Operationalizing needs-focused palliative care for older adults in intensive care units: Design of and rationale for the PCplanner randomized clinical trial.

Introduction: The number of older adults who receive life support in an intensive care unit (ICU), now 2 million per year, is increasing while survival remains unchanged. Because the quality of ICU-based palliative care is highly variable, we developed a mobile app intervention that integrates into the electronic health records (EHR) system called PCplanner (Palliative Care planner) with the goal of improving collaborative primary and specialist palliative care delivery in ICU settings.

Objective: To describe the methods of a randomized clinical trial (RCT) being conducted to compare PCplanner vs.