Life Care Planning

Care Partners believes in empowering older adults to document their health care wishes to ensure their medical teams and medical decision makers can honor their wishes during a medical emergency in which they cannot speak for themselves.

Care Partners offers culturally relevant education to support communities that need Advance Care Planning resources, conducting Advance Health Care Directive and Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment document trainings to engage Alameda County residents at all levels of health. If you are interested in an Advance Care Planning group workshop, please feel free to contact us.

Advance Health Care Directive (AHCD)

The AHCD Form is a legal tool to document your medical wishes and assign your medical decision makers for situations where you cannot make decisions for yourself.

Download AHCD form:

English | Other languages: Arabic | Armenian | Chinese | Farsi | Khmer | Korean | Russian | Spanish | Tagalog | Vietnamese

* Language specific forms are available on the PREPARE for Your Care website.

 

Physician Orders of Life Sustaining Treatment (POLST)

A POLST form is a medical order that informs emergency healthcare professionals what to do during a medical crisis.

	POLST	Advance Health Care Directive
Type of document	Medical Order	Legal Document
How long is the form?	1 Page	Multiple pages
Who completes	Healthcare Professional (Physicians, Nurse Practitioners, etc.) with patient	Individual
When to complete	Anytime	Anytime
Who is recommended to have	Seriously ill or frail (any age)	All cognitively competent adults
Appoints medical decision maker?	No	Yes
What is communicated	Specific medical orders for treatment wishes during a medical emergency	General wishes about future medical treatments
Does Emergeny Medical Services personnel have easy access	Yes	No
Where to locate	Refrigerator door or back of front door	The person, their health care providers and their decision makers