Living Will Registry
Good Shepherd Medical Center, the only healthcare provider in the area that is a member of the U.S. Living Will Registry, gives patients peace of mind about the management of their advance directives.
When a person becomes ill or is involved in an accident, making decisions about preferred methods of medical treatment may become difficult or even impossible, forcing family members to make decisions for their loved ones.
That is why having an advance directive, a legal document that specifies a person’s healthcare choices if there is no reasonable hope for recovery, is vitally important.
The U.S. Living Will Registry electronically stores advance directives and makes the confidential information available to member healthcare providers by Internet or fax. Therefore, Good Shepherd personnel has instant access to documents such as advance directives, organ donor information and emergency contact information, for any registered person 24-hours a day.
As a member healthcare organization, advance directives can be registered through Good Shepherd Medical Center. For more information on creating and/or registering an advance directive, call the Good Shepherd Social Work at 903-315-2443 or contact the webmaster@gsmc.org. Registering the advance directive is free, and once registered, a person is registered for life.
Managing the storage and retrieval of advance directives has historically been problematic for healthcare providers because the information is oftentimes not current and/or the document is not easy to locate by patients or their family members during times of stress.