National POLST Collaborative Evolves

POLST, known as Portable Medical Orders, has been a tool to help patients receive goal-concordant care for about 30 years since its development in Oregon (then called “Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment”). POLST calls for a quality, shared decision-making conversation between patients, loved ones, and their medical providers that results in a portable medical order set that will follow the patient across care settings. The POLST process “emphasizes eliciting, documenting and honoring patients’ preferences about the treatments they want to choose or decline during a medical emergency or as their health status changes” (National POLST, “Appropriate POLST Use Policy,” March 16, 2022, https://bit.ly/45awEEl).