Connect: Put Your Plan into Action

The "5 Things to Know" series offers both the consumer and care provider a common place to start a planning discussion. The discussion guides are built on a competent adult's legal & patient rights in health care planning. The 5 top rights are the-

1. Right to information to make informed care choices;
2. Right to direct your care decisions, and to accept and refuse medical treatments;
3. Right to make a personal health care plan and write down your choices for care;
4. Right to have your choices known; to communicate, update, revise & record your choices in the medical record;
5. Right to have your choices honored, and align quality care to your care goals, values and choices.

Our goal is to bring together a common language and set of terms so either a consumer or care provider can start a planning discussion. There is a consumer guide and a care provider guide — same topics and questions just from their respective perspective. Forming the essential 10-12 questions in each guide was a highly collaborative process. Hundreds of interdisciplinary care providers, from large health systems to community groups, consulted on the questions and added their expertise in working with patients and clients. The care providers worked together for many months, unifying and tailoring the questions to be universal to age, ability and culture, so that each question could be re-visited and re-defined as a patient or client's health needs changed over time. The Honoring Choices Alliance Partners and Community Partners formed the collaborative process to ensure the discussion guides could easily become a routine part of every consumer-care provider visit.

The series of 4 discussion guides are built on the fundamental right of person-directed care and a competent adult's 5 top rights. The common foundation for the series is established in the Everyday Care Guide. We created a series to align with the three phases of health and added a Palliative Care Guide. The guides recognize the fact that health care changes and so can the planning needs of adults and families. Our interdisciplinary care providers created the guides to show how questions, concerns and decisions can change as an illness progresses and goals of care are revisited and redefined. Each discussion guide coordinates with the Honoring Choices Getting Started and Next Steps Tool Kits. The Health Care Planning Road Map illustrates how the 4 guides work together for high quality consumer-care provider discussions at every phase of your health care journey.

Everyone is different. You can start with the Everyday Care Guide no matter where you are on your health care journey. It's easy to use and provides the basic set of topics and questions. Remember, this is not a script, it's just a guide. Choose any topic & question that makes sense to you to start your discussion. Often consumers and care providers start with one question regarding what information is needed to understand one’s illness to make choices for care. You can start with one question or a few, then build on your discussions overtime. Consumers can bring the guide to their next appointment — or call ahead to make an appointment for an “advance care planning discussion.” Care providers are placing the index card version of the discussion guides in the waiting rooms. It is helping to make the discussion “known and routine” for each visit.