PALO ALTO, Calif. & PORTLAND, Ore.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Vynca, a provider of advance care planning solutions, and Legacy Health, a locally owned nonprofit healthcare organization, have collaborated to implement Vynca’s advance care planning technology across Legacy’s six hospital campuses in Oregon and Washington to enhance end-of-life care for patients.
Vynca has been working with the Oregon POLST Registry since 2015 to provide health systems in the state with a streamlined electronic registry for Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment (POLST) forms—legal documents outlining the care patients want to receive at the end of life or in emergency medical situations. Legacy Health joins several other health systems in Oregon in adopting Vynca’s technology to electronically capture, store, and access patients’ advance care planning documents.
According to John Kenagy, Ph.D., senior vice president and chief information officer of Legacy Health, the deciding factors in adopting Vynca’s platform were the company’s partnership with the Oregon POLST Registry and the smooth integration of its technology with Legacy’s EHR system. “We are always looking for ways to innovate and provide better care and service for our patients,” Kenagy said. “We needed a technology that would seamlessly integrate with our Epic EHR platform, which will allow our 13,000 employees and 650 physicians to easily access and honor the end-of-life wishes of our patients.”
Advance care planning documents allow people to document their future healthcare preferences should they be unable to speak for themselves. However, the lack of infrastructure to support and sustain an electronic registry can make it difficult for providers to find and access patients’ documents, especially during emergencies. Vynca’s robust platform ensures that advance care documents, including POLST forms, truly reflect patient preferences and are quickly available to healthcare providers where and when needed.
“Our partnership with Legacy Health is an important step in ensuring that patient preferences are aligned with patient care,” said Ryan Van Wert, M.D., co-founder and chief executive officer of Vynca. “Through our collaborations with a growing number of health systems, we are seeing an impact in terms of higher quality of care at the end of life, and avoidance of unwanted healthcare interventions through the use of our platform. This speaks to the fact that patients’ wishes are being accessed and honored in a way that they were not previously.”
Van Wert said that Vynca has contracts with over 60 hospitals to implement and deploy its system, and several states across the U.S. have adopted Vynca’s platform, including California, Delaware, Oregon, North Carolina, and Louisiana.
About Legacy Health
Legacy Health is one of Oregon's only locally owned nonprofit healthcare organizations with over 13,000 employees. Legacy includes Legacy Emanuel Medical Center, Randall Children's Hospital at Legacy Emanuel, Legacy Good Samaritan Medical Center, Legacy Meridian Park Medical Center, Legacy Mount Hood Medical Center, Legacy Salmon Creek Medical Center, Legacy Laboratory Services, and Legacy Research Institute. The system also includes over 100 Legacy Medical Group primary care and specialty care clinics. Learn more at www.legacyhealth.org.
About Vynca
Vynca, based in Palo Alto, Calif., provides comprehensive advance care planning solutions that enable healthcare organizations to deliver consistent, high-quality end-of-life care. The company helps patients and healthcare providers have meaningful conversations about care preferences and document wishes accurately, and provides real-time access to this critical information throughout the care continuum. Vynca offers expertise in building state registries, having partnered with the Oregon POLST Registry. It also was selected as the technology vendor for the California POLST Registry Pilot, the Delaware DMOST Registry, and the Louisiana LaPOST Registry. The system is customized to the needs of healthcare organizations and state agencies, and provides full EHR integration. For more information, visit www.vyncahealth.com. Follow Vynca on LinkedIn and Twitter @VyncaHealth.
