Advance Care Planning

At MedStar Health, it is important for us to understand your wishes about your care

What is the Advance Care Planning Program?

MedStar Health’s Advance Care Planning Program is designed to strengthen and expand Advance Care Planning (ACP) efforts across our system. Our goal is to ensure every patient’s medical wishes—including their preferred decision makers—are documented and honored by their health care team.

We want to understand and document your medical wishes so we can act on them in the event you are unable to speak for ourself in the future. Our ACP facilitators can help you with the process. They are certified in Respecting Choices—an evidence-based system for person-centered decision making—and help patients, families and care teams make medical decisions that are informed by each patient’s values and goals.

ACP helps ensure your wishes are honored in the event you lose the ability to make decisions. This gives you peace of mind now and can reduce burdens on your loved ones in the future.

ACP Matters

• Advance care planning helps ensure the health care you receive is aligned with your personal values and goals.
• Planning now ensures your wishes are honored later, even if you’re unable to speak for yourself.
• Open discussions with your healthcare team and the people who matter to you most, such as family members, can clarify your preferences and help reduce ambiguity and burdens on others.

Remember that you don’t have to do this alone—we are here to support you.

Start your ACP journey now by taking a few simple steps.

While MedStar Health will honor any valid advance directive from its patients, we have partnered with organizations that provide legal advance directives to make the process easy.

• Five Wishes: complete a customized Five Wishes advance directive that you can print to share with your healthcare providers, email, or save to your computer

• MyDirectives: complete an online advance directive to make your wishes available electronically to participating healthcare providers

After reviewing an advance directive, take the following steps:

1. Write down any questions or concerns you have about your medical conditions as they relate to your treatment wishes and discuss those questions or concerns with your healthcare provider.
2. Complete a Five Wishes, MyDirectives or other valid advance directive form.
3. Share your medical treatment wishes with your loved ones and MedStar Health.  You should return your completed advance directive to MedStar Health one of the following ways:
   • In person drop-off: Provide a paper copy to a MedStar Health associate, who will email or fax it to Advance Care Planning (ACP).

   • Email: ACPinfo@medstar.net

   • Fax: 410-657-1910
   • Mail: Advance Care Planning, 10980 Grantchester Way, 7th Floor, Columbia, MD 21044

When the MedStar Health ACP team receives your advance directive, they will upload it to your electronic health record.