Advance Health Care Directory

Everyone should have an advance health care directive, also known as a health care proxy or medical directive.  This document names the person (agent) you choose to make medical decisions on your behalf should you become unable to make them yourself.  This may occur because of disease, injury, a debilitating condition or advancing years.   The advance health care directive only comes into play if your mental or medical condition leaves you unable to understand potential treatments and their risks, as well as the risks of doing nothing at all for your situation.  Otherwise, you make your own informed decisions.

Choosing someone to be your agent in the event you cannot make medical decisions for yourself should not be taken lightly.  You want to choose someone who will follow your wishes, which can be laid out in a "living will," dutifully.  Someone who loves you but may not agree with your wishes may not be the best person to select.  

For example, you have made it known that you would not want "extraordinary measures" to keep you alive and you have named your husband as your agent in your advance health care directive.  You are then injured in a car accident and left in a persistent vegetative state.   If your husband does not agree with your ideas about no extraordinary measures, he may insist that the doctors keep you attached to feeding and hydration tubes despite your wishes, particularly if you do not have a living will.  In such a case, it would perhaps be wiser to choose another relative or close friend, one whom you know would execute your wishes faithfully, as your agent.

Talk to an attorney to draw up a health care directive as the rules vary state by state.

Home