Increasingly, the advance directive, that important document that tells your family and your doctor who you would like to manage your end-of-life experience, are filled out every year by millions of more and more Americans. As a result of a significant public education campaign, as well as greater awareness of how things can go terribly wrong without this kind of documentation, men and women have completed this simple form to ensure their wishes are respected.
But then what happens? Only a few years ago, it was suggested that one’s directive should be kept in one’s freezer so that EMS staff could quickly refer to it during an emergency. In other cases, those medical instructions are put on thumbnail drives only to wind up in the back of a desk or a closet, never to see the light of day again.
UM-Regional Shore Health now has a serious option for those in its health network to have a safer, more accessible home for one’s directive. Using their massive EPIC database, which is the foundation of the My Portfolio website, and available to every major health database system in the country, Shore Health has begun a community campaign to encourage their patients to submit their directive to its Population Health division so that it can be uploaded into EPIC.
The Spy sat down with SRH’s Population Health’s Terry Satchell & Kathy Sellers to learn more.
This video is approximately four minutes in length. For more information about how to submit a advanced directive please contact Kathy Sellers at 410-822-1000 #5080. Or please use their website here.
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