POA and MC admission

mrahope

I have given the POA for my DH over to DS officially. He looked at the documents far more critically than I and he's not sure we would be able to make decisions for DH as regards moving him to MC facility. It seems the documents actually say two doctors must sign off on him being incapable of making his own decisions. What I don't know is this: Do most MC facilities check these documents? If so, where do we find two doctors to certify it? We can't even seem to get one. Does this mean we cannot place him? Any experience or knowledge you have here will help. I've reached out to the attorney who created the documents but haven't heard back and I don't think she realizes how far DH has progressed since this was done almost 3 years ago.

Phoenix1966

I believe my POA had the same “two doctor” requirement. Because my grandmother eventually had a frightening delusion I could not re-direct her from, I called 911 and she was hospitalized. While she was in the hospital, I looked for and secured memory care placement and she was transferred directly from the hospital. I never asked, but assume since it was the hospital doctors (and not her useless PCP) that officially diagnosed her, there was an immediate pool of doctors to sign off on her being incapable to care for herself.

Placement from the hospital went smoothly and since I went with the “this is a fancy rehab facility” story, my grandmother had no complaints about the move.

Edited to add that @harshedbuzz was correct in identifying my POA as a springing one and not a durable one.

harshedbuzz

That sounds like a springing POA.

Often people will get letters from the PCP and neurologist to support activating the POA. A friend of mine had to go to court to obtain guardianship because dad found them on getting a POA. The judge ordered 5-hour neurocognitive testing as part of the process. That remains an option if the POA can't be activated at this time.

HB

FTDCaregiver1

https://alzconnected.org/discussion/68602/poa-and-mc-admission

Sharing my experience when moving DW into MC last year as I had a DPOA. As to your comments; fortunately no, the MC locations I placed her in didn't flyspeck my DPOA BUT all had criteria for admission requiring a Qualified Healthcare Practitioner (QHP) to complete/sign a form verifying her condition. Unfortunately, my bank's manager thought he was an attorney and did flyspeck it resulting in banking problems in managing DW's SSDI, but that's another story. Anyway, I think when you say you heard that your POA lacks authority on decisions concerning MC placement, it is, in my experience, true. Let's get technical, generally, under my DPOA, decisions governing MC are in my authority but don't extend into placement at a specific facility as that is determined by the facility in meeting their placement criteria (it's generally a licensing issue for the facility). So, they decide to accept, my DPOA allows me authority to refer and choose which MC location. I do suggest you google Qualified Healthcare Professional (QHP), as I'm guessing, like the form given me by the MC facilities I worked with, yours uses this term as well or something similar. For me I passed it off to the PACE program DW was enrolled in, they had a Geriatric Nurse coordinate its completion and she signed it, don't know the details, but it sufficed and last year DW was in 3 separate MC facilities, no problems.

M1

I know I sound like a broken record on this mra, but it brings me back to thinking that your best option to get him placed is to get him hospitalized first.

jfkoc

There are also some legal matters that come into play.

Is the POA a Durable POA?...if it is not durable is is likely invalid at this point...As the agent you can not simply hand that position over...

RickM

I tried moving my dad when we finally got an ok from his pcp. When things blew up and we ended up with him in hospital we were able to get a second letter of incapacity from another doctor which was required per his health care directive. She was a geriatric care specialist who made “house calls “ We paid out of pocket Amazingly enough we got this after a ten minute evaluation

Original placement didn’t require POA. Once he rejected that placement we had to take over and get control with second doctor sign off. The second doctor was the medical director where we placed him.

Bottom line: make sure you have health care POA before moving and if you suspect move will be difficult get advice from doctors and memory care facility. You are in charge now whether you like it or not.

RickM

And no I did not like it! It was the worst weekend of my life but prepared me for my dementia land journey with my wife

mrahope

Thanks so much for all the input. I've basically handed over dealing with the attorney to my DS at this point. TBH, this whole situation feels like a powder keg waiting to blow. Ironically, we finally have an appointment with a doctor who may be a geriatric psychiatrist a week from tomorrow. It has taken us six months to wait for this appointment. I am considering messaging this doc about the situation and being brutally frank about my worries.