Who is your Power of Attorney for Healthcare?
When going about your regular day, you are the one making all of the decisions for yourself. But what happens if you find yourself in a situation where you are unable to make decisions for yourself? Who do you trust to make those decisions and how are you able to give them the power to do so?
Arguably the POA for healthcare is the most important POA and is honestly something that everyone should have prepared. What this document does is allow the signor to designate a person to make medical decisions on their behalf if they are unable to.
While most people obviously want to be the decision makers over their own care, that’s not always possible. Often times when someone has to be taken to the hospital, they can be arriving in varying states of consciousness. This is where the Power of Attorney for Healthcare comes into play. If you have a designated POA for Healthcare, the document you signed will give the designated person instructions and an expression of your wishes in regards to your medical care.
Having a Power of Attorney for Healthcare can be important to ensure that you not only receive the care that you would want, but that you don’t suffer any delays in your care. If you end up in the hospital. When a person is brought in to the hospital unconscious it is rarely as simple as a loved one coming in and beginning to making decisions for your care. Hospitals are often wary of allowing anyone other than the patient to make medical decisions due to liability and may require a POA to be signed for any healthcare decisions to move forward. Meanwhile you are sitting in a very expensive hospital bed waiting for your care to start.
When you draft a Power of Attorney you do not just assign your Power of Attorney authority, you also give them some basic instructions as to your wishes. The most common piece of information imparted by the POA is whether the person granting authority has a desire to be kept alive as long as possible (what we often refer to as “The Walt Disney Clause”) or to be taken off life support if quality of life is going to be impacted and no cure is in sight.
It is important to make the correct choice for who will be your power of attorney for healthcare. It may often seem like the best choice to elect a parent or sibling to be your power of attorney, however these loved ones may have issues following your wishes, especially in situations where it is your desire to be taken off life support and this may be difficult for your family to cope with or accept. When making the decision for healthcare you should elect someone you are confident will respect your wishes, whatever they may be.
It is important to choose carefully both, the people you want to be your Powers of Attorney and who you have draft the document/keep record of it. In order to ensure that your voice is able to be heard by your loved ones even when you can express your wishes for your healthcare or your property management, consider contacting the Law Office of Andrew Szocka, P.C. online or by phone at (815) 455-8430.