Vynca And Ariadne Labs Partner To Bring Serious Illness Conversations To More Patients

PALO ALTO, Calif. and BOSTON, June 5, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Patients facing serious, life-limiting illness benefit significantly from having conversations with their clinicians about their goals, values and preferences. Too often, however, clinicians face barriers in having these conversations reliably and consistently for all patients. A new partnership between Vynca, a provider of advance care planning technology solutions, and health system innovation center Ariadne Labs will make it easier for clinicians and patients to have these important conversations.

The partnership between Vynca and Ariadne Labs will offer Vynca clients the ability to electronically complete and share the Serious Illness Conversation Guide, developed by palliative care experts in the Ariadne Labs Serious Illness Program. The guide provides a structured framework that enables clinicians and patients to engage in sensitive and effective conversations about the patient's prognosis and illness understanding, values and personal goals. In a recently published study, Ariadne Labs demonstrated that serious illness conversations with the guide reduced by half the proportion of patients with serious to moderate anxiety and depression.

The guide will be embedded in Vynca's end-to-end solution that supports health care organizations to implement and scale high-quality advance care planning so that every person's care preferences are honored at the end-of-life. Vynca technology supports education and engagement in advance care planning conversations, shared decision making, electronic completion of documents, and makes these documents electronically available to individuals, their family members, and health care providers across the care continuum. Partnering with over 80 hospitals, as well as health plans, ACOs, and state registries, these organizations are realizing an impact in terms of higher quality of care at the end-of-life and the avoidance of unwanted health care interventions.

"As part of our ongoing commitment to support individuals with serious illness, we're excited Ariadne Labs is the first partner we have incorporated into our platform," stated Ryan Van Wert, M.D., co-founder and CEO of Vynca. "The Serious Illness Conversation Guide assists clinicians in gaining a thorough understanding of an individual's goals and preferences in order to inform future care decisions. Making this electronically available on our platform supports health care organizations to easily implement this valuable tool at scale. It also ensures health care providers have immediate access to all advance care planning documents in a single location, so they can ultimately honor end-of-life wishes."

To date, more than 300 organizations have implemented the Serious Illness Conversation Guide. It will now be available to all Vynca clients electronically.

"We know that these conversations improve the wellbeing and care of patients and their families, and we believe that this partnership with Vynca will ensure not only that these conversations happen, but that they are of higher quality and more accessible across multiple points of care," said palliative care physician Justin Sanders, MD, the assistant director of innovation for the Serious Illness Care Program. "We are working together to ensure that all patients facing serious illness are able to have a meaningful conversation with their clinician about what matters most."

About Vynca

Vynca, based in Palo Alto, Calif., provides comprehensive advance care planning technology solutions that enable health care organizations to deliver high-quality end-of-life care consistent with an individual's preferences. The company helps patients, families and health care providers have meaningful conversations about future care preferences, ensure that wishes are documented accurately, and provides real-time access to this critical information throughout the care continuum.

Vynca is also the leading solution provider for state advance care planning registries, having first partnered with the Oregon POLST Registry to develop a bi-directional electronic interface for health care organizations in Oregon.  It is also the technology vendor for the California POLST eRegistry Pilot, the Delaware DMOST Registry, the Louisiana LaPOST Registry, and the South Carolina Registry. For more information, visit www.vyncahealth.com. Follow Vynca on LinkedIn and Twitter @VyncaHealth.

About Ariadne Labs

Ariadne Labs is a joint center for health systems innovation at Brigham & Women's Hospital and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston. The Ariadne Labs mission is to save lives and reduce suffering by creating scalable solutions that improve health care delivery at the most critical moments for people everywhere.

CONTACT: Emelia Altschul, 914-260-1621, [email protected]

SOURCE Vynca, LLC