Honoring Choices Florida, Florida’s advance care planning initiative supported and coordinated by Community Hospice & Palliative Care, along with other national, state and community organizations, are leading an effort to highlight the importance of advance health care decision-making — an effort that has culminated in the formal designation of April 16 as National Healthcare Decisions Day.
As a participating organization, Honoring Choices Florida is providing information and tools for the public to talk about their wishes with family, friends and health care providers, and execute written advance directives (health care surrogate and living will) in accordance with Florida state laws. These resources are available at honoringchoicesfl.com.
Many events have been planned in collaboration with local organizations, including the National Healthcare Decisions Day webinar. Honoring Choices Florida and Community Hospice & Palliative Care welcomes the public to join in an online discussion to learn more about advance planning during the following session taking place from 3 to 4 p.m. Thursday, April 14. You can register at the following link: bit.ly/ACPSpring2.
As a result of National Healthcare Decisions Day, many more people in the community can be expected to have thoughtful conversations about their health care decisions and complete reliable advance directives to make their wishes known. Fewer families and health care providers will have to struggle with making difficult health care decisions in the absence of guidance from the patient.
Health care providers and facilities will be better equipped to address advance health care planning issues before a crisis and be better able to honor patient wishes when the time comes to do so.
For more information about National Healthcare Decision Day, go to nhdd.org.
