Healthcare Choices

Making healthare decisions is an important right for patients and their families.

Every adult of sound mind has the right to decide what may be done to his or her body in the course of medical treatment. As a patient, you have the right to be told about the nature of your condition, the general nature of proposed treatment, the risks of not undergoing the treatment and alternate procedures available.

To help with this process, the state of Texas has enacted three laws:

The first, the Medical Power of Attorney for Health Care, lets you appoint someone to make health care decisions for you when you cannot make them for yourself. It allows the patient's substitute to give or withhold consent to any medical treatment.

The second, the Directive to Physicians (Living Will), lets you specify what treatments you would not want for an incurable or irreversible illness. It allows you to "speak directly" to your physician, even after you cannot speak. A living will applies only to life-sustaining (extraordinary) procedures, and then only in situations involving an incurable or irreversible condition.

The third, the Mental Health Directive allows you to tell the hospital what kind of mental health treatment you want in the event you become incapacitated.