COVID-19 Highlights
Critical Need for Advance Healthcare Directives—Part 1
by Amy Clemmons Brown, Esq.
As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to ravage
the country, doctors across the nation are joining lawyers in urging Americans
to create the proper estate planning documents, so medical providers can better
coordinate their care should they become hospitalized with the virus.
The most critical planning tools for this purpose are medical power of attorney
and a living will, advance healthcare directives that work together to help
describe your wishes for medical treatment and end-of-life care in the event
you’re unable to express your own wishes. In light of COVID-19, even those who
have already created these documents should revisit them to ensure they are
up-to-date and address specific scenarios related to the corona virus.
While all
adults over age 18 should put these documents in place as soon as possible, if
you are over age 60 or have a chronic underlying health condition, the need is
particularly urgent. Contact us right away if you or anyone in your family
needs these documents created.
Advance directives
Medical power of attorney is an advance directive that allows you to name a
person, known as your “agent,” to make healthcare decisions for you if you’re
incapacitated and unable to make those decisions yourself. For example, if you
are hospitalized with COVID-19 and need to be placed in a medically induced
coma, this person would have the legal authority to advise doctors about your
subsequent medical care.
If you become
incapacitated without medical power of attorney, physicians will generally look
to someone in your family to make these decisions for you. If no family can be
located, they may ask the court to appoint a legal guardian to be the decision
maker. In either case, the person given this responsibility could be someone
you’d never want having power over such life or death decisions—and that’s why
having medical power of attorney is so important.
While medical
power of attorney names who can make
health-care decisions in the event of your incapacity, a living will explains how your care should be handled,
particularly at the end of life. For example, if you should become seriously
ill and unable to manage your own treatment, a living will can guide your agent
to make these medical decisions on your behalf.
These decisions could include if and when you want life support removed,
whether you would want hydration and nutrition, and even what kind of food you
want and who can visit you. To ensure your medical treatment is handled in
exactly the way you want and prevent your family from undergoing needless
stress and conflict during an already trying time, it’s vital that you document
such wishes in a living will.
Keep your directives updated
Even if you’ve already created advanced directives, now is the perfect time to
review the documents to ensure they still match your wishes and circumstances.
For instance, is the agent named in your medical power of attorney still the
individual you’d want making these decisions? Has your health changed in ways
that might affect your living will’s instructions? Are you values and wishes
regarding end-of-life still the same?
What’s more,
whether you are creating new documents or updating your old ones, you should
keep COVID-19 in mind. The highly contagious and life-threatening nature of the
corona virus is something medical providers have never dealt with before, and it
has strained our nation’s healthcare system to the breaking point.
Corona virus considerations
In light of COVID-19, there are a few unique circumstances you need to be aware
of when drafting these documents to ensure all of the potential scenarios
related to the corona virus and its treatment have been properly addressed.
1. Don’t do it yourself: While you’ll find a wide selection of
generic, advance-directive documents online, you shouldn’t trust these
do-it-yourself forms to adequately address such critical decisions. This is
especially true during the ongoing pandemic, when doctors are constantly tasked
with making highly difficult and uncertain decisions for patients suffering
from this deadly new virus.
When it comes
to your medical treatment and end-of-life care, you have unique needs and
wishes that just can’t be anticipated by fill-in-the-blank documents. To ensure
your directives are specifically tailored to suit your unique situation, you
must work with experienced planning professionals like us to create—or at the
very least, review—your medical power of attorney and living will.
2. Open lines of communication: Because COVID-19 is so contagious, family
members of those who’ve contracted the virus are often not allowed to accompany
them to the hospital. This means your agent likely won’t be there in person to
make your treatment decisions. While most advance directives give your agent
broad authority to communicate with your medical providers, the documents may
not explicitly authorize certain types of remote communication.
To remedy this, you may want to consider adding language to your directives
expressly authorizing your agent to give directions by phone, Zoom, email,
Skype, Facetime, and other methods. To facilitate this communication, you
should bring copies of your directives with you to the hospital to give your
doctors, and ensure your agent (and any alternate agents named) have updated
copies on-hand as well.
Next week, I’ll continue with part two in this series on the critical need for advanced
directives in the age of COVID-19.
As your
Personal Family Lawyer®, I can guide you to make informed, educated, and
empowered choices to protect yourself and the ones you love most. Contact me today to get started with a Family Wealth Planning Session.
This article
is a service of Amy Clemmons Brown, an Arkansas licensed attorney. I don’t
just draft documents; I ensure you make informed and empowered decisions about
life and death, for yourself and the people you love. That's why I offer a
Family Wealth Planning Session,™ during which you will get more financially
organized than you’ve ever been before, and make all the best choices for the
people you love. You can begin by calling my office today at 501-376-9119 to schedule a Family
Wealth Planning Session and mention this article to find out how to get this
$750 session at no charge!
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