Million+ Patients Helped

End of Life Planning Vynca

Rush Bartlett

Co-Founder, President & COO

Biodesign Innovation Fellow 2012-13

Ryan Van Wert

Co-Founder & Chief Medical Officer

Biodesign Innovation Fellow 2012-13

Frank Wang

Co-Founder & CTO

Biodesign Innovation Fellow 2014-15

It was a massive stroke. By the time Sallie Cutler’s 96-year-old mother reached the emergency room she was lethargic, unable to speak, and paralyzed on her right side. Distraught, Sallie’s first instinct was to beg the ER team to do everything in their power to save her mother’s life…until she learned that her mother had an advanced care directive. Available as part of her electronic medical record, the directive clearly stated her mother’s desire not to receive life support. Having immediate access to the document made the decision-making process much easier for Sallie and the ER team. As Sallie described, 'I was so relieved. [My mom] made all the decisions for me ahead of time.'

Advanced care directives are common. But, what we learned is that, far too often, this essential information isn’t readily available to the care team, especially in emergency situations. The advanced care directive is filed away with an attorney or taped to the patient’s refrigerator. What was missing was a way for doctors to rapidly access the patient’s directive in a crisis to understand how the individual wants to be treated in the event they are unable to personally communicate their wishes.

Vynca has solved this issue by directly linking advanced care directives, POLST forms, and other critical end-of-life information to the electronic medical record, and making it available to healthcare providers across the care continuum. So far, Vynca manages over 350,000 of these healthcare directives for patients at more than 30 hospitals.

End of Life Planning

 

“What was missing was a way for doctors to rapidly access the patient’s directive in a crisis to understand how the individual wants to be treated in the event they are unable to personally communicate their wishes.”

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Vynca enables individuals, families, and care teams to make care planning decisions, create accurate documentation, and share the documents across all care providers to ensure that personalized care is delivered to every patient, every time, according to their wishes.

Disclaimer of Endorsement: All references to specific products, companies, or services, including links to external sites, are for educational purposes only and do not constitute or imply an endorsement by the Byers Center for Biodesign or Stanford University.

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