The Importance of Health Care Documents

So what am I talking about in terms of healthcare documents? Of course, your typical, uh, healthcare...

Sometimes they're called healthcare powers of attorney.

Sometimes they're called, uh, medical directives or, or healthcare directives.

It doesn't really matter what you call them.

The key characteristic of these things is that they are the appointment of an adult to make medical decisions on behalf of another adult.

And that's critical, especially when you're talking about people who maybe aren't your spouse.

It becomes very, very important, although it's important for your spouse as well.

And the other thing that oftentimes goes in these documents that's also important for people in the United States in particular is that there are, uh, authorizations to disclose medical information to the person that you have named in the document under HIPAA, our health privacy rules, federal rules that are then sort of adopted by states, okay? And every, and every state kind of has their own rules that piggyback off of the federal HIPAA rules.

And those, those rules will prevent a medical provider from sharing any healthcare information that isn't authorized.

This can apply even between parents and their adult children.

And so if you have adult children in their home and they're, they're at u- they're going to school at some university somewhere or college somewhere, they're living in another place, um, those adult children, if you're their parent, uh, have to give you authority to speak to their doctor on their behalf.

And that may include like a healthcare power of attorney.

So think about when...

If something catastroch- catastrophic happens, excuse me, and they can't communicate, that'd be one instance where you need the healthcare power of attorney in order to, uh, communicate with their doctor.

But also just to have normal conversations, if that's what is desired with their, their medical practitioner, you won't be able to do it without a HIPAA release.

And getting the HIPAA release then opens the authorization for you to communicate with their doctor on behalf of the, uh, adult child of yours who now went from being a minor to being an adult, and now they are covered by HIPAA, and they are their own little legal entity in the eyes of our laws, and therefore you can't just step in and help them on a whim.

You have to follow the rules.

And this can be a frustration, uh, obviously, because many people don't think about these things.

And so when it arises, they get, they get frustrated by the fact that they, you know, they're not able to get information from the medical providers.

They're not able to participate.

Uh, they're just not...

They're cut out of the process.

And for all of you, the helicopter parents out there, this can be very distressing.

Well, you can fix it.

Just have your adult child who's home and now living in your house, uh, get one of these healthcare, uh, powers of attorney.