Importance of a Health Care Proxy

Health care proxies are allowable in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and what they do is they name a health care agent. That person has the right to make your health care decisions if you’re unable to do so if you’re incapacitated from doing so. So a typical case where a health care proxy might become important to you is if you are admitted to a hospital for example, and you’re not conscious when you’re admitted or you’re later become unconscious or in a coma or just simply unable for whatever reason to make your own health care decisions. In that case, your health care agent can make those decisions. Generally, the medical institutions prefer people to have health care proxies because then the burden isn’t on the medical provider to make the decision for you. There’s a clear designation of who has the authority to do that for you. That becomes especially important in a decision whether to sustain life equipment so I sometimes generically refer to that as it’s the pull-the-plug document. So you have to be able to trust the person who’ll make those decisions on your behalf and that’s the decision that you want made. The healthcare proxy that I use is very detailed and it gives very specific and powerful powers to the healthcare agent to make those decisions so I always urge my clients to also discuss their issues with their healthcare agent so that their healthcare agent will know what decisions you would want made.

This informational blog post was provided by Cynthia Hanley, an experienced Massachusetts Divorce Lawyer.