An Advance Care Plan Isn't Just for the End of Life

Smiling couple completes paperwork with attorney

The case for completing and filing an Advance Care Plan regardless of age or health status.

By Saint Francis Health System Staff

Most people assume advance care planning is for those who are seriously ill and/or nearing the end of life. But what if you were in a car accident on the way home from work tonight? What if you were temporarily unconscious and couldn't speak for yourself — even for a few hours or days?

An advance care plan is for those unlikely, but serious moments, too. And most of us don't have one.

What Is Advance Care Planning?

An advance care plan is a legal document that lets you record your healthcare wishes and designate a trusted person to make medical decisions on your behalf in the event you are unable to make them yourself.

That includes any situation where you lose decision-making capacity, whether temporary or permanent.

Without one, healthcare providers may be forced to default to a statutory hierarchy defined by Oklahoma law — starting with a spouse, then adult children.

If there are multiple adult children, they share equal authority—which can create conflict, delay and outcomes that are painful for everyone involved, particularly the patient and their medical team.

Common Myths—and the Truth

Advance care planning is widely misunderstood. Here are a few of the most common misconceptions:

"I'm not dying — why would I need this?"

An advance directive isn't a sign that your health is failing. It's a safeguard for anyone, at any age, in any health situation.

“An advance directive means they'll stop treating me."

Not true. An advance directive gives you a voice in your care — it doesn't limit what can be done for you.

"An advance directive is the same as a DNR."

These are separate documents. While an advance directive can address broader end-of-life care preferences, including the withholding or withdrawal of life-sustaining treatments, a DNR order is more narrowly focused on CPR decisions. If an individual’s advance directive does not explicitly address CPR or if they wish to ensure that their preferences regarding resuscitation are clearly documented, they may choose to execute a DNR order in addition to their advance directive.

Choosing Your Health Care Decisionmaker

Your healthcare decisionmaker can be whoever you trust most — a spouse, a child, a friend, a neighbor. The only restriction is on who can *witness* the signing of the document: a witness cannot be related to you or someone who will inherit from you. Your healthcare decision maker can be related to and can inherit from you.

Choosing your health care decisionmaker matters. If your family dynamics are complicated, or if the person you'd want advocating for you isn't who the law would turn to first, putting it in writing protects everyone.

How to File Your Advance Care Plan

Once completed, your advance directive should be easy to find in an emergency. Options include:

Submitting it to Health Information Management (HIM) to be uploaded to your Epic chart
Uploading it yourself through MyChart
Giving a copy to your physician, who can help ensure it's part of your medical record

Once you have filed your advance directive, keeping a wallet card with the location of your document is also strongly recommended. If your directive is filed with an attorney or stored in a safe deposit box, it may not be reachable at midnight on a Saturday when a decision needs to be made.

What Saint Francis is Building

Saint Francis Health System is working to make advance care planning a routine part of patient interactions — not a difficult conversation put off until a crisis.

The team is working on incorporating advance care planning into outpatient online scheduling and inpatient admissions processes with one simple goal: normalize the conversation before it becomes urgent, make creating these plans more accessible.

A Note on Upcoming Changes

Oklahoma has adopted the Uniform Health Care Decisions Act, which will go into effect on July 1, 2027. The new law outlines a process for patients to plan for their advance care.

The plain-language guidance above will continue to apply. Saint Francis will keep patients informed as those updates take effect.

Start the Conversation Now

You don't have to be facing a serious illness to take this step. You just have to care about having a say in your own care — and about making things easier for the people who love you.

Talk to your primary care provider about completing an advance directive or ask how to upload an existing one to your MyChart account.

It's one of the most important things you can do for yourself and your family — and it doesn't have to wait.