MyDirectives and Delaware Health Information Network Partner to Build Statewide Advance Care Planning Ecosystem

Five-year initiative will connect Delawareans, clinicians, emergency medical services, and community organizations to advance directives and portable medical orders across care settings

DALLAS & DOVER, Del.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--MyDirectives, the nation’s leader in digital advance care planning solutions, today announced a partnership with Delaware Health Information Network (DHIN) to build and support a statewide advance care planning (ACP) ecosystem designed to make advance directives and portable medical orders securely available when and where they are needed.

The five-year initiative brings together MyDirectives’ national ACP infrastructure and DHIN’s statewide connectivity. It was developed in collaboration with the Delaware Quality of Life Coalition (DQOLC) and its Delaware Medical Orders for Scope of Treatment (DMOST) Committee as Delaware prepares to transition from its existing DMOST form to the National POLST form and expand its approach beyond portable medical orders to include advance directives.

The initiative is supported by funding commitments from major Delaware health systems and Highmark Delaware. Rural Health Transformation Program funding will also help extend EHR-integrated ACP capabilities to rural communities across the state.

U.S. Senator Chris Coons (D-Del.), who earlier this year introduced the bipartisan Medicare Advance Planning (MAP) for Care Act to encourage Medicare beneficiaries to create electronic advance directives, praised the statewide initiative.

“Every Delawarean deserves to make their own decisions about their medical care,” said Senator Coons. “An advance directive or portable medical order helps ensure those decisions are respected even if you’re unable to communicate. With today’s announced partnership, Delaware is leading the way for the nation, making it easier for patients to create and share their wishes with doctors. My bipartisan MAP for Care Act would expand this system to all states, so more people can benefit from this commonsense idea.”

Scott Brown, Chief Executive Officer of MyDirectives, said the partnership puts that broader vision into practice through a statewide approach that connects patient preferences with care delivery. “Delaware healthcare stakeholders understand that advance care planning is healthcare infrastructure. This initiative is about giving Delawareans greater confidence that their goals of care and treatment preferences can be found and honored, while giving clinicians and emergency medical teams secure, real-time access to the documents they need to make informed care decisions. Delaware is building a model that can be replicated across the country.”

Through the partnership, MyDirectives and DHIN will deploy several connected capabilities:

• The A|D Vault Exchange™ ACP Document Query and Retrieve API will allow authorized healthcare organizations connected to DHIN to securely query and retrieve ACP documents from MyDirectives’ nationwide registry in real time.
• The ACP Document Insertion API will enable authorized healthcare organizations and community-based professionals to upload advance directives and portable medical orders to the registry.
• MyDirectives for Clinicians™ will be available through DHIN’s provider portal, giving participating organizations a secure way to help individuals create, upload, update, and share ACP documents.
• Healthcare organizations will also have options to integrate MyDirectives for Clinicians directly into their electronic health record workflows.

The statewide approach is designed to support hospitals, physician practices, emergency medical services, skilled nursing and post-acute care organizations, hospice and palliative care providers, home health organizations, community health workers, and other participants across the care continuum.

“DHIN was created to connect healthcare information across Delaware and make it available to care providers,” said Jan Lee, M.D., Chief Executive Officer of DHIN. “Expanding that infrastructure to include advance directives and portable medical orders will reduce fragmentation and give care teams access to critical information when it matters most. Most importantly, it will help Delawareans maintain a stronger voice in their care.”

Access to portable medical orders is particularly important for emergency medical services. While advance directives communicate an individual’s broader goals of care and treatment preferences, POLST forms contain medical orders that emergency responders and other healthcare professionals can act upon. Making those orders electronically accessible can strengthen patient safety and help prevent care that is inconsistent with the individual’s documented decisions.

“Portable medical orders only protect patients when healthcare professionals can find them and act on them,” said Sarah Matthews, M.D., Palliative Section Chief at ChristianaCare, and DQOLC Secretary and DMOST Co-Chair. “This initiative will connect the clinical, technical, and community resources needed to make ACP documents more accessible and more actionable throughout Delaware.”

The initiative will also help address barriers facing Delaware’s rural communities, where older populations, chronic illness, workforce shortages, and longer travel distances can make timely access to care more difficult. By using technology and existing statewide infrastructure, Delaware can make ACP resources and documents available across geographic and organizational boundaries.

The initial rollout is expected to begin in October 2026, with capabilities and participation expanding throughout the five-year initiative.

About MyDirectives

MyDirectives is the premier provider of digital advance care planning (ACP) solutions and highly secure, cloud-based storage that makes ACP documents available across the healthcare continuum. Through its free platform at MyDirectives.care, individuals can create and update an advance directive, upload existing ACP documents, including POLST forms and mental health advance directives, and securely share them with family members and care teams. MyDirectives for Clinicians™ supports guided ACP discussions and document creation within clinical workflows, while the A|D Vault Exchange™ registry enables the secure query, retrieval, and insertion of ACP documents nationwide. MyDirectives processes more than 5 million secure ACP document queries each week, reaches more than 90% of the U.S. healthcare ecosystem, and is HITRUST R2 and SOC 2 Type II certified. To learn more, follow MyDirectives on LinkedIn, X, and Facebook, or visit www.mydirectives.com.

About Delaware Health Information Network

Delaware Health Information Network (DHIN) is the first live, statewide health information exchange in the nation. Launched in 2007, today it serves all of Delaware’s acute care hospitals and nearly 100% of the state’s medical providers. More than 18 million clinical results and messages are processed through DHIN each year for over three million unique patients. DHIN shares real-time clinical information to improve patient outcomes, eliminate the duplication of services and reduce the cost of healthcare.

In addition to its role as Delaware’s health information exchange, DHIN also powers the state’s Health Care Claims Database (HCCD). The database collects healthcare claims, enrollment and provider data from Medicare, Medicaid and the seven largest commercial health insurers in the State of Delaware, making it the single largest repository of claims data Delaware has ever had. Learn more at dhin.org.