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Join National Healthcare Decisions Day... Because Your Decisions Matter On April 16, 2008, Community Hospice of Northeast Florida will join national healthcare, religious, and legal associations and organizations and numerous local and state organizations to participate in the inaugural National Healthcare Decisions Day.
The goal of this nationwide initiative is to ensure that all adults with decision-making capacity in America have both the information and the opportunity to communicate and document their future healthcare decisions.
In 1990, Congress affirmed the right of every citizen to make his or her future healthcare decisions in writing with an “advance directive” when it passed the Patient Self-Determination Act. Estimates suggest that fewer than 25 percent of all Americans have an advance directive. For an action that can be done without a lawyer, for free, and relatively easily — this figure is astonishingly low.
As Terri Schiavo’s situation tragically revealed, having an advance directive can be valuable for all adults, regardless of current age or health status. Advance directives enable you to document the types of healthcare you do and do not want and to name an “agent” to speak for you if you cannot speak for yourself. The easy-to-use Five Wishes® living will is available free-of-charge through Community Hospice. This document provides the practical information, advice and legal tools needed to ensure your wishes and those of your loved ones will be respected. It is unique among all other living wills and health agent forms because it looks to all of a person's needs — medical, personal, emotional and spiritual.
These are personal decisions for each of us that no one should be forced to make on our behalf. Community Hospice encourages everyone to use April 16, 2008, to decide, discuss, and document your wishes, whatever they may be.
Susan Ponder-Stansel President/CEO Community Hospice of Northeast Florida
Established in 1979 as the first hospice program in Northeast Florida, Community Hospice of Northeast Florida helps nearly 1,000 patients live better with advanced illness each day in Baker, Clay, Duval, Nassau and St. Johns counties, through the support of more than 700 employees and nearly 900 volunteers. The nonprofit organization has served more than 48,000 children and adults—at home, in long term care facilities, hospitals and through four inpatient centers throughout Jacksonville. Community Hospice Foundation generates philanthropic and community support for unfunded and under-funded programs, including indigent hospice care, Community PedsCare, a pediatric palliative and hospice program, and the programs and services of the Charles M. Neviaser Educational Institute. Care is available to all patients who need it, regardless of their ability to pay.
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