Advance Health Directives: Life Planning

This Century’s Model T? The first automobiles made their debut well before highways did. Early motorists steered their Model T Fords along rutted dirt roads designed for horse-and-buggy traffic. Like those early cars, today’s medical technologies are rolling off the assembly line faster than society’s ability to cope with their legal and ethical implications. We have machines that can pump oxygen into blood, keep kidneys filtering, and jump-start hearts. But as high-profile cases like Terry Schiavo demonstrate, our laws continue to lag behind these dazzling medical advances. There’s a big gap between medicine and the legal system, loaded with moral dilemmas and legal unpleasantness. It’s a gap not likely to be paved over anytime soon, and it’s one most of us don’t want to fall into. How do you keep yourself, and your family, out of the “gap”? How

• Health Care Power of Attorney: do you keep control of your medical destiny in this era of rapidly evolvAuthorizes a trusted person to make health care decisions for you if you ing medical technology? The best— in fact, the only way to do it—is to are unable to make them yourself. establish advance directives. These • HIPAA provisions: The Health Inare documents indicating the kind of surance Portability and Accountabilcare you do and don’t want, ity Act of 1996 limited and appointing someone to medical providers’ aumake your medical decisions thority to release health if you are unable to commucare information. Your nicate your own wishes. health care documents Advance directives inshould include HIPAA clude several types of doclanguage so that those you uments: wish to obtain your privileged medical informa• Living Will: Provides dition, can do so. rection to your treating Once your advance diphysician if you are in a terJoseph S. Karp, rectives are drafted and minal or end-stage condiC.E.L.A. executed, DO NOT put tion, or in a vegetative state. them in a safe deposit box and forgot • Do Not Resuscitate Order: Notiabout them! To be effective if they’re fies emergency personnel to withhold ever needed, you must let your docCPR. This document should only be tors, family and decision-makers know signed after consulting with your docthat they exist, where to find them and tor, not your lawyer.

how to access them. Also, the wording of your advance directives must be precise, unambiguous and encompass all possible scenarios. Therefore, you are well advised to have them drafted only by an experienced, certified elder law attorney. Thanks to medical breakthroughs, we’re living longer, often healthier lives than ever before. There is however, a thin line between medical miracle and moral morass. Make sure you protect yourself and your family with properly drafted and legally sound advance directives. Joseph S. Karp is a nationally certified and Florida Bar-certified elder law attorney (C.E.L.A.) specializing in the practice of Trusts, Estates and Elder Law. His offices are located at 2500 Quantum Lakes Drive, Boynton Beach; 2875 PGA Blvd., Palm Beach Gardens; and 1100 SW St. Lucie W. Blvd., Port St. Lucie. Call him at 561-752-4550 (Boynton); 561-625-1100 (Palm Beach Gardens); or 772-343-8411 (Port St. Lucie). Toll-free from anywhere: 800-893-9911. E-mail: KLF@ Karplaw.com. or website www.karplaw.com