We’ve posted blogs in the past about the importance of executing an advance health care directive. The Advance Health Care Directive can name an agent to make health care decisions for you if you become unable to do that for yourself. Other information that can be included in your AHCD is whether you want organ donation and if so, for what purposes. Common purposes are transplant, therapy, research, and education. If you are interested in being an organ donor, you can also specify on your drivers license that you are a donor.
You also may have heard of Altruistic Organ Donation. This type of organ donation is made while you can still alive. Living donors now comprise 42% of kidney donations. This is the most common type of donation by a living person because we have two kidneys and one can experience a full and normal life with just one kidney. This type of organ donation, when given to a stranger is called “altruistic.” Other organs that can be donated by a living donor are the pancreas, intestine, liver, and lungs.
Scripps Hospital here in San Diego has an altruistic organ donation program as does UCLA. With an estimated 63,000 patients in this country on the waiting list for a kidney and an estimated wait time of over 3 years, altruistic organ donation is on the rise.
An Advance Health Care Directive is just one document included in the revocable living trust package at Scott C. Soady, A Professional Corporation. We can include information about organ donation as will as what your want in the way of health care if you have a terminal or irreversible condition, your preferences for burial or cremation, and who can have access to your medical information. Other documents included are a revocable living trust, pour over will, durable power of attorney for assets, certificate of trust, and assignments of your personal effects in to the trust, and transfer of real property into the trust. A complimentary consultation is available and check the internet for special rates.