Everyone today is afraid of COVID-19. What can you do to help your clients? You can send them a note reminding them to prepare or update their advance health care directive and HIPAA waivers. These forms are available online at no cost. Every person over the age of eighteen should take thirty minutes to fill out these documents and share them with loved ones.

• Advance Health Care Directives can be obtained through a client’s doctors. Large medical institutions like Kaiser and UCSF and Stanford provide forms online. Most states, including California, have statutory forms. An advance health care directive provides trusted people with instructions for medical care and end of life decisions.
• As more and more hospitals and medical facilities refuse entry to non-essential personnel, HIPAA waivers are critical. HIPAA waivers allow a client to list the names of family members, friends, clergy, health care providers, or other third parties to whom they wish to have made their medical information available. If anyone would ask for medical information regarding a specific patient and their name is not listed on the HIPAA form, they would be denied access to this information.

Once your clients complete these documents, they should send electronic copies to their named agents and encourage those agents to save the documents on their phones for ease of access.

NOTE: Married clients do not automatically have this authority. These documents are necessary for all persons over the age of eighteen.

Completing these documents will give your clients peace of mind that they have given their trusted loved ones the authority and instruction they need to care for them in a time of personal health crisis.