Who's Your Agent?® Program for Care Providers and Professionals
Honoring Choices Massachusetts' signature Who’s Your Agent?® Program is a structured approach to health care planning to help adults make a personal care plan in order to get good care today and over their lifetime. Care providers and consumers use the same program and tools to help standardize early and on-going care planning conversations from simple to serious illness, Our structured approach supports care providers and community organizations, easily embedding our program, training and tools into your workflow. The Who's Your Agent? Program supports staff to routinely engage adults in conversations and connect them to timely care aligned with their goals, values and care choices.
Who can use the Who’s Your Agent?® Program & tools? ANYONE who engages an adult in planning conversations can use this program. It's free and downloadable on our website. All health care providers, interdisciplinary professionals, faith based leaders, community advocates, legal advocates and many more. You do not need to be an Honoring Choices Partner, but we welcome knowing how you are using the tools to help every adult in your community have equal access to care planning information and tools.
Why become an Honoring Choices Partner? Come join the Honoring Choices Partner Network, an amazing group of health care and community organizations across the state. It's no cost. We can tailor the Who’s Your Agent?® Program program and tools to support your mission and help educate/train your staff to confidently engage adults in planning discussions. We also promote your work on our website and in our monthly newsletter. To learn more, contact Ellen DiPaola, JD, President, edipaola@honoringchoicesmass.com
Who's Your Agent? Program
Our Who’s Your Agent Program's structured approach uses a step by step process that allow adults to take control of their health care planning. Care providers can help begin the process by engaging adults in a simple conversation to start to make a personal plan using the Getting Started Tool Kit.
Then when adults are ready, care providers can help build on planning conversations as health care needs change, and help adults add to and update their personal plan using the Next Steps Tool Kit.
Getting Started Tool Kit
Start a simple planning conversation using these tools:
- MA Health Care Proxy form
- MA Personal Directive (Living Will) form
- "I Have a Health Care Proxy" Wallet Card
- Handy Consumer Conversation Guide 1
- Start a Simple Conversations to Stay Well
Next Steps Tool Kit
Build on your conversations from simple to serious illness using:
- Handy Care Provider Conversation Guides 2-4:
- Manage Health Needs and Chronic Illness
- Live Well with Serious Illness
- Let's Talk About Palliative Care
- Update & Add Documents. Learn about-
- Durable Power of Attorney; MOLST form; CC/DNR form
- Learn About Palliative Care and Hospice Care
Information, FAQs, and Fact Sheets to Share
Care providers can access up to date information on many health care planning topics. For example, you can download FAQs- Frequently Asked Questions- fact sheets, and videos, such as;
- A Health Care Agent's Role and Decisions-Making Authority
- What is Guardianship?
- How do you complete a HCM Health Care Proxy?
- What is Palliative Care?
A complete listing of FAQs and fact sheets are on the Resources Page.
Conversation Guides
The Conversation Guide Series has two sets of guides: the Care Provider Conversation Guides 1-4 and the Consumer Conversation Guides 1-4. The Guides mirror each other for more effective consumer-care provider conversations.
You can download a 1-page Care Provider Guides below. Start with a simple conversation (Guide 1) and build on your conversations over time (Guides 2-4). Be sure to share the corresponding Consumer Conversation Guide with adults and families to help them prepare ahead of your conversations.
Care Provider Conversation Guide Series
5 Things to Talk About with Your Patients & Clients
Guide 1: Start a Simple Conversation to Stay Well
Guide 2: Managing Health and Chronic Illness
Guide 3: Living Well with Serious Illness
Guide 4: Let’s Talk about Palliative Care
Download and share the Consumer Conversation Guides, 5 Things to Talk About with your Care Providers.
Multi-Lingual Documents, Tools & Videos
Health Care Proxy
Personal Directive
Your Voice, Your Choice Videos
Webinars for Care Providers
We offer two webinars to education and train staff in using the Who's Your Agent? Program and tool kits. Due to popular demand the webinars are reserved for Honoring Choices Partners. Learn more at Webinars for Care Providers.
Become a Health Care Planning Ambassador
Educate your staff and colleagues as certified Health Care Planning Ambassadors to confidently and routinely start a planning conversation to help adults make a care plan. Come join the 2500 certified Ambassadors who use the Getting Started Tool Kit and Next Steps Tool Kit to engage adults in powerful planning conversations to complete a MA Heath Care Proxy and Personal Directive (Living Will), and build on their personal plan to get better care to live well with chronic and serious illness. Ambassadors gain strategies to start simple conversations, understand the 5 MA documents to revise and update a plan, and access resources to help connect adults to better care in their community.
Engage Adults in Seamless Conversations from Simple to Serious Illness
Educate your health care teams members to start simple planning conversations using the HCM Who's Your Agent? Program, and flow into a more complex conversations using Ariadne Labs Serious Illness Conversation Guide. HCM "Who's Your Agent?" Program's Getting Started and Next Steps Tool Kits work seamlessly with Ariadne Lab's Serious Illness Conversation Guide to help care teams engage adults in proactive planning conversations at every phase of health. The webinar reviews the HCM Getting Started Tool Kit to complete a Health Care Proxy and Personal Directive (Living Will), how to use the 5 MA planning documents, and introduces the Serious Illness Conversation Guide's step-by-step communication approach to have early and on-going conversations.
Join the Honoring Choice Partner Network
Everyone is welcome to join the Honoring Choices Partner Network. There is no cost to partnering. We'll tailor our tools and programs to support your staff and strengthen your mission. We promote your work on our Partner webpage and in monthly e- newsletter under "Partner News" Here are two ways to partner:
- Become a Community Partner
- For health care and community providers in 7 regions of the state.
- Become an Alliance Partner
- For state agencies, membership organizations and advocate groups to educate hundreds of their members and care providers to help consumers in their community,
If interested to learn more, contact Ellen DiPaola, JD, President, edipaola@honoringchoicesmass.com