With a $1 million grant from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT, Buffalo, N.Y.-based health information exchange HEALTHeLInk has been working to develop a FHIR-based solution to make advance care planning documents available through its health information network. While the grant period ended in August, the HIE said it is continuing to onboard additional advance care planning data sources and educate participants on available advance care planning services.

The advanced care planning information includes goals-of-care discussions and electronic documentation such as living wills, health care proxy, do not resuscitate, and medical orders for life-sustaining treatment. The creation and initial execution of HEALTHeLINK’s advance care planning functionality was funded through a grant from ONCs Leading Edge Acceleration Projects in Health Information Technology program. The grant portion concluded in August 2026.
 
With that funding, HEALTHeLINK said, it addressed a persistent clinical problem: advanced care planning and advance directive documents are often created, scanned, stored, or updated in separate systems, making them difficult or impossible to locate electronically at the exact point when they are most needed.

The HIE sees increasing access to these documents as a natural extension of the organization’s mission to improve health at the point of care, said Dan Porreca, president and CEO of the HIE. “HEALTHeLINK is meeting providers where they are as to how they document their patients wishes and making advance care planning documents more accessible, including during emergency care, pre-visit planning, and other clinical workflows where timely access to patient wishes is essential,” said Porreca, in a statement. “By supporting more informed decision making, HEALTHeLINK is helping providers better understand and honor patient wishes when they can no longer speak for themselves, reduce uncertainty, and provide comfort for family members during medical emergencies.”
 
Currently, 61 data sources and more than 73,000 advance care planning documents are available to participating HEALTHeLINK providers for their consented patients.