Future You is Counting on You Today

Imagine years from now that you’re in a hospital room. There’s a steady rhythm of machines, voices just outside the curtain, and a quiet urgency in the air. You can hear your name, but you can’t respond. Someone is asking, “What would they want?”

Your loved one is trying to answer. They’re doing their best. But they’re guessing. No one is sure.

And in that moment, the decision doesn’t feel medical. It feels personal. Emotional. Heavy.

This is where advance care planning shows up. Not in theory, but in real life.

What is advance care planning?

Advance care planning is deciding what future medical care you’d want if others had to make healthcare decisions for you. It includes understanding what matters to you and naming your priorities, including treatments you’d want or want to avoid. Detailing your choices in an advance healthcare directive provides legal protection for those choices you make. Often, an advance healthcare directive will include a living will which outlines specific choices as well as a durable power of attorney for healthcare (DPOAH) or Health Care Agent (HCA) that names a trusted person to make medical decisions for you.

But these documents are not the whole picture. Advance care planning should also include:

• Asking medical professionals about what treatment options would mean for your recovery given your personal health history
• Seeking guidance from religious, spiritual, and other leaders about choices if relevant
• Talking with loved ones, providers, and especially your designated Health Care Agent about your choices and what you would hope for outcomes
• Revisiting decisions throughout life as goals, values, and situations change

When this work is done well, it aligns healthcare with who you are. Studies show it improves communication, reduces stress and deep regrets for families, and increases the likelihood that medical care reflects a person’s wishes.

Still, most people never get there. Only about one-third of U.S. adults have completed any form of advance healthcare directive. Some estimates suggest even fewer have a fully developed plan or have discussed it with others.

Not because they don’t care but because no one helped them start before a crisis arises.

Why timing matters

In reality, most advance care planning happens late, during serious illness, hospitalization, or after something has already changed. In fact, many providers report these conversations often begin only when someone is already facing advanced illness.

But that’s the hardest time to do it. When decisions are urgent, emotions are high, and options feel overwhelming, there is very little space to reflect on values or talk things through clearly.

Planning earlier changes that. And support makes these conversations easier.

It helps to have someone who can guide the process, ask the right questions, and translate complex medical realities into clear, human terms. Empowered Endings’ high-touch, physician-led, in-home approach makes a difference. Advance care planning becomes:

• A conversation with you, not a checklist for you to do
• Personalized information, not generic assertions
• Responsive to your life, your health, and your concerns

Instead of trying to navigate it on your own, you have someone who can:

• Help you clarify what matters most
• Coordinate conversations with your family and care team
• Ensure your wishes are understood and documented clearly

You don’t have to figure it out in isolation.

Future you may not get to speak in that moment but present you can ensure that your voice is still heard—clearly, confidently, and without leaving the people you love to guess.

National Healthcare Decisions Day is April 16. Reach out and let’s make sure future you is heard.