According to a recent American Academy of Estate Planning Attorney’s article, when emergency medicine physicians were surveyed about the availability of advanced directives (i.e. Health Care Powers of Attorney):
•93% reported less frustration in situations where advance directives are easily accessible
•88% said having an advance directive helped ensure better quality patient care
•85% indicated that families were more we’re more comfortable with how doctors cared for their love ones when they patient had an advance directive
•and 55% were relieved upon learning that a patient already had an advance directive.
If you do not already have an advance directive, you should make getting one prepared a priority. Moreover, if you have one, you need to make sure that it is readily available when it is needed. One author suggests taping a copy to your refrigerator or carrying one in your glove box. An alternative that we are now making available to our clients is to enroll in DocuBank, a service that makes your advance directive available 24/7 through a simple phone call to DocuBank.
More information on DocuBank and how to enroll is here.