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Mom has dementia, congestive heart failure, and other ailments; has been receiving hospice care for more than 1 year; and lives in a memory care assisted-living facility. My sister (the agent) has made many decisions for mom in the past few years, especially this year, when there have been several occasions when mom has been "unresponsive" for an entire day. Yesterday, the hospice nurse decided the health-care POA should be activated. I think it's good this was made official; I'm a little surprised it wasn't done before now. I don't know what the trigger was; mom hasn't been worse than usual this week, as far as I know.When and how was your loved one's health-care POA activated?

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The two Financial POAs I have had were immediate upon my Mom and nephew singing. I found that this is how it is in my State unless the principle wants conditions put in place. The Medical POAs were different. I had/have to have one doctor declare the principles incompetent to make informed decisions. This can be done in a hospital setting. A doctor needs an answer that for some reason the patient is not capable of answering so he invokes the Medical POA. The person holding the POA should go by the principles wishes. But my daughter, RN, has seen wishes overridden by a POA.
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Reply to Creatved
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Alva, what kinds of questions do you think people should ask here?
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Reply to Rosered6
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There's no family disagreement. My mom has had POA documents for many decades. One brother is the financial POA agent and has been doing all the financial stuff for several years. And as I indicated, my sister has been asked to make many health-care decisions this year. Everyone in the family is on board with that. I wonder whether someone with the hospice agency had an "oops" moment recently, as in, "oops, this person's health-care POA isn't activated but we've allowed family members to make her health-care decisions."
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This is likely a simple legal issue with this particular Hospice. If this agent has been doing BANKING using this POA, then it essentially IS activated. I think this is Hospice attempting now to get it "set in stone" or set in writing. Often they "get this way" if there is any family disagreement? Is there?

In any case, you are right. A good thing it is being done. You ask about our own. I was actually made POA and Trustee of Trust with my brother when he was diagnosed after a car accident with probable early Lewy's dementia by symptoms. That is to say normal scans and etc. but he had ALL the symptoms. So my brother himself asked me to take over everything for him. He sold his last little home and went into ALF we chose together for him. He put me as the manager on all accounts, made certain health care directives new and updated and etc. That is to say, knowing what was coming, we updated everything to remove any pressure off him. I managed everything and gave him monthly accountings. He died in Hospice after a tiny non-healing wound on his shin went to sepsis and antibiotics weren't effective. But as I always say, asking others what their own case was never much matters in yours, for your own things are individual as your own fingerprint. Goodluck Rose.
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