April 16 Webinar on COVID-Related Advance Care Planning

The COVID-19 pandemic has created an increased and urgent need for advance care planning, a process through which people document the treatment they want to receive if they become unable to make medical decisions for themselves.

This is an area where medical-legal partnerships, such as the Medical-Legal Partnership for Seniors (MLPS) at UC Law SF, can provide significant support to patients and healthcare providers.

Sarah Hooper, Executive Director of the UCSF/UC Law SF Consortium of Law, Science & Health Policy, which oversees MLPS, will present at a Town Hall April 16 about the legal, policy, operational, and capacity issues related to advance care planning.

Presenters, including Dr. Rebecca Sudore, Professor of Medicine at University of California, San Francisco, will also share advance care planning scripts that outpatient healthcare providers can use to guide conversations with patients.

“Each of us should have a voice in our care, and it’s especially important for patients to feel heard in times of crisis,” Hooper said. “We’re encouraging patients and providers to have these conversations and many are eager to have them. But legal execution requirements, coupled with common misunderstandings of advance directives by healthcare providers, can make advance care planning more difficult. We’ll be discussing these barriers and steps governors are taking to help alleviate them during this crisis.”

The webinar is scheduled for Thursday, April 16, at 10 a.m. Pacific, and is free and open to the public. The program is hosted by the National Center for Medical Legal Partnership at George Washington University. Register here.

Webinar Recording available here.