What Happens If You Become Incapacitated?

Estate planning in La Jolla, University City – UTC, and San Diego

By Amy Hsiao

Sep 05

What happens if you become incapacitated? What kind of decisions can you ask your loved ones to make for you?

There’s a document known as the Advance Healthcare Directive that allows you to nominate people to make decisions for you when you can’t make them yourself. However, I often see people nominate loved ones for this position, and then when an urgent medical situation does arise, they have no idea what kinds of decisions to make.

To ensure this never happens to you, I’ve invited Dr. Bob Uslander of Integrated MD Care to join me today to talk about what you must do before this situation arises so that your wishes are fulfilled. Feel free to follow our entire conversation in the video above. I’ve also provided timestamps so you can skip ahead to various sections at your leisure:

1:00—What are some considerations you should make when nominating someone to make medical decisions for you?

2:20—Why your healthcare agent needs to be emotionally capable of making hard decisions and understand what your wishes are

4:46—Who are the ideal people to have these conversations with?

5:33—Why any adult or anyone dealing with a serious illness should identify their healthcare agent and make their wishes known

7:10—Specify the little details of your care in addition to the standard form documents

8:37—Examples of situations and conditions the Advance Healthcare Directive doesn’t specify 

9:43—Wrapping things up.

If you have any questions about this topic for Dr. Uslander, you can reach him by phone at (858) 925-7554 or visit his website Integratedmdcare.com.

 As always, if you have any other questions for me or there’s anything I can assist you with, don’t hesitate to reach out to me. I’d be happy to help you.