What is a Power of Attorney for Health Care?
Delaware’s Advance Health Care Directive Form allows you to name another individual as an “agent” to make health care decisions for you if you become incapable of making your own decisions. It also enables you to name an alternate agent to act for you if your first choice is not willing, able, or reasonably available to make decisions for you. This part of the form is a Power of Attorney for Health Care. An agent may not be an operator or employee of a residential long-term health care facility at which you are receiving care, unless that person is related to you. An agent’s authority becomes effective if your attending physician determines that you lack the capacity to make your own health care decisions. The agent’s obligation is to make health care decisions for you in accordance with the instructions you have given in your advance directive and any other wishes, to the extent that they are known. To the extent that wishes are unknown, health care decisions made by an agent are to c
The Power of Attorney for Health Care is a document in which you appoint another person (a “healthcare agent”) to make healthcare decisions for you in the event you are not capable of making them for yourself. When you complete this document, you give authority to your healthcare agent to make a wide range of decisions for you, such as whether or not you should have an operation, receive certain medications, have a feeding tube placed or be placed on a life support system. In some areas of health care, your healthcare agent is not allowed to make decisions for you unless you give him or her specific authority in these areas when you complete the form. These areas are admission to long-term care facilities, limitations on mental health treatment, healthcare decisions for pregnant women, pregnancy care and provision of a feeding tube. Because your healthcare agent will make decisions for you based upon what he or she knows about you and thinks is best for you, it is important to choose s
