Director of Clinical Ethics Banner Health Phoenix, Arizona
Abstract: Ethics consultations in intensive care units often come too late after conflicts have escalated, leading to unhappy families, prolonged hospital stays, and unnecessary or unwanted treatments. What if ethics involvement was a frontline intervention rather than a last resort? This session introduces the Banner Ethics Screening Tool (BEST)- a structured, proactive approach to identifying and addressing ethical issues before they become crises. BEST has been implemented across multiple hospitals and settings including a medical ICU, an academic Trauma/Surgical ICU, and an Oncology focused Medical ICU. BEST directs screening on four key issues- the early identification of a surrogate decision maker, the documentation of code status, the establishment of a plan of care, and the presence of any conflict. Our findings revealed that early ethics interventions after screening lead to a significant reduction in mortality index and length of stay; resulting in millions in cost avoidance. In this session we will discuss how we implemented the BEST tool, collected data, calculated ROI, and presented our findings to hospital leadership. We will review our data results, the positive opportunities, and the potential pitfalls of ethics program metricization. Attendees will leave with an understanding of the BEST tool, ROI calculations, and its potential role for justifying program growth.
Keywords: Clinical Ethics Department, Screening, Program Development
Learning Objectives:
After participating in this conference, attendees should be able to:
Attendees will leave with an understanding of the impacts of early ethics interventions in ICU settings related to mortality rates, length of stay, and cost avoidance.
Attendees will be able to discuss how ethics screening can be used to show ROI and support for ethics department growth.
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