Advance Directives

Advance Directives are legal documents that allow you to convey your decisions about end-of-life care ahead of time.

A living will guides your family and health care team about the medical treatment you wish to receive or not receive if you are unable to make your own decisions.

A medical power of attorney allows you to select a person you trust to make decisions about your medical care if you are temporarily or permanently unable to communicate.

In Utah these two directives are combined into one new and easy form. If yours is older than January 2008 or if you don't have one, fill out this Form (recommend using Internet Explorer).

Funeral Planning Form. Plan your own funeral! Be interviewed by a loved one--it is much more fun that way.

If your next of kin cannot or does not want to carry out your funeral plans, do not worry, just assign a specific person right now to control the disposition of your remains: Assign an Agent Form.

Your Organ Donor Advance Directive is specified on your Utah drivers license or state ID. You can edit your organ donor preferences on the website yesutah.org using your drivers license number. If you, a relative or a friend has registered YES to being a donor you may find it helpful to consider that:

  1. Mortuaries list on their price list a charge for organ donor repair.
  2. Utah mortuaries cannot charge survivors for organ donor repair. Intermountain Donor Services is supposed to pay that fee.
  3. No agency follows-up to make sure that Mortuaries are not double billing.
  4. If you edit your organ donor preferences online you can specify what organs or tissue you want exempt from harvesting. One person wrote in their specifications: "I want my family or friends to be able to carry out my funeral and body transport without a funeral director. So only remove those organs and tissue that allow my body to be completely sutured and sealed by the organ recovery team."

If you would like help with understanding more about Advance Directives, don't hesitate to call 801-226-2323.

Links

Mayo Clinic: Living wills and advance directives for medical decisions

U.S. National Library of Medicine and National Institutes of Health:
Advance Directives (has a lot of links to other resources)

A recent article in Newsweek said that nearly a third of the cost of Medicare for an individual occurs in the last two years of ones life. Some studies indicate that Americans are overtreated by 30%. Making decisions in advance about your can help avoid unnecessary costs (which often affect your loved ones) and actually improve your quality of life. The article recommends that we draft living wills to make our end-of-life desires known.

Anyone can benefit from having an Advance Directive. You could have an accident or get an illness that leaves you without the ability to make decisions. Without an Advance Directive, those making decisions for you may not know what you want. Worse still, your family and friends could argue over the care you should receive, and proceed with unnecessary health care treatment. Avoid this problem by helping your family and friends to know what to do: name an agent and tell your agent and family about your health care wishes.