site in which participant is receiving cancer care.
Altri nomi:
  • Standard of care, standard therapy
Sperimentale: Usual Care + A-EPAC
Participants will be assigned to a lay health worker who will conduct education sessions over 30-45 minutes by phone initially followed by 15 minute conversations twice monthly for 6 months to discuss goals of care and how to engage in these discussions with their clinical teams. Participants will also receive usual cancer care for a total of 12 months or until death, whichever is first.
Comportamentale: Usual Care
Usual care or standard of care as per the clinical site in which participant is receiving cancer care.
Altri nomi:
  • Standard of care, standard therapy
Comportamentale: Usual Care + A-EPAC
Educational and support intervention for participants regarding goals of care discussions and engagement in these topics with a lay health worker.
Altri nomi:
  • Goals of Care Behavioral Intervention

Cosa sta misurando lo studio?

Misure di risultato primarie

Misura del risultato
Misura Descrizione
Lasso di tempo
Life Sustaining Treatment Documentation
Lasso di tempo: 3 months
Proportion of participants in both study groups who have a life sustaining treatment document in the electronic health record.
3 months

Misure di risultato secondarie

Misura del risultato
Misura Descrizione
Lasso di tempo
Patient-reported Anxiety and Depression
Lasso di tempo: 3 months
Change in mean score using the validated PROMIS Short Form v1.0 of Anxiety 4a and Depression 4a between time of enrollment and 3 months post-enrollment. Each scale consists of 4 items rated on a 5-point Likert scale. Higher scores indicate greater symptom severity. That is - higher score represents a worse outcome.
3 months
Advance Directive Documentation
Lasso di tempo: 12 months
Proportion of participants with any advance directive documentation in the electronic health record between baseline and 12 months follow-up.
12 months
Acute Care Use
Lasso di tempo: 12 months
Any hospitalization or emergency room admission within 12-months of follow-up.
12 months
Life Sustaining Treatment Documentation
Lasso di tempo: 6 months
Proportion of participants in both study groups who have a life sustaining treatment document in the electronic health record.
6 months
Life Sustaining Treatment Documentation
Lasso di tempo: 9 months
Proportion of participants in both study groups who have a life sustaining treatment document in the electronic health record.
9 months
Life Sustaining Treatment Documentation
Lasso di tempo: 12 months
Proportion of participants in both study groups who have a life sustaining treatment document in the electronic health record.
12 months

Altre misure di risultato

Misura del risultato
Misura Descrizione
Lasso di tempo
Family reported quality of end-of-life care
Lasso di tempo: 12 months
For participants who die during the study period, the VA Veterans Experience Center will administer the Bereaved Family Survey which solicits bereaved family evaluations of care in the last 30 days of life. One component of this survey is the National Quality Forum-endorsed measure called the BFS Performance Measure (BFS-PM), a single item evaluation of the overall quality of EOL care. This measure is measured a 5-point Likert scale, which investigators will dichotomize as "excellent" vs all other categories. This measure will be reported out descriptively.
12 months
Heard and Understood
Lasso di tempo: 3 months
Descriptive measure using the National Quality Forum 4-item survey which assesses perceptions of quality of communication with the clinical team.
3 months
Proportion of patients with Intensive End of life Care
Lasso di tempo: 12 months

Number of participants who die within 12-months of follow-up who had any

  • hospital or Intensive Care Unit admission <30 days before death,
  • receipt of any systemic therapy <14 days before death (defined as both oral and intravenous chemotherapy and immunotherapy),
  • hospice referral <3 days before death. (abstracted from electronic health record)
12 months
Acceptability
Lasso di tempo: 6 months
Investigators will measure patient-reported acceptability using the 12-item validated Acceptability of Intervention Measure (AIM) (Veterans or designated caregivers)
6 months
Beliefs about GoC communication
Lasso di tempo: 6 months
Beliefs related to GoC communication (e.g., self-efficacy and readiness) will be measured using the 15-item validated Advance Care Planning Engagement survey (Veterans or designated caregivers), which has been validated in diverse populations of outpatients with advanced cancer. Beliefs related to GoC communication will be assessed using the 28-item validated End-of-Life Care Questionnaire (EOL-Q) (clinicians, LHW)
6 months
Patient-Centered Care 1
Lasso di tempo: 6 months
Patient-clinician communication will be measured among patients using validated communication items from the Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CAHPS) (Veterans or designated caregivers).
6 months
Patient-Centered Care 2
Lasso di tempo: 6 months
Patient engagement will be measured using a 4-item measure of shared decision making (SDM Process-4) (Veterans or designated caregivers)
6 months
Organizational Climate:
Lasso di tempo: 6 months
Investigators will administer the 18-item validated Implementation Climate Scale to capture degree to which the clinic supports use of GoC communication (clinicians, LHW)
6 months
Pragmatic Context Assessment Tool (pCAT)
Lasso di tempo: 6 months
Investigators will administer a 14-item tool to assess barriers and facilitators to A-EPAC within the CFIR framework (Veterans or designated caregivers, clinician, LHW)
6 months

Collaboratori e investigatori

Qui è dove troverai le persone e le organizzazioni coinvolte in questo studio.

Sponsor

VA Office of Research and Development

Investigatori

  • Investigatore principale: Manali I Patel, MD MSPH, VA Palo Alto Health Care System, Palo Alto, CA

Studiare le date dei record

Queste date tengono traccia dell'avanzamento della registrazione dello studio e dell'invio dei risultati di sintesi a ClinicalTrials.gov. I record degli studi e i risultati riportati vengono esaminati dalla National Library of Medicine (NLM) per assicurarsi che soddisfino specifici standard di controllo della qualità prima di essere pubblicati sul sito Web pubblico.

Studia le date principali

Inizio studio (Stimato)

15 luglio 2026

Completamento primario (Stimato)

30 giugno 2031

Completamento dello studio (Stimato)

30 giugno 2031

Date di iscrizione allo studio

Primo inviato

22 giugno 2026

Primo inviato che soddisfa i criteri di controllo qualità

7 luglio 2026

Primo Inserito (Effettivo)

8 luglio 2026

Aggiornamenti dei record di studio

Ultimo aggiornamento pubblicato (Effettivo)

10 luglio 2026

Ultimo aggiornamento inviato che soddisfa i criteri QC

8 luglio 2026

Ultimo verificato

1 luglio 2026

Maggiori informazioni

Termini relativi a questo studio

Parole chiave

Termini MeSH pertinenti aggiuntivi

Altri numeri di identificazione dello studio

  • HSR6-015-24W
  • 1-I01-RD-0000421-01-A1 (Altro numero di sovvenzione/finanziamento: VA HSR&D eRA)

Piano per i dati dei singoli partecipanti (IPD)

Hai intenzione di condividere i dati dei singoli partecipanti (IPD)?

NO

Informazioni su farmaci e dispositivi, documenti di studio

Studia un prodotto farmaceutico regolamentato dalla FDA degli Stati Uniti

No

Studia un dispositivo regolamentato dalla FDA degli Stati Uniti

No

prodotto fabbricato ed esportato dagli Stati Uniti

No

Queste informazioni sono state recuperate direttamente dal sito web clinicaltrials.gov senza alcuna modifica. In caso di richieste di modifica, rimozione o aggiornamento dei dettagli dello studio, contattare register@clinicaltrials.gov. Non appena verrà implementata una modifica su clinicaltrials.gov, questa verrà aggiornata automaticamente anche sul nostro sito web .

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