Ferdinando Mirarchi is the chief executive officer and chief medical officer of MIDEO Health Technologies, LLC. He is the principal investigator of the TRIAD (The Realistic Interpretation of Advance Directives) Research Series, which identified a significant patient safety risk involving the misinterpretation of living wills, DNR orders, and Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment (POLST).
His research has been featured by The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other national media outlets, and it led to the development of MIDEO (My Informed Decision on VidEO), an evidence-based video advance directive and portable physician medical order designed to clarify patient wishes and improve emergency decision-making.
He is a reviewer for leading peer-reviewed journals, including CHEST, JAMA, and JAGS, serves on the editorial board of Patient Safety magazine, and authored Understanding Your Living Will. A fellow of both the American College of Emergency Physicians and the American Academy of Emergency Medicine, he previously held multiple leadership positions at UPMC Hamot and chaired the national palliative care committee at US Acute Care Solutions.
He shares updates on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and X.
This is why we get it wrong
As clinicians, we were taught that advance directives (ADs) and Portable Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment (POLSTs) protect patient autonomy. So, we encourage our patients to complete them. Hospitals and health systems promote and measure our efforts. Public and private insurers pay for it. And policymakers celebrate them.
But these familiar tools upon which we so heavily rely at the end of life have been creating …
Read more…
Why problems with advance directives keep harming patients
