Minnesota Maintains 100 Percent Rate for Advance Care Planning

In study after study after study, researchers bemoan
persistently mediocre rates of advance care planning.  

So, I was delighted to hear the Medical Director or Honoring Choices Minnesota, Ken Gephart, announce at a recent conference that the "effective" completion rate of advance care planning in Minnesota is 100%.

What he meant is that medical treatment decisions have been made for every Minnesotan (and every other American too) should they become incapacitated.  The problem is that most of those decisions were not made by the patients themselves.  And in many cases they are not the same treatment decisions that those patients would have made for themselves.  

In short, failure to make any affirmative choice is still a choice.  It is a choice for the default option: continued aggressive treatment.