JustCare

Tag: HIPAA

  • HIPAA and why you need a health care proxy

    HIPAA and why you need a health care proxy

    In 1996, more than 25 years ago, Congress enacted the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, which aims to safeguard people’s private health care information. Keeping people’s health care information private is important. But, HIPAA sometimes also keeps doctors and hospitals from sharing key information with you about the people you love. HIPAA provides all the more reason everyone should have a health care proxy–someone you designate, whom you trust, who can speak for you and ensure your wishes are honored, when you cannot speak for yourself.

    Without a health care proxy (sometimes called a “medical power of attorney” or an “advance directive,”) your family has only limited rights to make health care decisions on your behalf. And, at times, doctors and other care providers are not aware of these rights or misunderstand them, preventing your family from making needed decisions. Stories abound of family members not able to get information from the doctor about a loved one’s condition because of HIPAA. HIPAA does not keep this information from being shared in many cases, but doctors and hospitals often misapply it.

    For your own peace of mind, make sure you and the people you love have signed health care proxies. They are state-specific. You can download them free here. With a signed health care proxy, you know that someone you trust can speak on your behalf if you’re hospitalized and unable to speak for yourself. Without a health care proxy, that person may not be able to help you at all.

    Ideally, you should give a copy of your health care proxy to the person you have designated as your proxy as well as to your doctor. If you don’t share it with the person, make sure your health care proxy knows where to locate it in your home. It’s of no use if your proxy does not have a record of it. For more reasons why health care proxies are so important, click here.

    What does HIPAA allow? HIPAA does allow doctors and other care providers to disclose a person’s health information to family members or close friends when in their professional judgment it’s in the best interest of the patient. And HIPAA only applies to care providers, health insurers and health data collectors, not clubs or churches or other organizations. So an assisted living institution or nursing home can let people know about the condition of their loved one.

    Updated from September 23, 2015 and December 31, 2018.

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  • VSED, an end-of-life choice

    VSED, an end-of-life choice

    When it comes to health care, there seem to be fewer and fewer things that the US health care system gets right. End-of-life matters are no exception, with hospitals generally keeping people alive, even when they have asked to die, and forcing their loved ones to suffer through their slow passing. For this reason, Kevyn Burger reports for Next Avenue that more people are taking their deaths at the end of their lives into their own hands through voluntarily stopping eating and drinking or VSED.

    One way people help ensure a peaceful death is through electing hospice care.  Medicare covers hospice care, usually at home, for people believed to have six months or less to live. Hospice care focuses on easing pain and providing social and emotional supports for patients and their families, To learn more about the hospice benefit, click here.

    At the end of their lives, some people choose to speed up their death by forgoing food and drink, an age-old process. This choice is called “voluntary stopping eating and drinking” or VSED. People typically die in 10 days.

    Three quarters of Americans favor medical assistance in dying. Ten states–California, Colorado, Hawaii, Montana, Maine, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington—and Washington DC permit it. In these places, patients with six months or less to live can ask their doctors for medicines that allow them to die in their sleep. But, in other states, where this is not an option, VSED is an option.

    You need assistance with VSED to ensure your pain and other symptoms are well managed. Medicines should be available to you. It’s best for patients who are in very poor health to understand the process and be committed to it. Even with help from a doctor, it is not considered assisted suicide. But, a family member who helps with VSED should have written authority through a health care proxy document or durable medical power of attorney that he or she is carrying out the patient’s wishes if the patient cannot speak for himself or herself.

    A new book! “Voluntarily Stopping Eating and Drinking, A Compassionate, Widely-Available Option for Hastening Death” explains the process, including practical and ethical details.  It also provides case examples.

    On day one, patients can engage with their loved ones and say good goodbye. With no food or drink, they get weaker and are less able to engage. With no liquids, their organs fail. Quite quickly, they tend not to be hungry but they are thirsty. Water will extend life, so generally mists and swabs of the patient’s mouth are the treatment.

    With VSED, it’s common for patients to become delirious and agitated right before death. They are often given tranquilizers and anti-anxiety medicines.  Then, their heart stops, and they stop breathing.

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