Healthcare Power of Attorney in Morristown

Choose for availability as well as trust

Start by identifying the person you would want to speak for you if you could not make or communicate a healthcare decision. Then consider practical availability: Can that person be reached when needed? Are they willing to take on the role? Can they understand and communicate your preferences?

Name an alternate choice as well as a primary choice when planning. Compare each person against the same questions, rather than treating the alternate as a formality. If your preferred person is often difficult to reach or may be unable to serve, discuss how to make the plan workable.

Separate decision-making from information access

A healthcare power of attorney concerns authority to make healthcare decisions. A HIPAA authorization concerns sharing protected health information. They are related planning topics, but one does not automatically do the work of the other: a separate information-sharing authorization alone does not appoint someone to make healthcare decisions.

State-law authority can make someone a HIPAA personal representative. That means a separate HIPAA authorization is not automatically required for an agent in every situation. Review any existing authorization alongside your healthcare decision document so the roles and intended access are clear.

Make a one-page decision and preference worksheet

Before discussing documents, write down your primary agent and alternate, how to contact each, and why each person is a workable choice. Add a short list of healthcare preferences or concerns you want to explain to them. This worksheet is for organizing your discussion; it does not replace a legal document or itself grant authority.

Tennessee’s Advance Directive for Health Care form addresses an agent, an alternate, and healthcare preferences. It also includes document-signing and copy-sharing instructions. Review those instructions in the form rather than relying on a general checklist for how to execute it.

• Gather any existing healthcare power of attorney, advance directive, living will, and HIPAA authorization.
• Note whether the documents name the same people and whether the contact details or preferences have changed.
• List the people or healthcare providers who should receive copies, and ask how sharing should be coordinated.

Questions to resolve before finalizing

Ask whether the person you selected is willing and realistically reachable; who should act if they cannot; and whether your written preferences give that person useful guidance. Ask how the healthcare decision document should relate to any existing advance directive or living will, and whether information-sharing instructions need updating.

Dale Law Group, PLLC offers healthcare power of attorney planning as part of its estate-planning services. The firm’s office is in Murfreesboro and serves clients throughout Tennessee; Morristown is not a firm-office location.