Health Care Related

Health care plays a major role in our finances. Here are terms to know for future healthcare-related needs.

DPOA for HC (Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care Decisions)

Also called the Healthcare Power of Attorney.

This is a signed and notarized/witnessed legal paper that allows a person to name someone to make health care decisions for him/her during a time of disability or incapacity. (The person who has the power of attorney is called the health care agent, proxy, or surrogate.)

They can be fairly general or very specific and can include decisions about going to the hospital, choice of doctors, and/or long-term care. It can also include refusing or withdrawing consent for use of life-sustaining procedures and consent for organ donation and autopsy.

This may be effective immediately or may be made effective only when the person lacks the capacity (as determined by a physician) to make or communicate decisions.

Common Questions:

• When does a power of attorney take effect?

  • When the principal person becomes legally incapacitated. Physical incapacitation can mean when the person enters into a coma or has a stroke making communication impossible. Mental incapacitation is when mental disease destroys the principal’s ability to rationally make decisions.

• When is it appropriate to have a DPOA (durable power of attorney) for healthcare in place?

  • Anyone 18 years and older. It can be beneficial for married couples to draft a power of attorney and a medical power of attorney at the same time they draft a will.

• Does a DPOA for healthcare have to be notarized?

  • It should be notarized to be recognized by any state; however, it can work in the case of an emergency if it was witnessed.

• When does a Power of Attorney end?

  • Typically they end at the death of the principal as this document is usually used when the person’s condition is serious, however, if the principal makes a full recovery and is no longer considered incapacitated, then this would end. This can mean a person has come out of a coma, recovered after a stroke, or even recovered from a debilitating mental disease.

Living Will

This is a signed and notarized/witnessed form that allows a person to state in advance that his/her dying should not be artificially prolonged in cases of a terminal illness. This decision may only be made by the patient or by the person designated on the DPOA for HC.

A Living Will only applies when the person has been diagnosed and certified as terminally ill by two doctors. (Terminally ill usually means that death will probably occur within six months regardless of whether life-sustaining treatments are used.

Comfort care may be given with a Living Will.

Advance Medical Treatment Directive

This can be any paper in which a person records his/her wishes regarding future medical treatment.

It may be a checklist, a narrative statement, or a letter to the physician or the person’s healthcare agent.

Do-Not-Resuscitate (DNR)

This is a form signed, dated, and witnessed form that lets an adult say in advance his/her decision that if their heart stops beating or breathing stops, no medical procedure will be done to restart the heart or breathing, however, other appropriate emergency medical care may be given.

This paper must also be signed by the attending physician as “medically appropriate” unless the person’s church or religion recognizes treatment by spiritual means only.

*Be sure to keep this form on the front of the refrigerator or another easily seen place.

Common Questions:

• Is a DNR (do-not-resuscitate) the same as a Living Will?

  • No. DNRs do not need notarized, but they do need to be signed by a physician. For some states/counties, the original DNR is needed, and for others, a copy will do.