Recent Publications by CFE Educators

Electronic health record (EHR) systems can be configured to deliver novel EHR interventions that influence clinical decision making and to support efficient randomized controlled trials (RCTs) designed to evaluate the effectiveness, safety, and costs of those interventions. In designing RCTs of EHR interventions, one should carefully consider the unit of randomization (for example, patient, encounter, clinician, or clinical unit), balancing concerns about contamination of an intervention across randomization units within clusters (for example, patients within clinical units) against the superior control of measured and unmeasured confounders that comes with randomizing a larger number of units. One should also consider whether the key computational assessment components of the EHR intervention, such as a predictive algorithm used to target a subgroup for decision support, should occur before randomization (so that only 1 subgroup is randomized) or after randomization (including all subgroups). When these components are applied after randomization, one must consider expected heterogeneity in the effect of the differential decision support across subgroups, which has implications for overall impact potential, analytic approach, and sample size planning. Trials of EHR interventions should be reviewed by an institutional review board, but may not require patient-level informed consent when the interventions being tested can be considered minimal risk or quality improvement, and when clinical decision making is supported, rather than controlled, by an EHR intervention. Data and safety monitoring for RCTs of EHR interventions should be conducted to guide institutional pragmatic decision making about implementation and ensure that continuing randomization remains justified. Reporting should follow the CONSORT (Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials) Statement, with extensions for pragmatic trials and cluster RCTs when applicable, and should include detailed materials to enhance reproducibility.

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) continues to impact older adults disproportionately with respect to serious consequences ranging from severe illness and hospitalization to increased mortality risk. Concurrently, concerns about potential shortages of healthcare professionals and health supplies to address these issues have focused attention on how these resources are ultimately allocated and used. Some strategies, for example, misguidedly use age as an arbitrary criterion that disfavors older adults in resource allocation decisions. This is a companion article to the American Geriatrics Society (AGS) position statement, "Resource Allocation Strategies and Age-Related Considerations in the COVID-19 Era and Beyond." It is intended to inform stakeholders including hospitals, health systems, and policymakers about ethical considerations that should be considered when developing strategies for allocation of scarce resources during an emergency involving older adults. This review presents the legal and ethical background for the position statement and discusses these issues that informed the development of the AGS positions: (1) age as a determining factor, (2) age as a tiebreaker, (3) criteria with a differential impact on older adults, (4) individual choices and advance directives, (5) racial/ethnic disparities and resource allocation, and (6) scoring systems and their impact on older adults. It also considers the role of advance directives as expressions of individual preferences in pandemics. J Am Geriatr Soc 68:1143-1149, 2020.

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) continues to impact older adults disproportionately, from severe illness and hospitalization to increased mortality risk. Concurrently, concerns about potential shortages of healthcare professionals and health supplies to address these needs have focused attention on how resources are ultimately allocated and used. Some strategies misguidedly use age as an arbitrary criterion, inappropriately disfavoring older adults. This statement represents the official policy position of the American Geriatrics Society (AGS). It is intended to inform stakeholders including hospitals, health systems, and policymakers about ethical considerations to consider when developing strategies for allocating scarce resources during an emergency involving older adults. Members of the AGS Ethics Committee collaborated with interprofessional experts in ethics, law, nursing, and medicine (including geriatrics, palliative care, emergency medicine, and pulmonology/critical care) to conduct a structured literature review and examine relevant reports. The resulting recommendations defend a particular view of distributive justice that maximizes relevant clinical factors and deemphasizes or eliminates factors placing arbitrary, disproportionate weight on advanced age. The AGS positions include (1) avoiding age per se as a means for excluding anyone from care; (2) assessing comorbidities and considering the disparate impact of social determinants of health; (3) encouraging decision makers to focus primarily on potential short-term (not long-term) outcomes; (4) avoiding ancillary criteria such as "life-years saved" and "long-term predicted life expectancy" that might disadvantage older people; (5) forming and staffing triage committees tasked with allocating scarce resources; (6) developing institutional resource allocation strategies that are transparent and applied uniformly; and (7) facilitating appropriate advance care planning. The statement includes recommendations that should be immediately implemented to address resource allocation strategies during COVID-19, aligning with AGS positions. The statement also includes recommendations for post-pandemic review. Such review would support revised strategies to ensure that governments and institutions have equitable emergency resource allocation strategies, avoid future discriminatory language and practice, and have appropriate guidance to develop national frameworks for emergent resource allocation decisions. J Am Geriatr Soc 68:1136-1142, 2020.

Liver transplantation (LT) offers excellent long-term outcome for certain patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), with a push to not simply rely on tumor size and number. Selection criteria should also consider tumor biology (including alpha-fetoprotein), probability of waitlist and post-LT survival (ie, transplant benefit), organ availability, and waitlist composition. These criteria may be expanded for live donor LT (LDLT) compared to deceased donor LT though this should not adversely affect the double equipoise in LDLT, namely ensuring both acceptable recipient outcomes and donor safety. HCC patients with compensated liver disease and minimal tumor burden have low urgency for LT, especially after local-regional therapy with complete response, and do not appear to derive the same benefit from LT as other waitlist candidates. These guidelines were developed to assist in selecting appropriate HCC patients for both deceased donor LT and LDLT.