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Advance care planning

What is advance care planning?

Advance care planning means planning ahead for how you want to be treated if you are very ill or near death. Sometimes when people are in an accident or have an illness that will cause them to die they are not able to talk or to let others know how they feel. Texas law allows you to tell your doctor how you want to be treated by using an advance directive.

Chapter 166 of the Texas Health and Safety code is the state law on advance care planning through advance directives. Chapter 166 explains advance directives, includes forms to use for advance directives and states how medical decisions can be made when a person does not have an advance directive.

Advance care planning is a five-step process.

• Thinking about what you would want to happen if you could not talk or communicate with anyone.
• Finding out about what kind of choices you will need to make if you become very ill at home, in a nursing home or in a hospital.
• Talking with your family and doctor about show you want to be treated.
• Filling out papers that spell out what you want if you are in an accident or become sick.
• Telling people what you have decided.

Advance directives brochures

• Advance Care Planning — Your Personal Health Care Choices
• Advance Care Planning — Frequently Asked Questions About Advance Care Planning and End-of-life Care
• Thinking Ahead: My Way, My Choice, My Life at the End (PDF)
• Thinking Ahead advance care planning forms (PDF)

Advance directives FAQs

• Frequently Asked Questions in English
• Frequently Asked Questions in Spanish

Advance directives forms

Copies of advance directives for use by Texas residents are free on the Texas Department of Aging and Disability website. The available forms are:

• Consent to medical treatment
• Declaration for mental health treatment
• Directive to physicians and family or surrogates
• Medical power of attorney
• Out-of-hospital Do not resuscitate
• Procedure when person has not executed or issued a directive and is incompetent or incapable of communication
• Statutory durable power of attorney

The forms are available in both English and Spanish with the exception of the Out-of-hospital do not resuscitate form, which is in English only.

Advance directive rule

• Texas Administrative Code, Title 40, Part 1, Chapter 19, Subchapter E, Rule §19.419 Directives and Medical Powers of Attorney

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Updated: January 22, 2013