Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care
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NATHAN A. CRAIG
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Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care The standard power of attorney (POA) is a written legal instrument authorizing a person (named an agent or attorney-in-fact) to sign documents and conduct transactions on behalf of the principal or maker who has delegated away that authority. The principal can delegate as much (for instance, a general or complete delegation) or as little (such as a delegation specifically delineating what types of choices the agent may and may not make) power as desired. The principal may end or revoke the arrangement at any time, as long as the principal remains mentally competent to do so. The POA in its traditional form does not work well as a method for dealing with medical decisionmaking authority on a voluntary, prospective basis. The ordinary POA ends automatically when the principal who created it dies or becomes mentally incompetent. The underlying theory is that, because a deceased or incompetent person no longer has the physical or mental ability to revoke the POA, the law should exercise that right immediately for the principal. Thus, a person who establishes a standard POA to help in managing medical affairs would be cut off from such assistance at precisely the time when assistance is needed the most, namely, when the principal cannot act personally. In an effort to get around this practical problem, every state legislature has enacted legislation authorizing citizens to create (or execute) a durable power of attorney (DPOA). In contrast to the ordinary POA, the effect of a DPOA may endure or continue beyond the principal’s later incapacity as long as that continuing authority is what the principal intended in executing the DPOA. To remove any ambiguity about the applicability of the DPOA concept to the area of medical decisionmaking (including choices about life-sustaining medical treatments such as mechanical ventilators or antibiotics), almost every state has passed legislation that explicitly authorizes the use of the DPOA in the medical context. Some statutes use terminology such as health care representative, health care agent, or health care proxy. In addition, a number of states use a single,
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Dysmenorrhea comprehensive advance directive statute to expressly authorize competent adults to execute both proxy and instruction direct
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