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Advance Directive for Health Care Form - Massachusetts
A Massachusetts Advance Directive for Health Care - not to be confused with a Living Will - ensures that an individual's wishes regarding health care are carried out even in situations when they are unable to make them known due to a terminal illness or being unconscious or too ill to communicate.
Make your own Advance Directive with our form builder or download a pre-made form through the link below.
Advance care planning involves learning about the types of decisions that might need to be made, considering and adjusting those decisions ahead of time, and then letting others - both the individual's family and their health care providers - know about their medical treatment preferences. Massachusetts only allows individuals to make their own health care proxies (included in the Advance Directive). A health care proxy must be witnessed by two (2) individuals.
What Is a Massachusetts Advance Directive?
An Advance Directive is a written form that lists an individual's preferences for medical care and grants a spouse, child, family member, friend or attorney the authority to make decisions regarding health care on the individual's behalf. All of these documents include two separate parts:
- A Medical Power of Attorney - also known as a Health Care Power of Attorney - in which the individual elects a person to make medical decisions when they are unable to do so due to being terminally ill, seriously injured, in a coma or near the end of life.
- A Living Will - a written, legal document that lists an individual's wishes regarding life-sustaining procedures, pain management or organ donation that takes effect when the patient is terminally ill.
How to Write an Advance Directive in Massachusetts?
Advance Care planning is a four-step process:
STEP 1 - Electing an agent to make health care decisions on the patient's behalf.
STEP 2 - Expressing wishes about any limitations in medical treatment - CPR, breathing machines, feeding tubes, and antibiotics.
STEP 3 - Making decisions related to organ and tissue donation and stating preferences regarding the funeral, burial and the disposition of remains.
STEP 4 - Signing, dating and witnessing the form according to the applicable Massachusetts law. Copies of the completed form should be handed out to the agent, the physician, the patient's family and to the health care facility.
Download Advance Directive for Health Care Form - Massachusetts
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