for
Individuals
Better Quality of Life
Learn More
Resource
A Plea for Better Endings
A conversation between Dr. Jessica Zitter, Dr. Monica Soni and Leah Puccio
Streaming Now (registration form at bottom)
Physicians’ first oath is “do no harm”. The lines get blurry quickly in end-of-life situations — especially when there are no good options. In absence of advance care planning (ACP) with the patient and their family, doctors face the overwhelming job of helping people make the hardest decisions they’ll face in life.
The consequences are painfully felt within families, health systems, and health plans, at great emotional and financial costs.
Hear from panelists as they confront the heart-wrenching, avoidable circumstances that happen in our hospitals and homes every day.
Inspired by the powerful documentaries Extremis and Caregiver, A Love Story. You will hear about:
- How the healthcare system takes over in absence of ACP
- The continued gap between what patients want and what they get
- Why even motivated stakeholders such as health plans and delivery systems struggle to close this gap
- Meeting people where they are to align care with their values and wishes
Meet the Speakers:
Dr. Jessica Zitter
Palliative and Critical Care Physician, Filmmaker, Author, and Co-Founder of Vital Decisions
Jessica Nutik Zitter, MD, MPH calls for a new approach to caring for the dying. Practicing the unusual combination of ICU and palliative care medicine, she has come to view our indiscriminate use of technology in dying patients as a public health crisis.
She’s the author of Extreme Measures: Finding a Better Path to the End of Life and her essays and articles have appeared in the New York Times, The Atlantic, the Washington Post, Time magazine, the Journal of the American Medical Association, and other publications. Her work is featured in the Oscar and Emmy-nominated Netflix documentary Extremis, as well as Caregiver: A Love Story, which explores the rising concern of family caregiver burden.
Dr. Zitter attended Stanford University and Case Western Reserve University Medical School and earned her Master of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley. She practices at the public hospital in Oakland California.
Dr. Monica Soni
Senior Medical Director for Medicaid and Exchange Solutions – New Century Health
Dr. Soni‘s focus is to ensure high quality, cost effective care for patients and an optimal provider experience. She is a board certified practicing Internal Medicine physician with over a decade of experience in both inpatient and outpatient safety net care.
Prior to her current role, Dr. Soni served as the Director of Specialty Care for the LA County Department of Health Services, the 2nd largest municipal health system in the US. Her areas of expertise include reducing practice variation, optimizing transitions of care, and effective deployment of primary-specialty care co-management models including e-Consultation. She is also an Assistant Clinical Professor within both the UCLA Department of Medicine and Charles R. Drew University Department of Internal Medicine.
Dr. Soni received her medical degree from Harvard Medical School. She completed her residency in Internal Medicine at the UC, San Francisco and was a fellow in the California Health Care Foundation Leadership Program.
