Advance Health Care Directives and Living Wills for Healdsburg Residents

Compare documents by the decision they address

An advance health care directive can express your health-care wishes and identify someone to make health-care decisions. Those functions are related, but they are not the same: written preferences communicate what matters to you, while naming someone identifies a decision-maker. Consider which function you want to address before deciding whether a document needs attention.

A financial power of attorney has a different role: it concerns financial decisions, not the health-care role of an advance directive. Comparing the documents can help you avoid treating a financial-planning document as a substitute for communicating health-care wishes or identifying a health-care decision-maker.

• For care preferences and a health-care decision-maker, consider the advance health care directive.
• For financial decisions, consider the financial power of attorney.
• If both areas matter, assess each document for its own purpose rather than assuming one covers the other.

Decide what you want your written preferences to do

Before changing a directive, consider whether the main need is to put health-care wishes in writing, identify someone to make health-care decisions, or address both. If your concern is about a particular preference, focus your review on whether your written instructions communicate that preference. If your concern is about who may decide, focus separately on the person identified for that role.

These questions are a way to organize your review, not medical advice about which treatment to choose. You can prepare a list of topics or preferences you want to discuss and ask how they can be expressed in the document. The purpose is to make your instructions and decision-maker understandable to the people who may need to refer to them.

Check access separately from document preparation

Preparing a directive and keeping relevant documents accessible are practical steps distinct from registering information about an executed directive. A registration step should not be confused with preparing the document itself or making the relevant documents available to people who may need them.

As you review your arrangements, consider where the relevant documents are kept and how the people involved would know where to find them. You can also note whether you have considered registration of information about an executed directive. These are separate points to discuss; registration does not replace the work of communicating your wishes and decision-maker.

Prepare a focused review

Gather the health-care directive you want to review and, if relevant, your financial power of attorney. Make a short list of what you want to clarify: the preferences you want expressed, whether the person identified to make health-care decisions remains the person you intend, and where the documents can be found. You may also note whether registration information is a separate item you want to ask about.

A useful next step is to discuss those questions with the firm and identify which document or documents relate to your concerns. Keeping the review focused on each document’s purpose can make it easier to decide what to change without conflating health-care instructions with financial authority.