Advance Health Care Directives and Living Wills for Colma Residents

Separate your treatment wishes from other planning decisions

An advance health care directive can express your health-care wishes and identify someone to make health-care decisions. Those are related but distinct purposes: written instructions describe what you want considered, while naming a decision-maker identifies a person who may act on your behalf. This page focuses on the instructions—not on choosing or evaluating an agent.

Before a consultation, consider what you want your written directions to communicate. Think about the kinds of care decisions that matter to you, what values should guide them, and whether there are circumstances in which your preferences might differ. You do not need to arrive with polished legal language. A short list of questions or themes can make the conversation more concrete.

Prepare for a focused remote consultation

Collect any existing advance health care directive or other health-care planning document you have, along with notes about what you would like to clarify or change. If you have not prepared a document, write down your preferences in ordinary language and identify any situations you would like to discuss. These are preparation steps, not legal requirements.

Consider who may need to locate the document if you cannot communicate. Make a practical list of people or care settings that should know where it is kept, and note any questions you have about sharing it. Keeping relevant documents accessible is different from registering information about an executed directive; registration does not replace having the document available to the people who may need it.

• Gather existing health-care planning documents and a list of questions.
• Write down the values and treatment preferences you want the document to convey.
• Note who should know where the document is kept and how they might access it.

Keep health-care planning distinct from financial authority

A financial power of attorney serves a different role from an advance health care directive: it concerns financial decisions rather than health-care wishes. If you are reviewing both, keep them as separate questions in your planning notes so that a document intended for one purpose is not mistaken for the other.

For this consultation, focus on whether your health-care preferences are clear and how the relevant document can be found when needed. Questions about financial authority can be identified separately rather than folded into your treatment instructions.

Turn preferences into an accessible plan

A document is more useful when the people who may need it can locate it. Decide where you intend to keep it and consider how you will let relevant people know where it is. If you already have a directive, bring it to the consultation and explain which parts still reflect your wishes and which parts you want to revisit.

A practical next step is to prepare your existing documents, preference notes, and access questions for a virtual consultation. The goal is to discuss how your written instructions can reflect your wishes and remain available—not to treat a registration record as a substitute for the document itself.