National Healthcare Decisions Day

It's been 10 days since April 16th marked this year's National Healthcare Decisions Day. Our firm recognized this important day with our 4th Annual Event, held at The Atrium in Boca Raton, on the 14th. Members of the senior healthcare community attended with interest and received an event packet that covered the need for Advance Directives. Guest speakers presented points of view on the delicate subject of End of Life Decision-Making from legal, moral and spiritual perspectives, and "Having the talk."

What is an advance directive?

What if something happened to you and you couldn't make your own decisions.....

Advance Directives are a suite of documents that assign "Power" to someone you trust who will make legal, financial and medical decisions on your behalf, should you become incapacitated and unable to read, speak, write, think logically for yourself.

All adults can benefit from thinking about what their healthcare choices would be if they were unable to speak for themselves.  These decisions can be written down in an advance directive so that others know what they are.  Advance directives come in two main forms:

• A "healthcare power of attorney" (or "proxy" or "agent" or "surrogate") documents the person you select to be your voice for your healthcare decisions if you cannot speak for yourself. 
• A "living will" documents what kinds of medical treatments you would or would not want at the end of life

And very improtant: The Durable Power of Attorney. When done correctly and comprehensively, and by a Board-certified Elder Law attorney, enables one to designate a person or persons who will be able to act on your behalf with regard to banking, real estate and other business transactions. In the best case scenario, you would assign someone you KNOW will always have YOUR best interests in mind.

Having the talk: nobody likes to think of the worst...or even the inevitable. But, on too many occasions, folks have suddenly become incapacitated and their loved ones are left powerless and unable to follow-through with certain plans and decisions that may have been communicated-verbally.


Think ahead and get it in writing.


According to the NHDD, here are some impressive stats on how many people, participated in events across the country and received information on this important matter:

• Over 626,000 medical staff members, employees, or organization members received either specific education on advance directives.
• Over 35,000 people attended public NHDD events.
• Over 1,800 advance directive documents were known to be executed.
• NHDD was mentioned in media all across the country.