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Newsletter

2014 2nd Edition (Other Editions)

NOTICE REGARDING DURABLE POWER OF ATTORNEY FOR HEALTH CARE

The Durable power of Attorney is an important legal document. Before executing this document, you should know and consider the following facts.

TThis document gives the person you designate (the attorney-in-fact) the power to make most health care decisions for you if you lose the capacity to make informed health care decisions for yourself. This power is effective only when your attending physician determines you have lost the capacity to make informed health care decisions for yourself. Notwithstanding this document, as long as you have the capacity to make informed health care decisions for yourself; you retain the right to make all medical and other health care decisions for yourself.

TYou may include specific limitations in this document on the authority of the attorney-in-fact to make health care decisions for you.

TSubject to any specific limitations you include in this document, if your attending physician determines you have lost the capacity to make an informed decision on a health care matter, the attorney-in-fact generally will be authorized by this document to make health care decisions for you to the same extent as you could make those decisions yourself, if you had the capacity to do so. The authority of the attorney-in-fact to make health care decisions for you generally will include the authority to give informed consent, to refuse to give informed consent or to withdraw informed consent to any care, treatment, service or procedure to maintain, diagnose or treat a physical or mental condition.

THowever, even if the attorney-in-fact has general authority to make health care decisions for you under this document, the attorney-in-fact never will be authorized to do any of the following:

1. Refuse or withdraw informed consent to life sustaining treatment unless your attending physician and one other physician who examines you determine, to a reasonable degree of medical certainty and in accordance with reasonable medical standards, that either of the following applies:
1. You are suffering from an irreversible, incurable and untreatable condition caused by disease, illness or injury from which:
1. There can be no recovery and
2. Death is likely to occur within a relatively short time if life sustaining treatment is not administered, and your attending physician additionally determines, to a reasonable degree of medical certainty in accordance with reasonable medical standards, that there is no reasonable possibility you will regain the capacity to make informed health care decisions for yourself.
2. You are in a state of permanent unconsciousness characterized by an irreversibly unawareness of yourself and your environment and by a total loss of cerebral cortical functioning, resulting in your having no capacity to experience pain or suffering, and your attending physician additionally determines, to a reasonable degree of medical certainty and in accordance with reasonable medical standards, that there is no reasonable possibility you will regain the capacity to make informed health care decisions for yourself.
2. Refuse or withdraw informed consent to health care necessary to provide you with comfort care (except that, if he or she is not prohibited from doing so under (4) below, the attorney-in-fact could refuse or withdraw informed consent to the provision of nutrition or hydration to you as described under (4) below).
   (You should understand that comfort care is defined in state law to mean artificially or technologically administered sustenance (nutrition) or fluids (hydration) when administered to diminish your pain or discomfort, not to postpone death, and any other medical or nursing procedure, treatment, intervention, or other measure that would be taken to diminish your pain or discomfort, not to postpone death. Consequently, if your attending physician were to determine that previously described medical or nursing procedure, treatment, intervention, or other measure will not or no longer will serve to provide comfort to you or alleviate your pain, then, subject to (4) below, your Attorney-in-Fact would be authorized to refuse or withdraw informed consent to the procedure, treatment, intervention or other measure.)
3. Refuse or withdraw informed consent to health care for you if you are pregnant and if the refusal or withdrawal would terminate the pregnancy (unless the pregnancy or health care would pose a substantial risk to your life, or unless your attending physician and at least one other physician who examines you determine, to a reasonable degree of medical certainty and in accordance with reasonable medical standards, that the fetus would not be born alive).
4. Refuse or withdraw informed consent to the provision of artificially or technologically administered sustenance (nutrition) or fluids (hydration) to you, unless:
1. You are in a terminal condition or in a permanently unconscious state.
2. Your physician and at least one other physician who has examined you determine, to a reasonable degree of medical certainty and in accordance with reasonable medical standards, that nutrition or hydration will not or no longer will serve to provide comfort to you or alleviate your pain.
3. If, but only if, you are in a permanently unconscious state, you authorize the Attorney-in-Fact to refuse or withdraw informed consent to the provision of nutrition or hydration to you by doing both of the following in this document:
1. Including a statement in capital letters that the Attorney-in-Fact may refuse or withdraw consent to the provision of nutrition or hydration to you if you are in a permanently unconscious state and if the determination that nutrition or hydration will not or no longer will serve to provide comfort to you or alleviate your pain is made, or checking or otherwise marking a box or line (if any) that is adjacent to a similar statement on this document.
2. Placing your initials or signature underneath or adjacent to the statement, check or other mark previously described.
4. Your physician determines, in good faith, that you authorized the Attorney-in-Fact to refuse or withdraw informed consent to the provision of nutrition or hydration to you if you are in a permanently unconscious state by complying with the requirements of (4)(c)(i) and (ii) above.
5. Withdraw informed consent to any health care to which you previously consented, unless a change in your physical condition has significantly decreased the benefit of that health care to you, or unless the health care is not, or is no longer, significantly effective in achieving the purposes for which you consented to its use.
   
   Additionally, when exercising his or her authority to make health care decisions for you, the attorney-in-fact will have to act consistently with your desires or, if your desires are unknown, to act in your best interest. You may express your desires to the attorney-in-fact by including them in this document or by making them known to him or her in another manner.
   
   When acting pursuant to this document, the attorney-in-fact generally will have the same rights that you have to receive information about proposed health care, to review health care records and to consent to the disclosure of health care records. You may limit that right in this document if you so choose.
   
   Generally, you may designate any competent adult as the attorney-in-fact under this document. However, you cannot designate your attending physician or the administrator of any nursing home in which you are receiving care as the attorney-in-fact under this document. Additionally, you cannot designate an employee or agent of your physician, or an employee or agent of a health care facility at which you are being treated as the attorney-in-fact under this document, unless either type of employee or agent is a competent adult and related to you by blood, marriage or adoption, or unless either type of employee or agent is a competent adult and you and the employee or agent are members of the same religious order.
   
   This document has no expiration date under law, but you may choose to specify a date upon which your Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care generally will expire. However, if you specify an expiration date and then lack the capacity to make informed health care decisions for yourself on that date, the document and the power it grants to your attorney-in-fact will continue in effect until you regain the capacity to make informed health care decisions for yourself.
   
   You have the right to revoke the designation of the attorney-in-fact and the right to revoke this entire document at any time and in any manner. Any such revocation generally will be effective when you express your intention to make the revocation. However, if you made your attending physician aware of this document, any such revocation will be effective only when you communicate it to your attending physician or when a witness to the revocation or other health care personnel to whom the revocation is communicated by such a witness communicates it to your attending physician.
   
   If you execute this document and create a valid Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care with it, it will revoke any prior, valid Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care that you created, unless you indicate otherwise in this document.
   
   This document is not valid as a Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care unless it is acknowledged before a notary public or is signed by at least two adult witnesses who are present when you sign or acknowledge your signature. No person who is related to you by blood, marriage or adoption may be a witness. The attorney-in-fact, your attending physician and the administrator of any nursing home in which you are receiving care also are ineligible to be witnesses.
   
   If there is anything in this document you do not understand, you should ask your lawyer to explain it to you.