You Can Take it to the Bank DocuBank
Follow me on a brief journey
through the imagination. Imagine that you care about your
personal health and safety. Thats not hard. However, do you
have a will? A large majority of Americans (76 percent) tell
us they understand the importance of having a will. However,
only about 43 percent have wills and fewer have bothered
updating them to reflect the fact that they have now been
married, divorced, remarried two or three times, have new
children and grandchildren and a strong desire to leave a
substantial estate behind for the care of Fluffy, the toy
poodle.
Imagine, in your caring,
that you are one of the very few Americans who has formally
designated a health care surrogate another person whom you
empower to make medical decisions affecting your fate when you
are not competent or able to make those decisions for
yourself. Imagine that youre one of the very few Americans
that have created a living will (one of about 36
percent).
This important document is a
form of communication to others such as the trauma center or
medical staff about your advance directives. Do you want to be
kept alive by artificial means? Do you want heroic efforts to
be made to prolong your life, or do you want to order a DNR
(do not resuscitate), should you be very likely to die? Do you
have a highly acute allergy, as some people do to shellfish,
bee stings, peanuts or watching Dancing with the
Stars?
Most people have wills. We
realize the importance to ourselves and to our families to
take steps now to make our wishes known when we may not be in
a position later (i.e., when were dead) to make them clear.
However, we dont take the follow-up steps to create a living
will or designate a healthcare surrogate to help us before we
die.
Now imagine that you are the
beautiful, young HR Doctor Daughter Rachel. You are working a
shift in an emergency room at 2 a.m. when a trauma alert is
received and paramedics bring an auto accident victim to you.
You have an ethical and a professional commitment not to let
him die. To do that, you must intervene fast and in the right
way, based on all the judgment borne of education, experience
and commitment.
There may be identification
in the victims wallet that tells the medical staff that he is
a visitor from Cleveland, but neither the emergency room staff
nor the police are able to contact anyone at his drivers
license address. In fact, he may have moved but failed to
change the address reported to the Department of Motor
Vehicles.
Meanwhile, the clock ticks
and the doctors must make critical decisions. His fate will be
in the hands of total strangers with no guidance from his
unconscious body about what he wants done and whom he wants
notified of his situation.
Personally, as Dr. Rachels
father, I would not have the slightest problem leaving my fate
in her hands. In fact, she is my designated health care
surrogate. But you dont know her, nor do you know any of the
doctors in the trauma center who will be responsible for your
care at the worst of times.
All those cares can
disappear quickly through a service known as DocuBank.
DocuBank stores key documents electronically such as the health care
surrogate designations and living wills. A DocuBank
member is provided with a wallet card and a sticker for the
drivers license that will immediately tell the medical staff
as well as the paramedics on scene that critical information
about you is available 24/7/365 by contacting
DocuBank.
All it takes is a phone call for
the medical staff to receive critical information about you,
including allergies, within seconds. That information will
guide the staff in the best treatment possible for you, in
notifying people you love, and in making sure that the
decisions made under very difficult circumstances are as
consistent as possible with your own wishes.
DocuBank offers for personal
health and security the same kind of safeguards that lead us
to deposit our paychecks in a conventional bank. There are
walls of protection to guard the data and trained personnel to
make the services come alive. Unlike a conventional bank
however, the doors dont close at three in the afternoon, nor
remain closed on holidays or weekends.
Im sure you answered the
questions at the beginning of this article in the affirmative.
You do care about your personal health and your security. You
might want to open a membership at DocuBank as a powerful tool
in enhancing that security.
The HR Doctor has an
affinity relationship with DocuBank. That means that if you
note on the membership form available at http://www.docubank.net/
that you were referred by the HR Doctor, then you
receive a substantial membership discount and the HR Doctor
receives one dollar for your membership. This is a
relationship not for the purpose of making money for the HR
Doctor, but for helping make colleagues aware of a valuable
service. The dollar I get from your participation will be
donated back to NACo to help with scholarships.
People used to keep their
money in mattresses or buried in the backyard, but the world
has changed tremendously. We are very mobile. Valuables in the
mattress are not secure at all, not even if you frequently
change the digits on your sleep number bed.
Our most valuable personal
protection information, like data about our own health,
through a living will or health care surrogate designation is
useless if Dr. Rachel cant identify that information quickly
in the morning. DocuBank can provide that access and provide
another dose of peace of mind.
Be healthy and wear your
seatbelts.
Phil Rosenberg
The HR Doctor http://www.hrdr.net/
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