Advance Directives

Do you understand your healthcare advance directives? What is the difference between the healthcare power of attorney and living will? How do the documents work together?

The Healthcare Power of Attorney is a document that designates someone to make health care decisions for you if you are unable to do so. It also enables someone to obtain protected health care information about you. This is really something that is both for you and your loved ones. The only time that the hospital is going to make decisions for you is in a life-threatening situation. Your consent is presumed in that scenario. You don’t want to leave your relatives in a scenario where they cannot make decisions for you and you clearly need them to.

A Living Will is a document that provides instructions to your health care provider. It only applies if two physicians have determined that you are in a terminal condition and you are unable to make your own health care decisions or you are in a permanently unconscious state and there is not any reasonable possibility that you will regain the capacity to make informed decisions about your healthcare.

When it comes time to make end of life decisions, if you only have a health care power of attorney, your agent makes the end of life decision. If you have a living will, or healthcare power of attorney and a living will, then you make the end of life decision when you are in the permanently unconscious state.

If nothing else, you want to ensure that you can get your healthcare advance directives in order. These forms are not completely intuitive. There are some double negatives in the language in the standardized forms. It is important to work with a knowledgeable attorney to sort  out these documents.