What Can You Include in Healthcare Directives?
By Barry Zimmer on April 6th, 2017 in Advance Directives
Healthcare directives allow you to take control over your own medical care, even in situations where you are not able to speak or make a conscious choice. There are many difficult situations where a person who is terminally ill, in an end stage of an illness or suffering from an incapacitating illness is not able to decide what kinds of care he or she wants. There are also situations where an injury renders someone incapable of expressing a preference for care. If you’ve prepared advanced directives to express your wishes in these types of circumstances, you and your family will be in a much better position.
Zimmer Law Firm can provide you with assistance in determining the types of advanced directives for healthcare that you can prepare in Ohio. Our legal team will also assist you in understanding the process of preparing advanced directives for healthcare, will advise you on the implications of the decisions that you are making, and will help you to make the most informed possible choices to ensure that any directives you create will be prepared in accordance with the law and legally enforceable. Give us a call to find out more.
What Can You Include in Healthcare Directives?
Ohio Hospitals.org provides information on two of the forms that most people use in healthcare directives: a health care power of attorney and a living will declaration. The Ohio State Bar Association also provides information about these two common types of advanced directives, as well as providing details about anatomical gift forms.
A healthcare power of attorney gives you the chance to name an agent who acts on your behalf. The chosen agent makes medical choices that you cannot make at the time of illness or injury and that you have not expressed a prior preference for or against in your living will.
A living will lets you be specific about the kinds of care that you do, and don’t, want under different circumstances. You can use a living will, for example, to specify that you do not want any extraordinary measures to be taken to save your life.
Finally, anatomical gift forms allow you to express your preferences in advance regarding whether or not you want to be an organ and tissue donor.
You can complete some or all of these advanced directives. You do not have to make a living will just because you name a healthcare power of attorney, although it is usually advised that you do create one so you get the final say over the efforts that doctors should make to try to save your life.
When Should You Make Healthcare Directives?
It is important that you make advanced directives for healthcare even when you are still young and healthy. If you wait too long and something unexpected happens to you, it will be too late. If you haven’t made plans, there could be uncertainty and fighting over who in your family has authority to make decisions on your behalf.
There could be questions about what kinds of care you would have wanted or declined, and your family could be left coping with guilt over whether they made the right choice. Court action could also be necessary for a loved one to get the authority over you that is necessary to make decisions.
You cannot take a chance on getting hurt or sick and having all of these undesirable things happen because you failed to make a plan. Zimmer Law Firm will help you with your plans today so you can use the right legal tools to control your medical destiny.
Getting Help from A Cincinnati Incapacity Planning Lawyer
You do not want to take a chance on waiting to create healthcare directives, and you cannot afford to make mistakes when you use these important legal tools to protect yourself from unwanted care and to protect your family from difficult choices. You should reach out to a Cincinnati incapacity planning lawyer for help today so you can get your plans made in case something happens to you in the future.
Zimmer Law Firm can provide comprehensive guidance on taking control of your own medical destiny, and we can help you to ensure that the forms you create to express your preferences are completed correctly and completely so your wishes will be respected.
Give us a call at 513.721.1513 today to find out more about how our legal team can help you so you and your loved ones aren’t put into an untenable situation in the event of a serious tragedy. Call now to get started with your plan and see how our caring and compassionate attorneys can help you make difficult but important choices.