Advance care planning is appropriate and necessary for all senior living residents

McKnight's Senior Living

December 11, 2017

Diane E. Meier, M.D., FACP

Choice and control are key elements of quality healthcare that often are lost in today's over-medicalized healthcare system. Senior living communities can play an important role in helping their residents take control over their medical futures by simply asking what is most important to them in terms of their future medical care. If a resident's family and their doctors don't know what the resident wants and the resident is too sick to tell them, then the resident will get the default: machines, tubes, procedures and loss of control. If the resident wants the default, then there is no need to prepare. More