Health Care Proxy 101 and 201

How important is a Health Care Proxy ("HCP") in your life?

Simply, if you are over the age of 18 and in need of medical care (or your family needs access to your medical information) and are unable to communicate then all your medical decisions will be made by the medical community and your family will have no say in your care!  In other words, the doctors will make all your life and death decisions independently of your family and retain all that decision making power in their hands.  The reason for this is not because the medical community wanted it, but the government placed that responsibility on their shoulders.

So the HCP is a document that acts as a buffer between the state's mandates and your family.  With the HCP, your family or the people you trust the most in the world, will be able to direct your medical care in those circumstances where you are unable.  People often ask "When would I not be able to make my own medical decisions?"  Simple, you are in a coma, unconscious or have a diminished mental capacity.

A simple story will illustrate how important the HCP is in your life.  A family drops their daughter off at college for the first time.  After a tearful good-bye in the parking lot, Mom and Dad go home leaving their daughter all alone.  The next morning, Mom and Dad receive a horrific phone call.  Someone from the college tells them their daughter is in a hospital.  Mom takes the phone and demands to know what happened and is told that since the daughter is over the age of 18, they cannot tell Mom anything since to do so would violate the Federal Government HIPAA laws. (These HIPAA laws are also known commonly as the health privacy laws.)  Mom and Dad drive up to the college and are directed to the hospital still without knowing anything.  At the hospital they get the same response.  Since there is no HIPAA compliant document authorizing the medical professionals to discuss their daughter's chart with them, the hospital refuses.  Six months later, and after going to court to become the court appointed guardian of their daughter, who is still apparently in a coma, the medical professionals finally agree to tell what has happened.  On the night they left their daughter, she had apparently consumed a large quantity of alcohol and had alcohol poisoning.  They then told Mom how they had treated the daughter.  Unfortunately, and much to the horror of the medical staff and Mom, one of the drugs they had used was one to which the daughter had an allergy.  This explained why the daughter had not responded to treatment but also left the daughter permanently brain damaged.

The moral to this story is this:  If Mom and Dad had a signed HCP from their daughter before she went to college, Mom  would  have been able to immediately tell the doctors of the allergy and daughter would be perfectly fine today.

Where can you find a HCP.  You can find them almost anywhere you look.  They are available on-line, at hospitals and doctors offices, in bookstores, in business supply stores and in general practice attorney offices.  The only problem with this easy availability is beware of the prices you may pay!  Simply because a document has a title, use a checklist to see if the document will perform the function(s) you need.

1.  Have you named your primary and alternate agents with current phone numbers?
2.  Have you included specific instructions about the "heroic measures" you will allow to sustain your life?
3. If the only thing keeping you alive are the "heroic measures", have you specified the number of days you would allow this to continue?
4. Have you specified if the agent can act for you if you are physically fine but simply mentally incompetent?
5. Have you addressed the Do Not Resuscitate ("DNR") orders that are NOT to be followed and the conditions in which they are to be followed?
6. Does the document conform to the HIPAA laws?

If you have answered "No" or "I don't know" to any of the 6 questions above, be aware you may have a document that is ineffective.

For those who have been following my blogs, this document is the first critical step in estate planning.  From a legal perspective, estate planning is the series of documents that ensure who is protecting me and my family and who is in control of me and my family, whether I am alive and well, alive and not well, or when I pass away.  The HCP allows my family to protect me and control what is done to me during my lifetime if I am unable to do so.  The HCP is extinguished if I rescind the document or when I die.