Advance Care Planning

At MultiCare, we believe advance care planning (ACP) is part of providing good patient-centered care. It means thinking about and discussing your goals, your values, and the health care choices you’d prefer. It’s helpful whether you are a healthy adult, someone who is battling an illness, or suffering from an unexpected injury. The ACP process helps your loved ones and your health care team provide the care you would want — even if something happened and you were no longer able to speak for yourself. Ideally, this would mean that you would complete a written advance directive.

Most adults should complete:

A Durable Power of Attorney Form (DPOA-HC or HCPOA). Our recommended advance directive is a durable power of attorney for health care. It allows you to name and prepare your health care agent.

This form meets the requirements of Washington state law. A health care agent can only make decisions for you if you are unable to do it on your own.

This document explains the purpose of naming a health care agent, what they can do, and what happens if you don’t name someone. It helps guide you and your loved ones to know and understand what matters most to you. When it is notarized or witnessed, it becomes a legal document. But this document also describes what to do, if any time, you change your mind.

This document and additional resources around long-term planning can be found in our long-term planning section.

All adults (even healthy 18-year olds) should consider basic planning and updating it from time to time. MultiCare offers several options to encourage meaningful conversation about planning for future health care decisions.