Bonner General joins National Healthcare Decisions Day

History will be made April 16, 2008. Bonner General Hospital is joining a national effort to highlight the importance of advance healthcare decision-making-an effort that has culminated in the formal designation of April 16, 2008 as the inaugural National Healthcare Decisions Day.

The goal of this nationwide initiative is to ensure that all adults with decision-making capacity have both the information and the opportunity to communicate and document their future healthcare decisions.

On April 16, Bonner General Hospital will join healthcare organizations across the country in providing free information to the public to assist in executing written advance directives (healthcare power of attorney and living wills) and to help people talk with their family members and friends about their healthcare wishes.

Details regarding the time and location will be announced soon.

While making healthcare decisions is often difficult in the best of circumstances, making decisions for others is even more complicated. Advance directives give you the ability to guide your healthcare providers and loved ones document the types of healthcare you do and do not want and to name an “agent” to speak for you if you cannot speak for yourself.

As Terri Schiavo's situation vividly revealed, having an advance directive can be valuable for all adults, regardless of current age or health status. With the Patient Self-Determination Act of 1990, Congress affirmed the right of every citizen to set forth his or her future healthcare wishes in writing with an “advance directive.”

Yet various estimates suggest that fewer than 25 percent of all Americans have an advance directive. For an action that can be done without a lawyer, for free, and relatively easily, this figure is astonishingly low.

In recognition of this, National Healthcare Decisions Day strives to provide much-needed information to the public, reduce the number of tragedies that occur when a person's wishes are unknown, and improve the ability of healthcare facilities and providers to offer informed and thoughtful guidance about advance healthcare planning to their patients.

With healthcare, your decisions matter. However, others need to know your wishes to honor them.

There are no wrong answers when thinking about healthcare choices and completing an advance directive. Please use April 16, 2008 to decide, discuss and document your wishes, whatever they may be.

n Lynda Metz is the director of community development at Bonner General Hospital.