Advanced Healthcare Planning
Make choices now so your friends and family can support and understand your future needs based upon you as an individual.
Advance Care Planning is all About YOU!
Forks Community Hospital is here to help you with planning, facilitating the conversation, and providing resources you may need now or in the future.
Our health care situation can change in a moment and without warning. When something happens unexpectedly, it is important to think through and communicate to loved ones and health care providers what your wishes are regarding your health care decisions. If medical decisions have to be made, and you cannot communicate your wishes, it’s important for your loved ones to be prepared to make those decisions for you.
This can be accomplished by communicating your wishes (Advance Directives), naming a decision maker if you become incapacitated (Durable Power of Attorney for Healthcare), or directions when you are near the end of life (Portable Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment). Forks Community Hospital is here to help you with this planning, facilitating the conversation, and providing resources you may need now or in the future.
Advance Directive
We cannot know what tomorrow holds, and we may be faced with a health care situation that does not allow us to communicate our needs.
In partnership with Honoring Choices, the linked workbook is designed to facilitate a conversation between loved ones and those over 18 years old and older. Forks Community Hospital is prepared to partner in this conversation, answer questions, and help you flesh out your health care goals, values, and preferences. Advance Directives change with your individual health care situation and are recommended to all adults no matter their current health care standing.
Durable Power of Attorney for Healthcare
When you cannot make a healthcare decision on your own, a durable power of attorney allows a trusted person such as a friend or family to make legal health care decisions on your behalf.
This does not have to be a permanent arrangement and can change as each situation dictates. A Durable Power of Attorney is a legal document and must be signed in front of a notary.
POLST – Portable Order for Life-Sustaining Treatment
POLST forms are between patients and their providers to determine which life-sustaining treatments if any, a patient wishes to have performed.
Forks Community Hospital can provide you with an advocate to help you understand each portion of the form and how it applies to your individual health situation. POLST forms can change as your individual medical situation changes.
Support & Questions
Advanced Healthcare Planning can feel overwhelming. Forks Community Hospital can help simplify the process and identify what is best for you as an individual.
For more information please email: sharp@forkshospital.org.
