The laws governing
advance directives vary from state to state, so it is important to complete and
sign advance directives that comply with your state's law. Also,
advance directives can have different titles in different states. One state’s advance directive does not always
work in another state. Some states do honor advance directives from another
state; others will honor out-of-state advance directives as long as they are
similar to the state's own law; and some states do not have an answer to this
question. The best solution is if you spend a significant amount of time in
more than one state, you should complete the advance directives for all the
states you spend a significant amount of time in. Source
The AHRQ
Report on Decision Aids for Advance Care Planning clearly states “As state law governs almost all issues related to end-of-life
care, content of decision aids for ACP should be consistent with a state’s laws
and regulations. For example, some states require that in order for a proxy to
have authority regarding withholding or withdrawing a feeding tube, that preference
must be explicitly stated in a healthcare directive, while other states grant a
proxy discretion on that issue. Thus, an
excellent decision aid for use in one state may mislead a patient’s effort to
document preferences in another state. “
One site, DoYourProxy.org, at least informs / warns
users that “Certain states require
specific forms and/or specific statements to be included in their advance
directive forms, and the forms generated here do not meet these requirements.”
Other sites
seem to completely ignore the state law issue and are creating documents that
are not legal.
I have also
seem the rapid generation of “state forms” that have been copied from site to
site, and one that just recently communicated that they now have state forms is
using documents created in 2004! State laws change a lot and a document that
has not been update for a decade might be at risk.
How do these
well intended Advance Directive (AD) websites improve to meet the state law
challenge?
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